v1.0.0 — 20/08/2026
First public release.
A braille display has a memory, and that memory is meant to hold books and
documents. Reaching it from a Mac used to mean fitting an extension into the
heart of the system. BrailliantConnect fits nothing: it goes into Applications,
you open it once, and from then on the display behaves like a USB stick —
plugged in, it is there; unplugged, it is gone.
The author uses a Brailliant with a screen reader. Everything the app says is
written to be read in braille: one fact per line, and never a state carried by
colour or by an icon alone.
Installing
- Drag the app into Applications and open it once. That is the whole
installation. The app registers itself with the system so it comes back at
every login, then exits: what runs afterwards is not the copy you
double-clicked. - A welcome window opens on first launch and names the two or three things
nobody can guess — first among them the setting to turn on, on the display
itself.
On the display: MTP
- File transfer has to be on, once, and it probably already is: it has been
on by default since version 2.5 of the display's software. Otherwise, on the
display: Options, User settings, MTP. - Nothing is switched off or swapped. A display the Mac can reach publishes
its braille interfaces and the file-transfer one at the same time, and stays
usable as a braille terminal throughout a copy.
The display in the Finder
- A "Brailliant" folder appears in your home folder as soon as the display is
plugged in, and goes away when you unplug it. - It holds one folder per storage, never a file directly. The display's own
memory is one; a USB stick plugged into the display is another, and it shows up
alongside rather than staying invisible. Your documents are therefore one level
down. - Nothing can be created at the top level, because that place belongs to no
storage. A copy dropped there is refused, and the app says so rather than
leaving a file the Finder shows and the display never received.
Transfers
- The Finder hands control back immediately, long before a copy is finished.
Three gigabytes return in a fraction of a second and keep going for seven
minutes, at roughly 7 MB per second. - So the app tells you when not to unplug, in the menu bar, and tells you
when the transfer is done. Without that, nothing on screen would tell a
finished copy from one that has just started. - Deleting, by contrast, is immediate — about thirteen milliseconds per item
whatever its size. There is no window in which unplugging could truncate
anything.
The menu bar
- A menu bar item is the only visible part. It says whether the display is
there, opens its folder, and tells apart the cases where it is plugged in but
answering nothing: asleep, or MTP turned off — each with the gesture that
fixes it. - Quit really quits. The location leaves the Finder and the agent stops for
good; opening the app again brings it straight back, and it returns on its own
at the next login as long as Open at Login stays ticked.
Uninstalling
- One menu entry removes everything the app wrote — the location, the
shortcut, the agent, preferences, containers, logs — and moves the app to the
Trash. Nothing on the braille display is touched.
What this version does not do
- One connection at a time. The protocol allows no more: while the Finder
holds the display, thebrailliantcommand cannot reach it, and the other way
round. - Anything you change on the display itself goes unnoticed until the folder
is read again: the display does not announce its own changes.
Reporting a problem
brailliant --versionsays which version you have, andbrailliant doctor
repeats it at the top of its report. It is the first thing to include when
something goes wrong: without it, a described behaviour belongs to no
particular build.
Hardware
Built and verified on a Brailliant BI 40X. Nothing in the code depends on the
model, but that remains to be confirmed on the others. If you own a different
one, brailliant doctor and its output would genuinely help.
🇫🇷 En français : RELEASE_NOTES.fr.md
Download
BrailliantConnect.zip below. Unpack it, drag BrailliantConnect into
Applications, and open it once. The app is signed and notarized by Apple, so it
opens without a Gatekeeper warning.