OwnKeep v1.7

OwnKeep v1.7

Restore a backup straight from the first screen on a new Mac, and a quiet reminder when your backups fall behind.

Requirements

• macOS 13 or later
• Universal 2 — Apple Silicon and Intel

Install

Download the .dmg, open it, drag OwnKeep to Applications. On first launch macOS asks for
Accessibility permission so the ⌘⇧Space global hotkey works system-wide; OwnKeep runs in the
menu bar with no Dock icon.

Upgrading from v1.6? Drag the new app over the old one. Your vault lives outside the app bundle and
is untouched. No schema change, no migration, no Emergency Kit re-issue. Backups keep the same
.okbak format.

Before you upgrade, know that:

• Back up with v1.6 first if you might go back. Once v1.7 saves your vault, older versions refuse to open it, including a vault restored from a v1.7 backup.
• Expect a backup reminder right after upgrading. v1.6 didn't record when you backed up, so v1.7 treats an existing vault as never backed up until you take one backup. Turn the reminder off in Settings → System if you'd rather not see it.

Verify this download

Signed with a Developer ID certificate, built with hardened runtime, notarized and stapled by Apple.
Check it yourself rather than taking my word for it:

spctl -a -vvv -t open --context context:primary-signature OwnKeep_1.7.0_universal.dmg
# expect: accepted / source=Notarized Developer ID

shasum -a 256 OwnKeep_1.7.0_universal.dmg
# b01b025c1359ad980aeb944e1812073d32845505dbb036afb27547f930543a31

Changes

• Restore from the first screen. On a Mac with no vault, choose Already have a backup? Restore it, enter the master password or recovery code the backup was made with, then pick the .okbak file. There's no need to create a throwaway vault first. The restored vault keeps its own password and recovery code. Touch ID isn't in backups, so turn it on again in Settings afterwards.
• Backup reminder. A banner above the Dashboard offers Back up now or Later (hides it for 7 days). It appears when a vault that's more than a day old has content and has never been backed up, when your last backup is older than the interval you set and something has changed since, or straight away once you add a file or change 10 items. Choose the interval in Settings → System: 7, 14, 30 (the default) or 90 days, or Off. Settings also shows the date of your last backup. Backups are still made only when you choose to make one, and nothing is uploaded.
• File tiles no longer cover menus. A PDF tile now draws its first page as an image instead of loading the PDF reader, whose zoom and save controls floated above menus and dialogs. A damaged PDF shows the file icon.
• Row menus open upward when there isn't room below them.
• The About panel and the Settings hint about the vault file now describe what's actually there: the vault file plus a folder of stored files, which only a backup copies together.

Known issues

• The reminder counts new and edited items, not deletions or renamed stored files. A restore that needs a migration doesn't record a backup date until you take your next backup.
• The number of stored files and their approximate sizes are visible to anyone with access to your disk; names, types and contents are not. Deleting a file removes its ciphertext but doesn't wipe the disk.
• Automatic pre-restore and pre-migration snapshots keep files you've since deleted, using disk space until you remove those snapshots by hand.
• Images and PDFs over 512 MiB can be stored and saved, but not previewed.
• Dragging works within a page or section, not across them, and a sorted list can't yet go back to automatic order.
• Event Tracker photos and PDFs still live inside vault.dat, so many of them still slow every save.
• Some technical error messages are still in English.
• No sync, no browser autofill, no TOTP generation — all deliberate non-goals.
• macOS only.

Full changelog: v1.6...v1.7

OwnKeep v1.6

OwnKeep v1.6

A new Files module for storing files of any type and size, encrypted, with built-in previews. Read the upgrade notes below: backups have a new format, and for the first time your data is more than one file.

Requirements

• macOS 13 or later
• Universal 2 — Apple Silicon and Intel

Install

Download the .dmg, open it, drag OwnKeep to Applications. On first launch macOS asks for
Accessibility permission so the ⌘⇧Space global hotkey works system-wide; OwnKeep runs in the
menu bar with no Dock icon.

Upgrading from v1.5? Drag the new app over the old one. Your vault lives outside the app bundle and
is untouched. No schema change, no migration, no Emergency Kit re-issue.

Before you upgrade, know that:

• Back up with v1.5 first if you might go back. Once v1.6 saves your vault, older versions refuse to open it.
• Backups are now a single .okbak file holding your vault and all stored files. Versions before v1.6 can't restore one. Your existing .dat backups still restore in v1.6, but restoring one leaves Files empty.

Verify this download

Signed with a Developer ID certificate, built with hardened runtime, notarized and stapled by Apple.
Check it yourself rather than taking my word for it:

spctl -a -vvv -t open --context context:primary-signature OwnKeep_1.6.0_universal.dmg
# expect: accepted / source=Notarized Developer ID

shasum -a 256 OwnKeep_1.6.0_universal.dmg
# 7bd8ce5ba6d5da19197a83bced0a50682b3ba45346bb4cf4f17b1607002d6319

Changes

• Files module. Store any file with a title, description, date and category. PDFs, images (zoom and pan), audio and video preview inside the app, and video seeks without loading the whole file. Set a maximum file size in Settings; the default is no limit. Mark an expired file Invalid to keep it as a record: it moves to a collapsed section with a dimmed, stamped preview.
• Your data is no longer one file — a deliberate change. Everything else stays in vault.dat, but file contents are encrypted blobs in a vault.files folder beside it: XChaCha20-Poly1305 in 1 MiB chunks, under a key derived from your vault key, so changing your password re-encrypts nothing. Keeping them out of vault.dat means large files don't slow every save. Previews are served through a local ownkeep-file:// scheme that refuses requests while the vault is locked and only serves displayable types; the content security policy allows that scheme for images, media and frames.
• Faster, fuller backups. A backup copies already-encrypted files straight through, with progress and Cancel. Restore checks your password first, then authenticates every chunk before anything live changes, so a damaged backup can't replace your vault.
• Change your master password in Settings → System → Security. It asks for your current password. Your recovery code and Touch ID keep working; backups you already made still open with the password they were made with.
• Drag to sort Files, Event Tracker, Notes and Commands, or use the arrow keys on the handle. A list keeps its automatic order until your first drag, then remembers yours.
• Notes and Commands are now flat lists with coloured category badges, no longer grouped by category or tag. Command tags show as chips under each title.
• Jump to any month and year in every date picker, from 1900 to 30 years ahead.
• Pagination for Files and Passwords.

Known issues

• The number of stored files and their approximate sizes are visible to anyone with access to your disk; names, types and contents are not. Deleting a file removes its ciphertext but doesn't wipe the disk.
• Automatic pre-restore and pre-migration snapshots keep files you've since deleted, using disk space until you remove those snapshots by hand. The app doesn't show this usage yet.
• Images and PDFs over 512 MiB can be stored and saved, but not previewed. Audio and video have no such limit.
• Dragging works within a page or section, not across them, and a sorted list can't yet go back to automatic order.
• Event Tracker photos and PDFs still live inside vault.dat, so many of them still slow every save.
• Some technical error messages are still in English.
• No sync, no browser autofill, no TOTP generation — all deliberate non-goals.
• macOS only.

Full changelog: v1.5...v1.6

OwnKeep v1.5

OwnKeep v1.5

A new Event Tracker module for things you follow day by day, and the whole app in English or Simplified Chinese.

Requirements

• macOS 13 or later
• Universal 2 — Apple Silicon and Intel

Install

Download the .dmg, open it, drag OwnKeep to Applications. On first launch macOS asks for
Accessibility permission so the ⌘⇧Space global hotkey works system-wide; OwnKeep runs in the
menu bar with no Dock icon.

Upgrading from v1.4? Drag the new app over the old one. Your vault lives outside the app bundle and
is untouched. No schema change, no migration, no Emergency Kit re-issue — v1.4 and v1.5 open each
other's vaults.

Verify this download

Signed with a Developer ID certificate, built with hardened runtime, notarized and stapled by Apple.
Check it yourself rather than taking my word for it:

spctl -a -vvv -t open --context context:primary-signature OwnKeep_1.5.0_universal.dmg
# expect: accepted / source=Notarized Developer ID

shasum -a 256 OwnKeep_1.5.0_universal.dmg
# 3e8a19bbb5a6d3b41d2bf97db319e598df8cfbc4caff06a7ec5bdc671fab72cf

Changes

• Event Tracker module (⌥⇧7). Track something over time — a child's height, sleep, a treatment — as an event with its own quick-entry tags (number with a unit, yes/no, or text, each with an icon; star a tag to highlight it). Fill in a day from a Monday-first calendar with year and month pickers, add free-form items, a note, and photos or PDFs, and mark milestone days. A pannable, zoomable timeline filters to one tag or item; a trending view charts any number tag over a date range with change / min / max. Days can be imported from a CSV, with a preview before anything is saved. Event Tracker is not in the command bar by default; scope a query with the e prefix.
• Photos and PDFs live inside the encrypted vault, so they are encrypted at rest and travel with every backup and restore — no separate files. Photos are downscaled to 2000 px and re-encoded as JPEG; PDFs are kept as uploaded, up to 10 MB each. To display them, the app's content security policy now allows data: images and blob: frames (the PDF reader). Scripts are still restricted to the app itself.
• English and 简体中文. Settings → System → Appearance → Language: Follow macOS (the default), English, or 简体中文. The switch applies immediately to the command bar, the Dashboard, the menu-bar menu, dialogs and reminder notifications. Translations ship inside the app; nothing is downloaded or machine-translated.
• Faster saves. The Dashboard shows a change immediately while the vault is re-encrypted in the background; if the write fails, it reloads what is actually on disk and tells you.

Known issues

• Your vault is one encrypted file that is rewritten in full on every save, so many large photos make every save in every module slower.
• Some technical error messages (a failed restore or disk error) are still in English, and the default category, tag and finance option lists stay as they were — they are your data, edit them in Settings.
• No sync, no browser autofill, no TOTP generation — all deliberate non-goals.
• macOS only.

Full changelog: v1.4...v1.5

OwnKeep v1.4

Redesigned logo.

OwnKeep v1.3

OwnKeep v1.3

A notes module with a Markdown editor, and auto-renewing subscriptions that roll themselves forward.

Requirements

• macOS 13 or later
• Universal 2 — Apple Silicon and Intel

Install

Download the .dmg, open it, drag OwnKeep to Applications. On first launch macOS asks for
Accessibility permission so the ⌘⇧Space global hotkey works system-wide; OwnKeep runs in the
menu bar with no Dock icon.

Upgrading from v1.2? Drag the new app over the old one. Your vault lives outside the app bundle and
is untouched. The vault schema is unchanged at version 11 — v1.3 adds an empty notes slice the
first time it opens your vault, and nothing else about the file changes. No migration runs and no
re-issue of the Emergency Kit is needed.

One thing will surprise your fingers: Notes takes ⌥⇧4, so Subscriptions moves to ⌥⇧5 and
Finance to ⌥⇧6. Modules are numbered by their position in the sidebar, so inserting one shifts
everything below it.

Verify this download

Signed with a Developer ID certificate, built with hardened runtime, notarized and stapled by Apple.
Check it yourself rather than taking my word for it:

spctl -a -vvv -t open --context context:primary-signature OwnKeep_1.3.0_universal.dmg
# expect: accepted / source=Notarized Developer ID

shasum -a 256 OwnKeep_1.3.0_universal.dmg
# <sha256>

Changes

• Notes module (⌥⇧4). Markdown notes with a formatting toolbar, a Write/Preview toggle, and a full-screen editing mode. Notes group by category and sort by last edited. Code blocks get the same per-line copy affordance as the Commands module. Rendered Markdown is sanitised before display, so a note pasted in from elsewhere cannot inject markup.
• Notes are not in the command bar by default — they are long-form text and would drown out logins and commands. Turn on searchability per module in Settings, or scope a command-bar query to notes with the n prefix.
• Subscriptions and Finance move to ⌥⇧5 and ⌥⇧6 to make room for Notes at ⌥⇧4.
• Auto-renew subscriptions now roll forward on their own. When the invoice day arrives, OwnKeep advances the subscription to its next invoice date and notifies you once that it renewed. This is the first feature that writes to your vault without you asking: it happens only while the vault is unlocked, only to the nextDueDate of subscriptions you marked auto-renew, and the Dashboard refreshes itself when it does. Manual subscriptions are untouched and still go overdue if you ignore them.
• Reminders are now deduplicated per due occurrence instead of on a five-minute cooldown, so rescheduling an item lets it notify again and nothing fires twice for the same due date.
• Settings keeps its header in place and scrolls the body; theme is a button group rather than a dropdown.

Known issues

• Notes have no revision history — an edit replaces the previous body. Your backups are the undo.
• The command bar indexes a note's full body when searchability is enabled, so a large note makes for noisy results.
• Your vault is one encrypted file that is rewritten in full on every save, so notes are best kept to notes. A few hundred of them is nothing; pasting entire documents in will make every save in every module slower.
• No sync, no browser autofill, no TOTP generation — all deliberate non-goals.
• macOS only.

Full changelog: v1.2...v1.3

OwnKeep v1.2

Features delivered:

• Passwords
• Todos
• Commands
• Subscriptions
• Finance
• App configuration: vault backup/restore, Touch ID