What's new
Rows that say what happened
- “State changed” was the answer whenever nothing else fit, and on a real inbox it covered four unrelated things. Inkling now asks GitHub what actually happened, so a row says a label was added, a branch force-pushed, a pull request retargeted, marked ready for review, put back to draft, or a review dismissed — each with its own switch and its own level.
- A force-push onto a moved base used to be reported as new commits, because the only evidence was the diff totals and the base had shifted them. An event GitHub names outright now beats that guess.
- Bookkeeping — branch deletions, auto-merge, cross-references — is named as bookkeeping and kept low, rather than arriving as something that changed.
- Someone else’s approval and someone else’s requested changes are their own kinds, so you can hear about yours and not theirs.
Opening a thread
- The conversation now shows what happened as well as what was said: pushes, merges, labels, force-pushes and dismissed reviews are interleaved with the comments, in the order GitHub has them. It used to say “No comments — this was a state change”.
Failed builds
- A failed check carries the pull request it belongs to and opens the run that failed. It used to arrive with no number, no facts, no conversation, and a link to the notification page rather than the build.
Saying things once
- A thread that moves again no longer re-reports whatever it found last time. GitHub only advances a thread’s read marker when you read it on github.com, so every later event used to re-find the same comment, the same excerpt, the same link.
- A merge is announced once, not again hours later. A review request that keeps being re-sent is one row, not one per push.
Filtering and views
- Views can filter by label, by base branch, and by how big the change is.
- A pull request’s labels are shown on the row.
- Two more things you can ask to see: activity after something was merged or closed, and other people’s drafts.
- Accounts you own outside an organisation appear in the switcher.
Settings
- Regrouped, with a hint under every switch that says what happens when it is off as well as on.
- Kinds read as names rather than as identifiers, everywhere they appear.
- Usage counts what arrived from GitHub against what was filtered out, so the quiet is measurable.
The same notes appear in the app the first time you open this version.
Installing
Download Inkling-arm64.dmg and drag Inkling to your Applications folder.
The first launch will say the developer can't be verified — the app is signed,
but not yet notarized by Apple. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and
choose Open Anyway, or run:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Inkling.app
Updating: quit Inkling first, then replace it in Applications.
When macOS asks about notification style, choose Alerts rather than Banners.
Banners disappear after a few seconds, which isn't long enough to reach the
Snooze, Mute and Done buttons.
Requirements
- A Mac with Apple Silicon, running macOS 12 or later
- A GitHub account — the
ghCLI if you have it, or a
personal access token you paste in during setup
Known limits
- Apple Silicon only. There is no Intel or universal build yet.
- Not notarized, which is why macOS warns on first launch.
- No automatic updates. Inkling checks for a newer release and links here;
downloading and replacing it is your move.