Plantoir 1.4.0

Windows: no changes in this release — the Windows download on plantoir.app stays at version 1.1.0.

This release is for the Mac. It is the biggest one since Plantoir began: Plantoir now keeps itself up to date, the first course on a new Mac starts much sooner, and there is new help for the start of the year, for clubs and for publishing on a schedule.

Before you update

• This is the last release you install by hand. From 1.4.0 on, Plantoir checks for new versions by itself and asks you before installing one. If you are on 1.3.1 or earlier, download this one yourself; after that, you will not need to.
• The Mac download is now about 411 MB (it used to be about 60 MB). Plantoir now carries its own copies of the helper programs it used to download the first time it ran, so the first course on a new Mac is ready much sooner. A download this much bigger than you remember is still the right file.
• A publish you scheduled before updating still happens as you set it. Until it runs it may appear under a slightly different name than new ones; it can be shown, cancelled and run just as before. Scheduling that section again replaces it.

New

• Plantoir finds its own new versions, asks before installing them, and never installs one while it is building, previewing or publishing.
• Get Ready for the Start of the Year… puts every class after the first into draft in one step. You see what will change first, and you can undo it.
• This is a club in the New Course wizard: weekly meeting pages and a club front page, and the assistant talks about "meetings" rather than classes.
• A How I Teach page for each course, which Claude and Codex read before helping with it. Open or create it from Course Settings.
• A course with two curriculum folders gets a coverage map for each, and College Board codes count.
• Ready-made example content for TAS2O.
• A publish set for later tells you how it went in a notification, even when Plantoir is closed. Clicking the notification opens that section.
• The assistant can answer "What does Unit 2, Day 3 link to?" straight from the page, and "Publish all the classes in Unit 2." publishes the unit.
• The build warns you when a published class links to pages students cannot see yet.

Improved

• The first time Plantoir runs on a Mac, it gets the website builder ready in the background, and that first build is smaller and faster.
• Plantoir reopens on the working folder you used last.
• Every folder and file list in Course Settings and the New Course wizard is now a table with checkboxes.
• The Backups list shows how much space each backup takes, and you can delete several at once.
• The front page, and every page a class links to, show that class's date.
• A scheduled publish goes where the course publishes at the time it runs, and every publish uses the settings as you last saved them.
• The assistant reads a course's settings when it acts, not when its window was opened.
• Times the assistant cannot place, such as "deploy at 6:30", are asked about instead of publishing right away. "Publish all of those" asks which pages you mean.
• Duplicating a class that moves other classes warns you, on its card, that Undo will not move them back.
• Two working folders that hold the same course each keep their own scheduled publish.
• A page whose settings Plantoir cannot read is hidden from students and named in the build, instead of being published or stopping the build.
• Messages about a working folder say plainly what is wrong, and the first-run messages talk about "your website builder".
• Clearer wording in several places: skeleton pages no longer show "{subject}", the skeleton choice says "an English skeleton", and the wizard's unit row no longer says "Unit" twice.

Fixed

• Hide from the site's sidebar now always matches the built site, even with two windows open or a preview running.
• Unpublishing a class no longer hides another class it links to.
• Adding a section no longer publishes a page you had hidden.
• Publishing now follows every way of writing a link — with an escaped |, in angle brackets, or Markdown style — and never follows a link inside code or a %% comment.
• Pages with unusually written settings are no longer treated as hidden, broken by a restore, or skipped. Moving or renaming a class no longer leaves half a date behind.
• A scheduled publish whose build failed no longer names a destination it never reached.
• A publish to a folder lands where it says, or tells you it did not. Pressing Cancel during a publish ends it quietly.
• Previews: the address is never lost, a Mac that cannot reach the website builder stops within seconds instead of waiting, each working folder finds room for its own previews, and two people on one Mac no longer see each other's previews.
• The window, the assistant, a scheduled publish and an outside assistant can no longer build the same course at the same time.
• A working folder whose name has an accent or different capitals no longer gets a second website builder.
• Plantoir no longer offers to use a working folder that the website builder cannot reach.
• Approving a change from the assistant no longer freezes the window while the course is backed up.
• Copies and imports of a course no longer bring its Obsidian add-ons along.
• One unreadable character no longer empties a problem report.
• A course can no longer be called "work", and the folder path shown under a chosen folder now names every folder in it.
• Four ready-made curriculum explainers no longer link to pages a skeleton course does not have.

Downloads

File	Size	SHA-256
Plantoir-macOS.dmg	411.3 MB	140aa9dbcaa05ca98fc71efdfc18c9813d5e201fedd497987cb3fca69ec921b3

The SHA-256 lets your IT department verify the download is genuine.

Plantoir 1.3.1

macOS only: this release changes the Mac app. Windows: no changes; its download on plantoir.app stays at version 1.1.0. This is a small release of fixes and clearer messages.

Before you update

• The first preview after updating takes a few minutes longer, once, while Plantoir rebuilds your website builder.

Improved

• Pressing ⌘Q while a preview is still being built now asks before quitting, the way it already did during a publish. A preview that is simply open is never asked about.
• When you ask the assistant to schedule a deploy, its question now reads as a schedule rather than as "deploy now".
• Scheduling a deploy for a section that already has one now tells you which scheduled time it replaces, on the assistant's card and in the Schedule Deploy sheet. It used to replace it without a word.
• A problem report now lists the helper programs actually on your Mac, where each came from and when they were checked, instead of the versions Plantoir would install.

Fixed

• The messages when Plantoir starts up no longer call a daily step "a one-time step", and they no longer name the machinery: they say "Setting up this Mac…".
• Cancelling a preview while it builds no longer leaves a screenful of technical error text in the details or in a problem report.
• Every preview used to show a message saying it "could not read allowed sections". It was never true, and it is gone.
• If the assistant picks an action but leaves out what it needs (which pages, which day, which time), nothing runs, and it says so. It used to suggest your sentence was the problem.

Downloads

File	Size	SHA-256
Plantoir-macOS.dmg	56.1 MB	35644379a043303cdd03c59c5fdbf94c5f93de9bae3d5af39c2056834ef5be84

The SHA-256 lets your IT department verify the download is genuine.

Plantoir 1.3.0

macOS only: this release changes the Mac app. Windows: no changes; its download on plantoir.app stays at version 1.1.0. You can now keep last year's courses beside this year's, to read and to borrow from, with no risk of them going back on the web.

Before you update

• If your working folder is in iCloud Drive and you use it on two Macs, update both Macs before you keep a course for reference. An older Plantoir does not know what a reference course is. It still refuses to publish one, but explains it as a setup problem, and following that advice could put the course back on the web.
• A course kept for reference is locked only on the Mac where it was made. iCloud Drive does not carry the lock to your other Mac. Plantoir adds the lock again the first time it opens the folder on that Mac.
• The first preview after updating takes a few minutes longer, once, while Plantoir rebuilds your website builder.

New

Keep a course for reference

• Right-click a course and choose Keep a Copy for Reference… to save a copy of it as it is today. Your live course is untouched.
• Reference courses get their own Reference Courses group in the sidebar, grouped by school year. You can preview them, open them in Obsidian (where they open for reading) or change their school year. They are never published: there is no Deploy button, and every other way of publishing is refused. Their pages are locked so nothing changes them by accident.

Bring in last year's courses

• File ▸ Import Courses for Reference… reads last year's working folder and brings in the courses you tick. It never changes the folder you choose, and it leaves last year's built websites behind. Plantoir suggests a school year for each; you can change it.
• It also understands two older ways of keeping a course: one Obsidian folder for each class, or one website folder for each class, including folders you reach through a shortcut. One section of each course comes across, and Plantoir lists anything it left behind.

Copy a page into another course

• Right-click any course, whether you teach it or keep it for reference, and choose Copy a Page from This Course…. The page comes with its pictures and files. The pages it links to can come too; untick any you don't want.
• A copied page always arrives hidden from students in every section. Nothing already in the course is changed or replaced, and Plantoir backs the course up first.

Starting a new course

• If you turn down the ready-made pages, you still get the curriculum expectations for your course code. That means the curriculum coverage map works.

Scheduled deploys

• A new course setting, How late a scheduled deploy may still run, sets how late a deploy can run if your Mac was asleep at the chosen time. A deploy later than that is cancelled.

Fixes

• Turning down the ready-made pages used to give you empty folders. Now you get your subject's usual starting pages.
• Removing a course or a section now cancels any scheduled deploy for it that has not run yet.
• A missed scheduled deploy can no longer run a year later.
• Teachers of British Columbia courses are no longer told they are getting "the official Ontario curriculum."
• Making a course that already exists now suggests keeping last year's copy for reference first.

Downloads

File	Size	SHA-256
Plantoir-macOS.dmg	55.9 MB	b4e73c049012a9a5d7d0f9c8550d01a65e00f91c32e9b98089800da7a2e6e8f6

The SHA-256 lets your IT department verify the download is genuine.

Plantoir 1.2.1

This release is for the Mac. It fixes problems teachers met in their first days with Plantoir. The Windows download on plantoir.app remains version 1.1.0 for now.

Before you update

Keep your working folder inside your home folder — on your Desktop or in Documents, for example. A working folder on an external drive, a second disk or a shared location is now refused, with a message saying so. Before this version such a folder looked as though it worked and built an empty website. If yours is somewhere like that, move it into your home folder first. If it is already on your Desktop or in Documents, there is nothing to do.

The first preview after updating takes a little longer than usual, once. And because quitting Plantoir now really shuts down what it runs in the background, the first preview of each day may take a little longer to start than you are used to.

Improved

• Quitting Plantoir really frees your Mac. On most teachers' Macs, quitting never shut down what Plantoir runs in the background, and several gigabytes of memory stayed in use until you logged out. It now shuts down when you quit — unless something else on your Mac is still using it.
• Plantoir asks before quitting in the middle of a publish, so a stray ⌘Q cannot leave your class website half updated without your say-so.
• When macOS asks whether Plantoir may use your Desktop or Documents folder, the question now says why.

Fixed

• A working folder with a slash in its name works. A folder called something like "Comm Tech 26/27" used to stop Plantoir's first-time setup at its very last step, with an error nobody could be expected to understand. It now sets up, previews and publishes like any other folder.
• A preview that cannot appear now tells you. If your website was built but could not be shown, Plantoir used to wait silently for ten minutes. It now stops after a short while, tells you what happened in plain words, and tells you what to do — usually, to restart your Mac.
• If a folder cannot be used for building, Plantoir now says so plainly instead of stopping with a technical message.

Downloads

File	Size	SHA-256
Plantoir-macOS.dmg	55.3 MB	5d714a7d80554bd90d7c9580eda6cb85655395c0bc9e09ffd0c6d7084ee6d677

The SHA-256 lets your IT department verify the download is genuine.

Plantoir 1.2.0

This release is for the Mac. The Windows version of 1.2.0 is still being finished and will be added to this same release when it is ready; until then, the Windows download on plantoir.app remains version 1.1.0.

Before you update — if you use Plantoir on two Macs

If you keep your working folder in iCloud Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive and open it on TWO Macs, update both of them. A Mac still on the older version will not be able to build a course that the newer one has touched, and it will quietly undo the newer Mac's setup each time it opens the folder. If you use one Mac, there is nothing to do.

The first preview after updating takes longer than usual, once, while Plantoir rebuilds its website builder.

New

• Publish a section to more than one place at once — for example Netlify and Cloudflare, or a web host and a folder — so your class site stays reachable if one host has a problem.
• British Columbia courses. The New Course wizard now offers BC course codes alongside Ontario's.
• Find a course by its name. In the New Course wizard you can type "chemistry" rather than remembering the code, and the list marks the courses that come with ready-made content.
• A section's title says "— Edited" when its pages have changed since you last published, so you can tell at a glance whether students are seeing your latest work.
• Plantoir checks your course's folders when it builds, and offers to put a problem right — a folder renamed or removed in Obsidian no longer quietly breaks a feature.
• Make the course's structure your own. Choose which folders count for marks, choose your own curriculum folder, see every folder Plantoir relies on in Course Settings, and rename any of them from inside Plantoir — your links are updated for you. A course can call a Unit a "Thread" and a Class a "Day", if that is how you teach.
• A working folder kept in iCloud Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive is noticed and explained in plain words, with the choice to move it.
• "Revise with Codex…" sits beside "Revise with Claude…" for teachers who have OpenAI's Codex installed. Codex asks before each change it makes.
• The assistant can do more: list your courses, add classes, make room for extra classes, back up a course, and explain how publishing works.
• A publish you scheduled tells you how it went. A note appears at the top of the section the moment it finishes — and if it could not finish, the note says why, with a warning beside the section in the sidebar.

Improved

• Your working folder no longer carries the website it builds. A folder kept in iCloud Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive stops uploading thousands of files after every preview, Time Machine stops backing them up, and a course you zip for a colleague is smaller. Nothing you wrote moves.
• "Deploy at 6:30 AM" schedules a publish for that time instead of offering to publish immediately — and when a publish IS immediate, the assistant now says so before you approve it.
• "Hide" is understood the way "unpublish" is. "Hide unit 4, day 21" takes the page down, with the same card to approve.
• Publishing a class no longer publishes the NEXT class early. If Day 3 links to Day 4, only Day 3 goes up, and the assistant tells you which linked class it left alone.
• "Roll this section over to a new year" asks whether this is a new website or last year's, and re-dating your classes no longer changes which pages students can see.
• "Duplicate this class as my next class" is safer: the copy starts hidden and can be published later, the plan says how many later classes really move, and a lesson already in the way is never written over.
• A request that names another course is refused rather than quietly carried out on the course in front of you.
• Plantoir cleans up after itself. Old copies of its website builder are now removed.
• Class sites carry the Plantoir icon in the browser tab and on an iPhone's Home Screen.

Fixed

• Hiding a page really hides it. A page whose publish: value was written on the line below could be reported hidden while students could still read it.
• Class sites published to Netlify do not show Netlify's "Powered by Netlify" badge to your students.
• The window no longer goes blank after publishing to a folder.
• The assistant no longer stalls for a minute or more on "publish tomorrow's class and everything it links to", and no longer stops answering after one confused reply.
• An assistant window left open overnight now knows what day "tomorrow" is.
• Asking the assistant to publish when the section's window was not open no longer runs without showing you anything.
• Publishing straight after a preview no longer flashes "Stopped", a Cloudflare publish no longer fails because of a stale network connection, and scheduling a publish right after a successful one is no longer refused.
• Removing a folder no longer takes marks off the Curriculum Coverage map because of a capital letter.
• Backups and archives are named with an ordinary date whatever calendar your Mac uses.
• Older courses: pages that still say draft: are brought up to date to publish: the first time you change whether students can see them.
• Choosing a different working folder no longer says "Course Not Found", and the folder path at the bottom of the window is shortened the way Finder does it.

Downloads

File	Size	SHA-256
Plantoir-macOS.dmg	54.7 MB	32d0dd4072b745af82d214f88fbda6ac129375437550511752bc13be86351eda

The SHA-256 lets your IT department verify the download is genuine.

Windows: PlantoirSetup.exe, version 1.1.0

Plantoir 1.1.0

Both platforms. The Mac app joins this release: it is the same 1.1.0 as Windows, tested against the same shared rules. Windows: no changes since this release first went up — the installer and zip below are the same files published on 20 August, and there is no need to re-download them.

New

• Plantoir builds your class website on your own PC now (Windows). No Docker, no WSL2, no administrator rights, no restart, and no one-time "getting this PC ready" wait — your first preview starts building within seconds of installing. Everything Plantoir needs travels inside the installer, which is why this download is much larger than 1.0.0 was.

Improved

• Setting up a new working folder no longer freezes the window while it works — it says “Setting Up…” and stays responsive (macOS).
• A clean laptop no longer asks you to install .NET before Plantoir will start (Windows).
• Your first preview no longer puts a Windows Firewall permission dialog in front of you (Windows).
• A preview no longer mentions publishing while it is only building a preview (Windows).
• The assistant answers your first question instead of falling silent — and when it cannot answer, it says so instead of leaving you waiting (Windows).
• Closing the New Course window part-way through is recorded as your decision, not as a failure (Windows).
• A problem report now includes what recently happened, so a problem can be looked into without asking you to make it happen all over again (Windows).

Fixed

• Building a preview failed if your course's Media folder was a link to a folder somewhere else — the usual way of sharing one Media folder between Obsidian vaults. Those folders work now, and a link Plantoir genuinely cannot follow is explained in one plain sentence instead of stopping with a wall of text (Windows).
• Stopping a preview now really stops it and frees the address, instead of leaving it quietly serving in the background (Windows).
• Two courses previewing at the same time no longer collide on one address, so the second one no longer fails at the very end of its build (Windows).
• Publishing refused to start after a perfectly good build, saying it could not find the built website (Windows).
• Creating a course in a folder that was not ready yet left that folder in a state that blocked a second attempt (Windows).
• The arrow keys now work when you answer the course setup questions (Windows).

Downloads

File	Size	SHA-256
Plantoir-macOS.dmg	50.8 MB	4dfc80b01c750993740429dc61fb200bd755927786d2aa0aa390cb7c9f7cbdf5
PlantoirSetup.exe	224.5 MB	9990bcacade548a35cbd5b11f65dbf79d4a0236eeeee4d4d0e5322204c96527e
Plantoir-win-x64.zip	379.9 MB	b141c7ac30116c9836334e90472e5a2527fb4e50629c56d4c2f258f437cbb1ba

The SHA-256 lets your IT department verify the download is genuine.

On a Mac, take Plantoir-macOS.dmg. On Windows most teachers want PlantoirSetup.exe; the zip is the portable edition, for a PC where you would rather not run an installer.

Plantoir 1.0.0

The first release of Plantoir — for teachers who write course notes in Obsidian and want each of their class sections to have its own polished website, without becoming a web developer to get it.

What Plantoir does:

• Write in Obsidian, publish to the web. Your course notes become a clean, searchable website for each class section — with a sidebar organized the way your course is.
• Start a course in minutes. Ready-made example content for 37 Ontario courses, and a sensible starting structure for every other Ontario course code.
• Preview privately first. See exactly what students will see, on your own computer, before anything goes online.
• Publish when you're ready. Each section gets its own web address, and updates go out in seconds. You choose what students can see — private notes and unfinished pages stay private.
• See your curriculum coverage at a glance. A map of every expectation in your course shows what has been addressed and what hasn't yet.
• A built-in assistant that stays on your computer. Type "publish tomorrow's class" and it's done. It works entirely on your own machine — nothing you write is ever sent anywhere.
• No special permissions needed. Installs and runs on managed school computers without administrator rights, on both Mac and Windows.

Downloads

File	Size	SHA-256
Plantoir-macOS.dmg	51.3 MB	f247859ebe7090e0a67c1b5f4e6bf7a422de57ac0bd025d296dae7de44da06eb
PlantoirSetup.exe	83.0 MB	972bdfd6c5cfc84f654ad2a169a8a04a4d9d82534321ccf3eff394ca1db257d6
Plantoir-win-x64.zip	140.9 MB	173b70ebbc07cd5bfbd4e12c655b7b34a2bfbf229d503b79d0b073fdb08d338e

The SHA-256 lets your IT department verify the download is genuine.