2.0.0-rc.2.1

Hotfix

• Hidden divider boundary and layout-editor drags — repair the visible/hidden boundary when H_ctrl drifts before the per-item reorder pass, so applyProfileLayout no longer reports "all items already in correct positions" while the whole hidden section sits misplaced. Drops into an empty hidden section that only contains the new-items badge no longer snap back, and persistent status-level windows (shelf/HUD) no longer defer every move — deferral still applies while the pointer is inside a long-open menu (#880, fixes #879).

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This RC is a large reliability and platform update: menu bar identity/ordering, layout persistence, notch overflow, settings UI, Swift 6.2 / concurrency, and Sparkle update hosting.

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Highlights

• Menu bar reliability overhaul — safer saved-layout apply/persist, stronger item identity matching, and fewer false “reorder storms,” especially with Control Center items, dynamic titles, and multi-display setups.
• Settings & onboarding refresh — redesigned settings UI, glass tour onboarding, stronger AX identity / click paths.
• Swift 6.2 + approachable concurrency — MainActor default isolation on the app target, AXSwift6, EventTap synchronization, and cleanup of pre–Swift 6 GCD/Timer patterns.
• Update distribution — Sparkle ZIP/deltas/appcast publish to thaw-app/updates, with a mirror for legacy stonerl Pages installs.

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Menu bar & layout

Identity, ordering, and clicks

• Deterministic visual ordering with stable identifier tie-breaks (no more shuffle when minX ties).
• Volatile metric titles (e.g. CPU 12% → CPU 43%) canonicalized so saved layouts and failure ledgers keep matching; prune stale title-variant saved entries that fueled reorder storms (#842, thanks @danielhopkins).
• Stop provisional identities from scrambling saved layout (#863).
• Failure ledger stamped with build version so marks clear on update; avoid exclusivity violation when persisting the ledger (thanks @VailElla).
• Click reaction verification: success only if the owner shows a real UI reaction, not just event delivery.
• AX identity catalog + ControlItemPair frame fallback (fixes silent hidden-section death when control items could not be identified, #754).
• Optional AX click delivery (useAXClickDelivery, default off) with synthetic-click fallback.
• Report control items the menu bar accepts but does not render (notch occlusion), with consecutive-sample confirmation (#570).
• Unresponsive owner / window-mismatch error types for clearer click failure handling.

Saved layout & persistence

• Do not move items on untrustworthy observations (#849).
• Block saveSectionOrder while layout divergence is still pending.
• Do not persist collapsed hidden sections (#795).
• Do not persist layouts with an unresolved always-hidden divider (#849).
• Do not persist notch-overflow ejections as user intent (#790 / #796, thanks @lathe-agent-oa).
• Skip bulk apply while source PIDs are unresolved (#784 / #785, thanks @lathe-agent-oa).
• Refuse saved-layout bulk apply while the hidden-section dividers are collapsed / zero-width — same hiddenSectionHasRoom gate the save path already uses — so a collapsed reading cannot drag the whole hidden section and then get persisted (#868 / #876, thanks @TheBenMeadows).
• Revalidate hidden-section geometry before the move batch runs so apply does not proceed on a stale collapsed reading (#876).
• Prefer exact saved identifiers; avoid ambiguous multi-instance divergence matches (#714 / #716, thanks @t4sh).
• Defer apply/persist on unsettled or cross-display geometry; clear stuck profile flags (#702, #717, #743).
• Restore unresolved-sourcePID gate in applySavedLayout.
• Ignore unresolved Control Center placeholders (#810, thanks @VailElla).
• Resolve parked items titled with their bundle ID (e.g. Little Snitch) (#709, #795 / #797, thanks @lathe-agent-oa).
• Restore legacy profile layout snapshots (#778 / #779, thanks @ShiroKSH).
• Delete profile manifest entries even when the file is already missing.
• Negative-cache TTL for source PID lookups uses per-window backoff instead of a flat 60s (#856, thanks @lathe-agent-oa).

Notch overflow

• Only run overflow on the main display; fail closed if active menu bar display is unknown (#808 / #809, thanks @lathe-agent-oa).
• Keep the visible control item in place during overflow (#742).
• Keep overflow running outside profile applies.
• Avoid redundant full-sort replays (#822, thanks @alvst).

Moves, rehide, and multi-instance

• Defer item moves while a menu bar item menu is tracking.
• Require stable divergence; suppress bulk cursor warps (#705, #723, #736, #750).
• Stop bulk-apply pointer hijack; release on user input.
• Keep menu bar move events out of screen corners — stops Hot Corner / Show Desktop false triggers (#625, #766 / #774, thanks @ZeterMordio).
• Recover blocked items before alerting on hidden-section drags (#744).
• Recover control items after lookup failure.
• Bail instead of trapping on inverted control-item order.
• Keep timed rehide armable after deferred rehide; anchor rehide to a neighbor in the item’s own section so temporarily shown items are not rehidden into Visible (#859 / #860, thanks @andredlng).
• Prevent duplicate Thaw instances from competing (#821, thanks @alvst).
• Avoid repeated source PID cache scans (#820, thanks @alvst).
• Each layout-reset waiter gets its own cache continuation.
• Configurable pre-move input-pause threshold (#756, thanks @subway-jack).
• Fall back to Thaw Bar when hiding app menus under fullscreen (#740 / #741, thanks @auspic7).
• Defer/stabilize moves that previously relocated system modules mid-interaction (e.g. AudioVideoModule / WeType, #746) and reduced cursor teleport / dance storms (#718, #723, #750).

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Settings, profiles & onboarding

• Settings UI redesign (native grouped forms, relocated options, refreshed Ice UI primitives, sidebar search).
• Glass tour onboarding in first-launch and settings.
• Unconfigured displays fall back to global configuration instead of hardcoded defaults (fixes spacing resets on Space/display changes).
• Ice V1 appearance data converted at import time.
• Cleared hotkey bindings removed instead of persisting JSON null.
• Authorization retry allowed after denial (#780 / #781, thanks @VailElla).
• Full onboarding button hit targets (#724, thanks @eli-yip).
• IceBar naming leftover on an Advanced setting corrected (#829).
• Settings About/repository URL updated (thanks @cbguder).
• Hidden debug flags moved into the Defaults registry.
• Unreachable Ice-era migrations removed.
• Layout reset target picker with legacy section moves.

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Appearance, capture & IceBar

• Tint no longer covers menu bar items; tint renders above the menu bar under Reduce Transparency (#844, #700).
• Capture bounds validated before WindowServer handoff (#759 / #813).
• Individual captures use the captured scale (layout icon sizing, #703).
• SCStream pinned to 32BGRA; shareable-content fetches coalesced.
• Image cache: LRU/concurrency overhaul, lossless disk keys, rate-limited on-screen capture, stale display ID fallback (#749, thanks @hxu).
• Memory: detach cropped glyphs, lower icon refresh, stop background captures (#680).
• Tooltips stay above Thaw Bar / IceBar grid (#760 / #782, thanks @VailElla) with watchdog placement (#734).
• Cursor restore after profile apply uses CoreGraphics space (fixes multi-monitor warp).
• Virtual display resolver removed (brief resolution / screen-shrink side effects, #708).

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Accessibility, hooks & events

• Bounded AX messaging timeouts in the item service and event path (#767).
• Consolidated item failure ledgers; quieter expected procNotFound.
• Hook timeouts bounded with process-group teardown; teardown restored after Subprocess 0.5 upgrade.
• Mouse-moved handling throttled by time, not event count.
• Shared/adaptive Mission Control detection (#777).
• EventTap shared runtime state synchronized.
• Clicking items in Thaw Bar no longer spikes CPU via runaway work (#757).

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Performance

• Rate-limited on-screen image capture path.
• Memoized per-row item search work.
• Shared Mission Control detection.
• Time-based mouse-moved throttle.

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Platform & engineering

• Swift 6.2 packaging alignment.
• MainActor default isolation on the app target.
• @Observable migration for ObservableObject surfaces.
• SourcePIDCache converted to an actor.
• Hooks/spacing via swift-subprocess (0.5).
• swift-algorithms adopted; package-underuse cleanup.
• Virtual display resolver removed.
• SettingsURIParser extracted; fuzz + contract tests.
• Broader unit coverage (settings, HID, replay, layout gates, URI, search, Swift Testing migration).
• Sonar excludes Icon Composer bundles (thanks @VailElla).

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Release, CI & docs

• Sparkle payloads published to thaw-app/updates (#840); DMGs remain on GitHub Releases.
• Appcast mirrored to legacy stonerl Pages (#843).
• Org CI / brand-assets adoption; Sparkle no longer auto-publishes on every tag push.
• OpenSSF / Scorecard / CodeQL / SLSA provenance / OSV SCA hardening; Sonar coverage path fix.
• README restyle/restructure; RELEASES.md, verifying releases, governance/security docs; contribution/install docs (thanks @t4sh); URI scheme docs (thanks @davidnichols-ops).
• Crowdin / localization syncs (#694, #804–#807).

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Contributors

Thanks to everyone who landed fixes in this RC:

@alvst · @andredlng · @auspic7 · @cbguder · @danielhopkins · @davidnichols-ops · @eli-yip · @hxu · @lathe-agent-oa · @ShiroKSH · @subway-jack · @t4sh · @TheBenMeadows · @VailElla · @ZeterMordio

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Notable issue closures

Area	Issues
Layout / identity / persist	#702, #705, #709, #714, #717, #718, #776, #778, #783, #784, #789, #790, #795, #826, #828, #849, #863, #868
Notch / overflow	#570, #808
Moves / cursor / Hot Corners	#625, #723, #736, #744, #746, #750, #766
Control items / hidden section	#740, #754, #859
Appearance / capture / memory	#680, #700, #703, #708, #734, #759, #760, #844
Search / AX / Mission Control	#767, #777, #757
Settings / permissions / UX	#701, #724, #780, #829
Releases	#840, #843
Closed as duplicate	#727
Closed without code change (stale / upstream / not planned / user-resolved)	#571, #610, #649, #664, #707, #720, #721, #722, #726, #851, #852

Related merged fix PRs called out above include #716, #741, #749, #756, #774, #779, #781, #782, #785, #796, #797, #809, #810, #813, #820, #821, #822, #838, #842, #856, #860, #862, #876. Reliability stack landed via #811 → revert #857 → re-land #858.

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Upgrade notes

1. From 2.0.0-rc.2: in-place Sparkle update; hotfix only, no behaviour changes beyond the fix above.
2. From 2.0.0-rc.1: in-place Sparkle update; failure-ledger marks clear on build change.
3. Legacy Ice / V1 appearance: converted on import.
4. Update feed: new installs use thaw-app/updates; existing stonerl feed users keep updating via the mirrored appcast.
5. Experimental: Advanced → AX click delivery remains off by default.