Release FITS Blaster 1.24-beta.2 · tvanpeer/FITS-Blaster

2026-10-26 — 1.24 beta 2: faster network folders, smoother browsing, safer loading

Opening folders over the network is much faster: listing the folder and checking the files went from over a minute to about 15 seconds for 1,147 files on a 1 Gb/s share. While FITS Blaster prepares a load you now see "Scanning…" and "Checking files" with a progress bar instead of an empty window.
Holding an arrow key is smooth again in large sessions: the sidebar keeps up without stutter (5 short hitches in 5 seconds instead of 39–57 in a 355-frame session). Scrolling a zoomed frame redraws less too.
Much less memory with many folders or filters: a session of 464 mono frames in 8 folders × 3 filters now peaks at 1 GB instead of 4.4 GB while loading.
Open Folder: "Include files from subfolders" and "Include REJECTED folder" are back in the folder panel itself, and scanning a large folder no longer freezes the window. Dropped folders are scanned in the background too.
Export: the header columns follow the order you chose in Settings → Export. Text that a spreadsheet could read as a formula is protected, and a failed export now shows an error.

A second folder during a load (opened or dropped) now waits for the first one. Before, the progress bars disappeared and Cancel greyed out while the second folder was still loading.
Reset during a load stops the load; it can no longer add frames to the emptied session.
Colour toggled during a load now ends correctly: turned on, every frame ends in colour, also the frames that weren't loaded yet; turned off, every frame ends in grey. Toggling quickly ends on the last setting.
Cancel also stops a colour re-render, and no longer measures the remaining frames one by one.
Several folders dropped at once each get their own section in the sidebar, in the order you dropped them.
The info bar above the chart no longer disappears when you select a frame that is still loading.

A colour toggle can be cancelled (Cancel is active while it runs), and a display-size change made during a load runs after the load.
Files with Finder's "hidden" flag are no longer skipped when a folder is scanned (files whose name starts with a dot still are).

The loading pipeline was rebuilt so batches run one at a time, and the app now compiles in Swift 6 language mode, which turns data races the compiler can detect into errors. Measurements and image rendering are unchanged.