ParcelBeam 2.6.11

Aim, then send

Clicking a device used to send whatever was packed on the spot — or open a file picker if nothing was. There was never a moment where you decided.

Now a device click only chooses the destination. The parcel's header says where it's going — Beam to MacBook Pro — and a Send button appears once there's both a parcel and a destination. That button, or Enter, is the only thing that sends. Click the device again to un-aim. This is how the phone has always worked.

Messages stay on screen

A message beamed to your computer used to land as message_….txt in the save folder and in History, with the words shown only after being read back off the disk. It's now held in memory, shown with a Copy button, and never written — exactly like the phone. A message on its own no longer opens a "Receiving…" panel, and one that arrives while the window is hidden raises a notification.

Previews in History

Click an image or video in History and it opens right there — full size, Esc to close, Open in app if you wanted the system app after all. HEIC still goes to the system, since the app can't decode it.

Updates that come back, on every platform

Linux (AppImage): the update replaces the AppImage at its installed path, so your autostart entry and the file-manager "Share with ParcelBeam" action keep working, the old version is gone, and the app restarts itself. A .deb install is handed to the package installer, which asks for your password. Windows: an elevated install now waits for the installer to actually finish before relaunching, rather than a fixed timer that could start the old app. macOS: the downloaded archive is cleaned up after the swap. All platforms: the download is checked against the release's size before anything runs, and the app says "Updated to X" when it comes back.

Also

Computers now introduce themselves to phones they find by scanning, so a phone lists the computer within seconds instead of after its own slow scan.

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macOS builds are signed and notarized; both the disk image and the update archive are stapled.

ParcelBeam 2.6.10

Your phone sees this computer as soon as this computer sees your phone

When ParcelBeam found another device by scanning the network, it added that device to its own list and said nothing to it. Between two computers that never mattered: they also hear each other's broadcast and introduce themselves that way within a second.

A phone is different. It cannot use that broadcast, so the only way it can learn this computer exists is by scanning every address on the network itself — slowly, in order — or by this computer telling it. Until now, this computer didn't. The result was one-sided: your computer listed your phone within seconds, while your phone showed nothing until its own scan happened to reach the right address, often twenty seconds later, and only if you asked it to scan at all.

ParcelBeam now introduces itself to every device it finds. Open both apps and the phone lists the computer within a few seconds, without tapping anything.

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macOS builds are signed and notarized; both the disk image and the update archive are stapled.

ParcelBeam 2.6.9

"Restart normally" no longer just closes ParcelBeam

On Windows, the restart option in Settings quit the app and never brought it back.

ParcelBeam allows only one copy of itself at a time, so that launching it a second time hands your files to the window already open instead of opening another one. The restart asked Windows to start the replacement and then closed the original a fraction of a second later — which meant the replacement arrived while the original was still running, politely handed itself over, and closed. Then the original closed too, and nothing was left.

The restart now waits for the app to finish closing before starting it again.

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macOS builds are signed and notarized; both the disk image and the update archive are stapled.

ParcelBeam 2.6.8

Paste, where Windows won't let you drop

Windows will not hand a dragged file to an app that is running as administrator, and it does not tell the app it refused — no drag arrives, no drop, no error. ParcelBeam covered for that with a notice above the parcel explaining the situation and offering to restart without administrator rights.

For anyone whose machine runs the app elevated, that notice was there on every single launch, and the restart it offered could not always help — on a machine with UAC turned off there is no unelevated session to restart into.

So it now offers the gesture that works instead of explaining the one that doesn't. Where dragging is blocked, the parcel asks to be pasted into — Ctrl+V, which crosses the boundary dragging cannot — and says nothing about administrators. Where dragging works, nothing has changed.

The restart option still exists for the case where it genuinely fixes things, as a single line in Settings rather than a banner over the app.

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macOS builds are signed and notarized; both the disk image and the update archive are stapled.

ParcelBeam 2.6.7

Your phone shows up, and finding it takes five seconds

If ParcelBeam on your computer could not hear multicast, it fell back to scanning the network — and that scan only ever looked for peers speaking HTTPS. The ParcelBeam iOS app announces itself over plain HTTP, so the scan was blind to phones entirely. From the outside this looked like "my phone just never appears," or "nothing sends from the PC."

The scan now looks for both at once. It is also far quicker: a probe timeout was never actually bounding connections that hang, so every dead address on the network cost five seconds whatever the setting said. Measured on a real home network, a full scan went from 30.9 seconds to 5.1 — finding the same devices.

Settings save themselves

The Save Settings button meant a change only counted if you remembered to press it, and switching away from the tab first threw it away silently.

Every setting now saves itself. Toggles save the moment you flip one, text fields shortly after you stop typing and again when you click away. The port is deliberately the exception — it saves when you leave the field, and only once the number is a complete, valid port, so typing "53317" does not briefly move the listener to port 5 on its way through.

Paste files with Ctrl+V

Windows will not hand dragged files to an app running as administrator, and no app can change that. The clipboard can cross that line, though — so Ctrl+V now adds files anywhere in the window, by the same route as a drop.

It also handles files that have no path on disk at all, like an attachment straight out of an email or a file inside a zip.

The notice about running elevated leads with what actually works now — paste, the "Share with ParcelBeam" right-click entry, and Add files — instead of telling you your Windows setup is wrong.

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macOS builds are signed and notarized; both the disk image and the update archive are stapled.

ParcelBeam 2.6.6

Updating on a Mac no longer fights you

Updating used to mount a disk image and leave you to drag ParcelBeam into Applications, where the Mac asked whether to replace it and then refused, because the app you were updating was still running. There was no way out of that without knowing to quit the app first.

Now it behaves like the Windows updater: the update installs itself and ParcelBeam restarts. Usually the update has already downloaded quietly in the background, so the only thing left to do is press restart.

If anything goes wrong mid-update, your existing app is put back untouched rather than left half-replaced.

Note: this takes effect for updates from this version onward. Updating from 2.6.5 or earlier still uses the old drag-across route one final time.

Fixes

• ParcelBeam could wrongly claim it was running as administrator on Windows and blame that for drag-and-drop not working. The check was faulty; it now reports honestly. If you did see that warning, it was almost certainly wrong — ParcelBeam does not ask for administrator rights.

macOS builds are signed and notarized; both the disk image and the update archive are stapled.

ParcelBeam 2.6.5

Devices stay findable

If ParcelBeam had been running a while and your devices stopped seeing each other until you restarted it — this is the release that fixes that.

The discovery socket used to die permanently the first time the network hiccuped: a Wi-Fi drop, waking from sleep, a VPN connecting. It was closed and never rebuilt, so the app stayed silent for the rest of the session while looking perfectly healthy. It now rebuilds itself. Multicast is also re-joined when your network changes, instead of staying subscribed to an interface that no longer exists, and known devices are no longer dropped from the list while discovery is deaf.

Scanning also works on networks that are not a plain /24. Previously, pressing Scan on those probed nothing at all.

Drag and drop

Files dragged from a mail client, from inside a zip preview, or from a browser now attach properly. Those carry no path on disk — only the bytes — and were silently ignored before.

On Windows, dragging from Explorer into ParcelBeam does not work at all if the app is running as administrator. Windows blocks it and no app can work around it, so ParcelBeam now tells you instead of appearing broken.

Also

• The Receive tab said "Standing By" even when the app had failed to claim its port and could not actually be reached. It now says so, and why.
• Windows and Linux can open developer tools with F12 or Ctrl+Shift+I — there was previously no way at all, which made problems hard to report.

macOS builds are signed and notarized; the DMG is stapled.

ParcelBeam 2.6.4

Updates that get out of your way

Updating on Windows no longer re-runs the installer wizard. The update is fetched quietly in the background, and installing it applies silently and relaunches ParcelBeam — no more being asked which users to install for, or for an install directory, every single time.

The update prompt is also where you can see it: a pill next to your device name in the header, visible from the Send tab rather than buried in Settings. It tells you which of the three things is true — an update exists, it's downloading, or it's ready and only needs a restart.

Transfer history shows what the files actually are

History rows now show real thumbnails for files still on disk, instead of a generic icon. Images preview everywhere; videos, PDFs and HEIC additionally preview on macOS and Windows via the system thumbnailer.

Fixes

• Feedback sent from the app was being filed under a different app in the developer's inbox, so some reports went unseen. Fixed — if you sent feedback that never got a reply, that's why, and it's worth resending.
• The header's coffee button was too small to read as a button.

macOS builds are signed and notarized; the DMG is stapled.

ParcelBeam 2.6.3

Now says what it works with.

• 📱 Works with LocalSend. ParcelBeam speaks LocalSend Protocol 2.1, so any phone running the free LocalSend app can send to and receive from your desktop. The app now says so, instead of leaving you to discover it.
• Everything from 2.6.x: in-app feedback, PIN protection, verified transfers, preserved timestamps, certificate pinning, Share via Link with QR, supporter badge.

macOS is signed and notarized — opens on first try, no warnings.

Install: macOS — .dmg · Windows — Setup .exe or portable zip · Linux — AppImage or deb.

ParcelBeam 2.6.2

Fixes the save folder for anyone who upgraded from an early build.

• 📁 Files no longer land in a folder called "LocalSend". If you upgraded from a pre-rename build, that old name came across with your settings — ParcelBeam now points future transfers at Downloads/ParcelBeam. Files you have already received stay exactly where they are; nothing is moved or deleted.
• Everything from 2.6.0: in-app feedback, PIN protection, verified transfers, preserved timestamps, certificate pinning, Share via Link with QR, supporter badge.

macOS is signed and notarized — opens on first try, no warnings.

Install: macOS — .dmg · Windows — Setup .exe or portable zip · Linux — AppImage or deb.