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Memory Leaks Fixed (Part 1 — WindowServer & UI Panels)

• Fixed multiple memory leaks that were causing AeroBar to accumulate hundreds of megabytes of memory over time through normal use. WindowServer no longer ramps up to ~500 MB just from the bar sitting on screen.
• Fixed a permanent ~50 MB memory leak that occurred every time the Aero Menu or Customizer panel was opened. Memory is now fully released after closing them.
• Optimized the display background dimmer service to defer heavy WindowServer surface allocations until the panel is actually shown.
• Icon bitmap cache is now capped to prevent unbounded RAM growth when many apps are running simultaneously.
• Memory from closed panels is now proactively returned to the OS, keeping AeroBar's working set lean.

Screenshot Conflict Fix & Layout Auto-Corrections

• Screenshot Thumbnail Conflict Resolved:
  • AeroBar now automatically disables the macOS floating screenshot thumbnail preview (bottom-right corner) while running, preventing it from being obscured behind AeroBar's elevated window level.
  • On quit or crash, the original screenshot thumbnail setting is fully restored so the native thumbnail reappears normally.
• Dock / Taskbar Mode Layout Auto-Correction: Switching between Dock Mode and Taskbar Mode now instantly re-clamps all background windows to the correct screen boundary — no restart required.
• Bottom Gap Auto-Fill: Reducing bar height now automatically expands docked windows downward to fill the freed screen space.
• Singleton Crash Fixed (EXC_BREAKPOINT): Resolved a launch crash caused by AeroBarSettings static singleton re-entrancy during initialization.
• Aero Start Menu Positioning: Start Menu now anchors directly above the Aero Vista Orb in Dock Mode; taskbar button hover no longer prematurely closes it.
• Music Widget Smart Play: Pressing Play with no track loaded now auto-opens and focuses the music app. Fixed Apple Music window tab display when the app is closed.
• UI Polish: Fixed Vista Orb / Finder icon spacing, utility tray button sizing at all bar heights, and standardized popover dismiss grace period (850ms).

Health Check Diagnostics & Watchdog Overhaul

• Health Check Diagnostic Pass (100% Green):
  • In-Memory Heartbeat Tracking: Updated AeroBarWatchdogService to track heartbeat freshness via in-memory main-thread Darwin IPC timestamps (0.8s freshness), eliminating unnecessary background disk I/O.
  • External Watchdog Helper Daemon: Built AeroBarWatchdogHelper as an independent SPM background daemon and registered its LaunchAgent plist (com.aerobar.watchdoghelper). It watches AeroBar from outside its process space, automatically saving hang reports and force-relaunching AeroBar if the main process ever wedges completely.
  • Disabled-by-Design Overlay Status: Updated EmergencyExitOverlayService health check status to accurately report disabled by design (prevents UI overlap with menu bar and full-screen windows) as a clean passing state.

Critical Fixes & Stability Pass

• Critical Crash Fix (EXC_BAD_ACCESS / 0x8000000000000028):
  • Accessibility Callback Memory Safety: Fixed a critical fatal crash in AccessibilityService and WindowLifecycleEventWatcher caused by C-level AXUIElementRef pointers being dispatched into main-queue async blocks without an explicit CFRetain. All C-level Accessibility references are now retained synchronously before dispatching (Unmanaged.passRetained), preventing dangling pointers and memory corruption.
  • Global Event Tap Lifecycle Hardening: Ensured background event tap runloops (GlobalMouseTapService) cleanly stop and invalidate MachPort runloops on object deallocation.

New Features & Fixes

• Clipboard History Overhaul (Left Alignment, Spacebar QuickLook & Save As):
  • Left-Aligned Text & Files: Text snippets, code blocks, file names, folder paths, and link URLs now align cleanly to the left directly beside their icons.
  • Spacebar QuickLook for All Items: Pressing Spacebar on any item (text, code, files, folders, images, GIFs, videos, audio) opens full, scrollable native macOS QuickLook previews.
  • 1-Click Save As / Save To: Added a 1-click "Save As..." / "Save Image" / "Save To" hover button and right-click context menu options to export copied text as .txt files, images as .png files, or copy files and folders to custom locations.
• Popover Gap & Glass Panel Standardization: Standardized floating popover gap (~10pt above taskbar) across Music Widget, Window Previews, and Utility Buttons, with 24pt squircle panel masking.
• Pinned App Preview Border Alignment: Single-window pinned app previews now render with 0 outer margin, matching window tabs 1:1 and eliminating secondary dark box outlines.
• Multi-Display Placement Precision: Popover panels and window previews now open on the exact display your cursor is hovering over on multi-monitor setups.
• HUD Glass Previews for Cmd+Tab & 3-Finger Swipe: Window previews shown during Cmd+Tab and 3-finger swipe gestures now render in vibrant, translucent Liquid Wallpaper HUD Glass while remaining 100% non-focus-stealing.
• AuraBar & AeroBar 1:1 Synchronized Theming: Top menu bar (AuraBar) and bottom AeroBar now synchronize glass materials, tint hue, brightness, and surface tint density (default 50%) 1:1.
• macOS Tahoe Compositor & Music Vibrancy Fixes: Fixed macOS Tahoe (16.0) Window Server compositor dimming on glass popovers and restored Liquid Glass album art vibrancy in Spotify & Apple Music widgets.

New Features & Fixes

• Window Preview Reliability: Fixed an issue where authorization prompts over window previews required two clicks instead of one.
• Recycle Bin Feedback: The Trash icon now instantly highlights and glows whenever you drag any file or folder anywhere on your screen.
• Floating Bar Resizing Fixes: Fixed a lingering ghost shadow on the screen after shrinking the bar height (such as switching from Default to Compact in Dock mode).
• Maximized Window Stability: Fixed a rare issue where maximizing a window (or using layout tools like Magnet) would cause a subtle 1-frame screen flash.
• Performance & CPU Efficiency: Optimized background processing to reduce CPU and battery consumption across all running applications.

New Features & Fixes

• Dock Mode & Taskbar Mode: Easily force specific layouts (like macOS Dock or Windows Taskbar) directly from Settings. Dock Mode is now enabled by default for new users.
• System Dock Protection: Added a background watchdog to ensure your native macOS Dock settings are safely preserved under all conditions.
• Music Widget Layout & Single-Click Focus: Overhauled the Music Widget with clean tab layouts, instant 1-click app focusing for Spotify and Apple Music, and smoother hover behavior.
• Drag & Drop to Trash: Drag single or multiple files and folders directly from Finder onto the AeroBar Recycle Bin icon to instantly move them to macOS system Trash.
• Unified Extensions & Shelves: Centralized all element enable/disable toggles inside Extensions & Shelves with full toggle coverage for Mission Control and Search Icon.

New Features & Fixes

• Tooltip Reliability: Fixed an issue where hover tooltips for buttons (like Trash, Mission Control) were hidden when the Start Menu was open.
• Start Menu Orb Toggle: Fixed an issue where clicking the Aero-menu Orb icon wouldn't toggle the Start Menu on and off.
• Quick Links Shortcut: Fixed an issue where using the keyboard shortcut for Quick Links would select the button but occasionally fail to render the panel.
• Drag & Drop Glow Effects: Added glowing visual feedback to Quick Links, File Shelf, and Pinned Folder buttons when dragging compatible files or URLs anywhere on your screen.

New Features & Fixes

• Global Keyboard Shortcuts: Configure custom system-wide hotkeys (e.g. `⌥⇧C`) to instantly toggle panels (Clipboard History, File Shelf, Pinned Folders, Utility Tray, Widgets, Quick Links) or trigger key actions from anywhere.
• Shortcut Safety & macOS Protection: Built-in safety hard-blocks native system conflicts (like `⌘Space` or `⌘Tab`) and requires Option (`⌥`) modifier so you never override other apps.
• Hardware Key Cap Previews: Translucent hardware-style key cap badges (`[⌥][⇧][C]`) display directly in panel headers and Customizer UI.
• Indestructible Tooltips & Action Hotkeys: Hover tooltips display 100% reliably regardless of system focus with integrated shortcut hints.
• Seamless Setup: Deferred background engine initialization until after setup is complete, eliminating aggressive macOS permission prompts.

New Features & Fixes

• Dynamic Liquid Glass (Default): Introduced a brand new, highly optimized dynamic material that renders volumetric, real-time tracking liquid glass waves on hover. This breathtaking effect is now enabled by default for all users.
• Sleeker & Synced Glass Menus: Reduced the App Menu and popup glass bevels to a much sleeker 1.5px and implemented custom, perfectly concentric squircle inner radii so that the inner glow and outer window borders are in flawless visual sync.
• Unblockable Global Hover Tracking: Rebuilt the hover tracking logic to use raw OS-level `CGEventTap` coordinates. Dynamic liquid glass waves now sweep smoothly back and forth across the entire bar, including straight across all window tabs without ever freezing or dropping frames.
• Faster Beta Cycles: Changed the default update check cycle to 2 hours (previously Daily) so testers get the latest hotfixes almost immediately.
• Performance & Stability: Fixed App Hang deadlocks that occurred when interacting with native Fullscreen spaces or using trackpad gestures under heavy system load.
• Smoother transitions for Mission Control.
• Added confirmation prompts for Power Menu buttons and deleting Clipboard history.
• The App Drawer button now auto-enables when the pinned apps section is disabled.
• Improved the Troubleshooting menu layout and functionality.
• Fixed broken fav-icons in Quick Links.
• Fixed an issue preventing users from renaming Quick Links.

Fixes & Enhancements

• Pinned App & Mission Control Hover Highlight Fix: Resolved an issue where dragging and rearranging pinned apps reversed their hover highlights, and fixed hover highlights missing on the Mission Control button by updating frame and layout tracking across all bar elements.
• Right-Side Utility Buttons Drag-to-Reorder: Added live drag-to-reorder support for all right-side utility buttons (Clipboard, File Shelf, Quick Links, Widgets, Recycle Bin, Show Desktop, Pinned Folder) with customizable order storage.
• Independent Light & Dark Mode Indicator Styles: Made Indicator Styles (Pill, Full Line, Trimmed Line, Dot, Border) and dimmer settings completely independent per appearance mode, defaulting to Full Line on Dark Mode and Pill on Light Mode.
• Refined Light Mode Pill Fill: Upgraded the Pill indicator style (.underline) to render a smooth, rich rounded pill background fill with accent border in Light Mode.
• Automatic macOS App Icon Refresh: Connected system appearance changes (NSApp.effectiveAppearance) to automatically purge icon caches and re-extract native app icons when switching between macOS Dark and Light modes.

Fixes & Enhancements

• Troubleshooting & Fixes Tab: Added a dedicated Troubleshoot tab in AeroBar Settings featuring a 4-step quick fix guide and direct System Settings shortcuts for resolving post-system freeze macOS HID event tap blocks (Cmd+Tab / 3-finger swipe, hover highlights, button popups).
• macOS App Icon Cache Refresh: Added a "Refresh All macOS App Icons Now" tool to purge icon caches and force a system-wide reload across all pinned apps, window tabs, window previews, and start menu items when macOS themes or icon settings change.
• Fullscreen Popover Suppression: Resolved an issue where button popups and preview panels (Quick Links, Widgets, Window Previews, File Shelf, Pinned Folders) appeared on hover when watching videos or running apps in true fullscreen mode.
• Opt-in Clipboard Background Processes: Fully gated all clipboard background activity (0.4s pasteboard polling timer, system sleep/wake event observers, and thumbnail disk I/O) behind the Extensions setting toggle. When disabled, background clipboard activity and memory consumption drop to zero.
• Main Thread Safety: Dispatched coordinate hover tracker evaluations to the main thread, eliminating thread sanitizer/Main Thread Checker warnings and ensuring thread-safe window property reads.

Fixes & Enhancements

• Bar Height Dock Re-enforcement & Window Re-clamping: Changing the Bar Height automatically re-enforces system Dock size defaults and autohide settings after a 500ms debounce, triggering window re-clamping across open applications.
• Adaptive Button Fill Tint Presets: Added independent Light Mode and Dark Mode button fill tint settings, with preset swatches (Auto, Dark, Ice White, Tahoe Blue, Mint, Turquoise, Amethyst, Amber, Crimson, Neon Cyan).
• Color Sliders (Hue & Brightness): Introduced interactive Hue & Brightness sliders for Quick Icon Tint, Button Fill Tint, and Orb Logo Foreground Tint.
• Advanced Per-Element Customization: Upgraded per-element controls (Search, Recycle Bin, File Shelf, Clipboard, Widgets, Quick Links, Pinned Folder, Show Desktop, Mission Control) with 4 individual Hue & Brightness sliders + preset swatches for icon glyph and background fill.
• Default Logo Brightness (85%): Updated default orb logo brightness to 85% (#D9D9D9).

Fixes & Enhancements

• Mission Control Divider Line Fix: Resolved an issue where disabling the Mission Control button rendered two adjacent divider lines instead of a single divider line between pinned apps and window tabs.
• Show Desktop Icon Spacing Fix: Resolved an issue where disabling the Recycle Bin button caused the Show Desktop button and other right-side utility icons to stick directly together without proper margin/padding.

Fixes & Enhancements

• Per-Icon Show/Hide Toggles: Added enable/disable switches to every row in Appearance → Icon Colors → Advanced - Per-Element, letting you hide individual bar icons (Search, Recycle Bin, File Shelf, Clipboard, Widgets, Quick Links, Pinned Folder, Show Desktop, Mission Control) independently, right alongside their color overrides. All icons remain enabled by default.

Fixes & Enhancements

• CheckedContinuation Crash Fix: Resolved a fatal SWIFT TASK CONTINUATION MISUSE crash in the clipboard thumbnail generator where a checked continuation could be resumed multiple times on decryption failure.
• Main Thread App Hang & Watchdog Fix: Moved AppleScript execution (session actions, onboarding permission checks, and keystroke automation) entirely off the main thread to background queues, eliminating UI hangs and Watchdog timeout crashes.
• Unified Hover Highlights: All app icons and system buttons share the exact same selection-color border and glow highlights on hover.
• MacOSSquircle Rendering: Applied mathematical macOS superellipse curves to all overlays and clipping masks to eliminate edge aliasing.
• High-Resolution Icon Scaling: Refactored the icon rasterizer to retrieve high-resolution 256x256 representations and manually downsample them, preserving the squircle background on smaller bar heights.
• Adaptive Button Sizing: Dynamically scale system shortcut button containers and inner icons depending on active bar height to match the visible padding of native app icons.
• Window Tab App Icon Upgrades: Updated window tab icons to use the high-resolution rasterized loader, aligning them with the main tray's sharp rendering.

Fixes & Enhancements

• Window Tab Pruning Fix: Fixed a bug where closed or stale app windows would still show up on the window tabs list for up to 15 seconds. Reduced the CGWindowList cache refresh interval to 0.5 seconds, ensuring closed windows are pruned immediately.

Fixes & Enhancements

• Critical Crash Fix: Fixed a rare but fatal SWIFT TASK CONTINUATION MISUSE crash in the clipboard thumbnail generator. A code path could resume the same async continuation twice whenever decrypting a clipboard item's cached payload failed (e.g. a stale or unreadable payload file), crashing the app outright. Thumbnail generation now safely resumes exactly once regardless of which path it takes.

Fixes & Enhancements

• Hardware-Derived Keys: Migrated the clipboard encryption key directly to a secure, hardware-derived key using the Mac's logic board serial number, ensuring military-grade security without triggering macOS Keychain permission prompts.
• Improved Lockout Flow: The beta lockout panel is now immovable and automatically hides the main AeroBar taskbar when active. Also fixed a bug where clicking 'Disable launch at start' closed the confirmation alert prematurely.
• Automated Check-Ins & Rate Limiting: Implemented network change observation and a 24-hour background timer to fetch license updates automatically, with rate-limiting to protect free Cloudflare worker quotas.
• Critical Bug Fixes: Resolved a major memory leak (100MB+) that occurred when plugging/unplugging external displays by aggressively shredding orphaned SwiftUI window previews. Also fixed a minor memory leak where the Beta/Update alert panels failed to release their view controllers.
• Update Prompt: Engineered a flawless dynamic height system for the update panel that automatically shrink-wraps small release notes and natively scrolls massive release notes without cutting off UI elements.
• AeroBar Options: Added a new "Show Bevel on Empty Displays" toggle to control bevel visibility when a display has no active windows. Also fixed an issue where the bevel line was incorrectly hidden by the focus mode dimming overlay when the background dimmer was active.

Fixes & Enhancements

• Hover Highlights: Fixed an issue where hovering over pinned apps and buttons on the internal display broke after disconnecting an external monitor.

Fixes & Enhancements

• Multi-Display Window Previews: Fixed an issue where hovering over a window tab on a secondary display would incorrectly highlight tabs on the primary display, and resolved instances where window previews would pop up on the wrong screen.
• Preview Flicker / Stability: Fixed a bug where hovering over window tabs for edge-aligned or maximized apps (like Antigravity IDE) would cause the window preview to infinitely retry and flicker due to a truncated display crop check.

Key Highlights & Fixes

• Scroll View Fix: Fixed an issue where adding a new window from a pinned tab would not automatically resize the tab scroll view.
• Pinned App New Window: Fixed the "Open New Window" context menu action for pinned apps to reliably open a new window even when the application is already running.
• Preview Reliability: Resolved a race condition where window previews on pinned apps would sometimes appear blank or missing during rapid mouse hovers.
• Performance Enhancement: Dramatically reduced lag when hovering over pinned apps and opening their context menus by eliminating heavy main-thread IPC calls.

Stability & Debugging Fixes

• Native Crash Reporter: Moved the crash popup to a clean native launch window instead of a background script.
• Log Size Guard: Crash logs are automatically truncated to fit GitHub issue size limits.
• Event Tap Circuit Breakers: Built-in structural defense to prevent global Mac freezes if an event tap times out repeatedly.
• Developer Options: Moved testing tools safely into a dedicated Developer tab in settings.

Key Highlights & Fixes

• App Menu: Fixed an issue where system apps inside subfolders (like Utilities) and user-specific apps were not showing up in the Start Menu app list.

Key Highlights & Fixes

• Performance: Under-the-hood optimizations and minor bug fixes.

Key Highlights & Fixes

• Hover Responsiveness: Fixed hover lag and sticky button states during Focus Mode animations.

Key Highlights & Fixes

• OS Support: Added experimental support for macOS Sonoma and macOS Sequoia.

Key Highlights & Fixes

• Memory Leaks & Performance: Fixed severe memory leaks and CPU hitches related to window tracking and clipboard thumbnail generation.

Key Highlights & Fixes

• Display Background Dimmer: Added a new toggle to optionally dim the wallpaper on secondary/inactive displays when they have no windows, preventing bright wallpapers from causing glare.
• Multi-Display Focus Mode: Completely fixed multi-monitor Focus Mode bugs where dimming panels would display at the wrong coordinates (e.g., midway down external displays) or fail to correctly trigger on hover.
• Codebase Cleanup: Fixed deprecated property warnings and modernized dictionary initializers.

Key Highlights & Fixes

• Settings UI: Restructured "Surface Tint Density" to be grouped correctly under "Liquid Tint Hue", matching the visual style of "Tint Brightness" with a dark background fill.
• Focus Mode: Corrected the icon shading for the Search and Trash buttons to match dimmed buttons.
• Focus Mode: The dim tint now applies instantly upon resizing the AeroBar window.
• Focus Mode: Disabled the "bevel" edge effect on both the top and bottom bars while in focus mode.
• Focus Mode: Fixed a flickering issue that occurred when hovering over pinned apps.

Note for old v8.0/older users: This update stabilizes performance loops and UX rendering efficiency.

Key Highlights & Fixes

• Daemon Optimization: Eliminated severe CPU usage and UI hitches (saving ~500ms per tick) by caching Space IPC calls and eagerly short-circuiting invisible phantom windows.
• Memory Leaks: Plugged continuous memory leaks caused by undocumented CGS WindowServer APIs returning +1 unmanaged CF types.

Note for old v8.0/older users: This update stabilizes performance loops and UX rendering efficiency.

Key Highlights & Fixes

• Performance: Resolved a critical layout/rendering loop that caused massive 40% CPU overhead whenever the Start Menu or Cmd+Tab panels were open. The glass masking is now fully processed by native AppKit CoreAnimation layers.
• Responsiveness: Re-architected AX accessibility hit-testing to run completely off the main thread, fixing frequent 5-second UI lockups when clicking zoom and window control buttons.
• Stability: Fixed a layout crash (Invalid frame dimension) that occurred during the initial display of the Cmd+Tab panel.

Note for old v8.0/older users: This update stabilizes our trackpad gestures and window positioning framework.

Key Highlights & Fixes

• Trackpad Gestures Redesign: Replaced the 4-finger swipe up/left/right gesture cycling with 3-finger swipes, completely freeing up 4-finger trackpad gestures for native macOS features (like Mission Control or spaces).
• No Update Interruptions: The update checker will no longer interrupt you with popups while any connected display is in true fullscreen mode or if the active app window is maximized.
• Window Positioning & Repositioning Fix: Resolved a layout coordinate bug that caused window tabs and previews to reposition app windows slightly downward when switching or pulling cross-display.
• Customization Button Hover Fix: Fixed the customization button interaction bounds so tapping its surrounding hover area triggers the customization panel correctly.
• App Icon Corner Squircle: Adjusted the pinned app icon corner mask to match native macOS squircle/rounded icon design constraints.
• Hover Jitter Lock: Silenced physical trackpad cursor drift from interfering with the active 3-finger swipe gesture cycle highlights.

Note for old v8.0/older users: This update is marked as a full release to trigger updates automatically via the legacy check-for-updates system.

Key Highlights

• Cmd+Tab & Gesture Switching Fixes: Solved issues when using 3–4 finger swipe gestures to switch back to the last active window. Window preview hovers now correctly follow the custom Window Preview Size settings without clipping.
• Liquid Design macOS Aesthetics: Introducing beautiful, native AppKit glass vibrancy with custom light/dark mode-split accent colors, customizable selection intensity, and a 0.5pt specular bevel highlight.
• Stability & Performance: Resolved background issues that caused window switching lag and memory leaks, ensuring a responsive and resource-friendly experience.
• Window Workspace Fixes: Resolved the fullscreen Space flicker and VLC fullscreen window rendering compatibility bugs.

Full Change List

User Interface & Aesthetics

• Added selection highlight color intensity slider.
• Added Active Tab Dimmer for inactive states.
• Fixed icon padding, welcome screen gaps, and EULA layout on boot.

System & Battery Optimizations

• Moved window tracking updates to dynamic background threads.
• Added battery drain warning for heavy CPU background loops.
• Improved overall idle CPU utilization (targeting 0% idle).

Stability & Reliability

• Added Clipboard History delete confirmation.
• Fixed Context Menu freeze issues.
• Upgraded license and trial handling logic.

Baseline Features

• Liquid Glass Taskbar: Blurs and tints desktop wallpapers dynamically.
• Start Orb & Menu: Interactive start launcher with application browser and Spotlight search integration.
• Live Window Tab Strip: One-click app switching showing window titles and app icons natively.
• Multi-Display Integration: Independent taskbar layout across all secondary monitors.