Changelog

Turn a photo into a real 3D scene, tag and colour-code your files, and make the whole app your own with themes. Plus a richer marketing site with a dedicated security page, and fixes so the desktop app works against a remote server.

Added

• Photos in 3D — turn any photo into a real 3D Gaussian splat with Apple SHARP, running on your own GPU (macOS, Windows and Linux), fully offline. Orbit it in a proper viewer that opens at the original angle and follows your theme; the result is saved as an end-to-end-encrypted derivative that syncs to your other devices and shows in the photo's details. The heavy model isn't bundled — a one-time in-app setup provisions it on demand.
• Drive tags — Spacedrive-style coloured tags for files and folders: a Tags section in the sidebar, a right-click Tags menu to apply, remove or create tags, tag chips in the details panel, and a per-tag filter view. Tag names are end-to-end encrypted like everything else.
• Make the app yours — new accent colours (Violet, Blue, Emerald, Rose, Amber) and full neutral palettes (Sand, Slate) that compose with light/dark, chosen from Account → Appearance and applied instantly.
• A richer site — a scroll-reveal feature showcase with pinned media, direct per-platform download links, a dedicated Security page (how your data stays end-to-end encrypted and zero-knowledge), and a 3D spotlight section.

Fixed

• The desktop app now works against a remote server — thumbnails, originals and downloads authenticate with your session token instead of a cookie, so images load when the app connects to a self-hosted instance.
• Only real devices are shown — browser tabs no longer register as devices, and offline devices drop off the list; the Devices section shows your desktop and mobile apps, synced folders and the Cloud.

Notes

• Still moving fast. Keep your recovery code safe — without your password, encrypted data can't be recovered.
• Generating 3D needs the one-time SHARP setup (a few GB, downloaded on first use); it then runs entirely on your device.

This release reimagines the Drive interface around a floating, modern chrome and finally makes your devices aware of each other — sign in on the web and your desktop app shows up, and vice-versa. Plus a polished marketing site with one-command and copy-paste install.

Added

• Your devices, all in one place — every client signed into your account (the desktop app, other browsers, your phone) now appears in Drive's Devices section on both the sidebar and the Overview, each with a platform icon and a live online/offline dot. Clients register themselves on sign-in and heartbeat to stay current, so the web app sees your desktop and the desktop sees the web — through the Cloud, with no setup.
• A floating Drive toolbar — the bottom pill is gone; browsing controls now live in a row of floating pills at the top: back/forward navigation, the folder breadcrumb, view switcher, thumbnail size, and a create menu.
• Sort and filter — order files by name, size, date modified or kind (ascending or descending), and filter the view down to specific file kinds or just your favourites.
• A redesigned details panel — the inspector is now a floating, rounded card that matches the Photos viewer and pins itself in place as the grid scrolls behind it.
• One-command and copy-paste self-hosting on the site — the marketing page now offers a curl … | sh installer (with a Windows PowerShell option) and a copy-paste docker-compose.yml for Dockge/Portainer users, with syntax highlighting.

Improved

• Folder sync is clearer and self-updating — adding a synced folder now refreshes the sidebar and Overview immediately, progress shows an honest count instead of sitting at 0/0, and the indexer no longer skips your files because of a stray .gitignore.
• A sharper marketing hero — a real multi-layer parallax mountain scene, a platform-aware Download button that links straight to the right installer for your OS, and a cleaner, more readable landing page.

Fixed

• The web app no longer reserves empty space for the macOS traffic lights it doesn't have, so its sidebar sits flush at the top.
• macOS desktop builds no longer fail on a misconfigured signing certificate — code-signing is now opt-in, so the build always succeeds (un-notarized until real Apple credentials are set).

Notes

• Still moving fast. Keep your recovery code safe — without your password, encrypted data can't be recovered.
• Real peer-to-peer device transfer is still a future layer; this release makes devices visible to each other through the Cloud.

The big one this round: PolarHQ Mobile — a native iOS and Android app — alongside a ground-up reimagining of Photos and Drive on desktop, one-command self-hosting, a real admin console, and the whole interface in 21 languages.

Added

• PolarHQ Mobile (iOS & Android) — a native app built on the same encrypted core as web and desktop. Your camera roll backs up automatically (photos and video), everything is decrypted on-device, and you get a Google-Photos-style grid with albums and search, a swipeable viewer with pinch-to-zoom, multi-select, and a full Drive browser (folder navigation, upload, new folder / rename / delete) with live updates and push notifications. iOS uses real Liquid Glass controls; end-to-end crypto runs natively on the device.
• Self-host in one command — a curl … | sh installer (and a PowerShell one for Windows) that checks Docker, asks for your domain, sets up Caddy with automatic HTTPS — or a self-signed cert for localhost — and brings the whole stack up. Front and centre on the site now.
• Import from Google — bring your Google Photos and Drive across in a guided migration.
• Admin console — inline, Discord-style editors for Users, Groups and Roles: create accounts, edit and delete custom roles, per-user storage usage (usage only — never your contents or devices), and a demo / read-only mode. Settings and admin now open as an overlay over the live app.
• Photos, reimagined — a new workspace with Grid, Canvas (drag-to-arrange with saved positions) and Infinity modes; a focus viewer with a filmstrip, an ambient blurred backdrop, floating chrome that adapts to each image's brightness, drag-to-pan when zoomed, a proper video/audio player, and a download button that morphs into a spinner then a "Saved" check.
• A device-first Drive — the sidebar leads with an Overview, then your Devices: the Cloud (My Drive / Recents / Favorites / Trash), this device and its synced folders, and P2P peers, each tagged CLOUD / LOCAL / P2P. A redesigned Overview dashboard (storage hero, file-kind breakdown, a space treemap, largest files) and the same floating, top-bar-free chrome as Photos.
• Desktop folder sync — a Rust indexer + file watcher with live background auto-upload, plus offline image→3D generation (monocular-depth point clouds you can view in-app) and native video playback.
• 21 languages — the entire UI is translated (Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and more), with dates, numbers and app names localised too.

Improved

• A big performance pass. Large media decrypts in a Web Worker, off the main thread; a shared thumbnail store decrypts once and dedupes across the grid and filmstrip; the grid uses lightweight CSS entities with deferred decrypt for fast scrolling; pinch/wheel resize is coalesced to one relayout per frame; and the Docs/Sheets/Whiteboard editors lazy-load out of the initial bundle. Drive got the same care — cached, deduped thumbnails and memoised cards so selection and drag only re-render what changed.
• Optimistic favourite / trash in Photos (no full-feed refetch) and lazier feed paging on scroll.

Fixed

• Desktop builds and runs reliably — the folder-sync UI freeze and folder-picker crash are gone (indexing is async, the picker is native), the real bundle version shows, and the keypair stays unlocked across launches.
• No more nags — the macOS keychain isn't touched on every launch, and there's no per-refresh encryption-unlock prompt.
• iOS stability — logins and E2E keys persist, the library paginates fully, photos order by capture date, and auto-unlock works.
• Localisation — dates, times and day labels now follow the selected language everywhere.

Notes

• Still moving fast. Keep your recovery code safe — without your password, encrypted data can't be recovered.

The headline: PolarHQ Desktop — a native app for macOS, Windows, and Linux that runs the exact same code as the web app. Underneath it is a ground-up re-architecture that lets one codebase power web, desktop, and (soon) mobile, plus a big round of Photos and Drive polish.

Added

• PolarHQ Desktop — a native Tauri 2 app with proper macOS chrome: a Tahoe-rounded window, a floating sidebar, the traffic-light controls tucked into the sidebar, and a frosted top bar. Downloads for macOS (Intel + Apple Silicon), Windows, and Linux are on the releases page.
• Auto-update — a Discord-style launch updater that checks for new versions, downloads, installs, and relaunches automatically; signed end-to-end.
• Pick your server on the sign-in page — one animated, split-screen sign-in with a Self-hosted / PolarHQ Hosted (managed storage, coming soon) toggle and server field right above your credentials.
• The Photos lightbox, now in Drive — image previews in the file browser use the exact same viewer as Photos, filmstrip and all.
• A reimagined Drive — a Library Overview dashboard, a Miller-column (cascading) view, smart views for Recents / Favorites / File Kinds, pinned saved searches, a storage treemap, and proper file-type icons.
• Inline photo editor — edit straight inside the lightbox.

Improved

• Re-architected into shared packages — the i18n, data/crypto core, and the entire UI + feature logic now live in @workspace/* packages, so web, desktop, and future mobile are thin shells over one codebase with no duplication.
• Migrated the web app from Next.js to Vite + React Router, for one consistent stack across every shell.
• Redesigned the Photos lightbox — a windowed viewer, an animated filmstrip, an ambient blurred backdrop, a minimal toolbar, and an attached details panel.
• Frosted top bar — content scrolls cleanly under a translucent, blurred header.
• Migrated every icon to a single Phosphor set.
• Parallelized encrypted part uploads, so one large file can saturate the connection.

Fixed

• The desktop webview no longer prompts for the macOS keychain on every launch (the local-cache key is stored as raw bytes there).
• Uploads stay alive across in-app navigation, and chunked uploads resume through transient failures.
• The viewer no longer crashes the tab on very large encrypted videos.

Notes

• Still alpha, still moving fast. Keep your recovery code safe — without your password, encrypted data can't be recovered.

The big one: PolarHQ is now a real office suite. Sheets and Docs ship as full-screen, Google-parity editors, with genuine Microsoft and Google file interop.

Added

• Full-screen editors for Sheets and Docs — each opens in its own tab with a menu bar, toolbar, and (for Sheets) a formula bar.
• Office import — open .xlsx and .docx files directly.
• Office export — save documents back out to the Microsoft formats.
• Open Office files from Drive — double-click an .xls/.docx in the file browser and the right editor launches.
• Correct file-type icons per document type across Drive.

Improved

• Rebuilt the spreadsheet grid on Glide Data Grid (canvas) — smooth scrolling, real resize, right-click menus, copy/paste, and a correct fill handle.
• Spreadsheets default to 1,000 rows with a button to add more, matching Google Sheets.
• Migrated all maps to mapcn for consistent, reliable rendering.
• Rebuilt the marketing site to match the app's dark theme.

Fixed

• Undo/redo in Sheets after the grid rebuild.
• Column dropdowns no longer scroll the sheet to the bottom.
• Spreadsheet text selection no longer triggers on drag-fill.

A focused round of fixes for the new iOS client, mostly about making the library complete and the timeline correct.

Fixed

• Paginate the full photo library — earlier builds capped at a single page.
• Sort photos by parsed capture date across mixed-precision timestamps, so mobile matches the web.
• Persist login and E2E keys reliably in the Keychain (with a UserDefaults fallback).
• Send the Origin header so better-auth accepts native sign-in.
• Surface the real sign-in error (status, URL, and server message) instead of a generic failure.

Improved

• Refresh upload thumbnails immediately after capture.
• Broadcast photos.asset.changed on upload so other clients update live.

PolarHQ goes mobile. A native SwiftUI client for iOS 26, built on a libsodium core that matches the web's encryption byte-for-byte.

Added

• Native iOS client (SwiftUI) — server setup, bearer auth, and an app-launcher home screen.
• OrbitCrypto — a Swift libsodium module with JS parity test vectors; E2E unlock and decrypted Photos thumbnails on-device.
• Immersive Photos library — Liquid Glass chrome, pinch-to-zoom across Years / Months / All, and an Apple-style photo viewer with filmstrip and action bar.
• Drive on iOS — Files-app-style folder browsing with decrypted names and types, plus rename / delete / new folder.
• Device & session management — see and revoke every signed-in client.
• Live sync — Photos and Drive changes broadcast across web and mobile in real time.

Improved

• Bearer-token auth enabled for native clients.
• OrbitCrypto compiles cleanly under Swift 6 strict concurrency.

Photos grows up: non-destructive editing and Immich-style stacks.

Added

• In-depth photo editor with non-destructive before/after stacking — your original is never overwritten.
• Photo stacks (collections) — group related shots behind a single cover with a count.
• Copy image to clipboard straight from the lightbox.
• Remember the lightbox details-panel preference between sessions.

Improved

• Continuous-flow layout so sparse days share a row instead of each taking a lonely line.
• HEIC + Apple Live Photo upload support.
• Client-side EXIF metadata with a location map in the details panel.

Fixed

• Use the correct nucleo duplicate icon for the lightbox copy action.
• Center day labels and harden map sizing.

Dozens of small fixes that make the Photos grid feel solid.

Added

• Selection keybinds with on-screen keyboard hints in the quick-actions bar.
• NumberFlow selection count that animates as you select.
• Videos play on hover in the grid.

Fixed

• Stop runaway scroll and stabilise pagination.
• Virtualization range now updates on scroll — no more grid gaps.
• Drag-select works from the empty grid margins (right and below).
• Inset selection ring with a white check, no focus-ring overlap.
• Square-grid corner rounding and continuous-flow row math.

The first public alpha. The foundation of the whole suite: an encrypted library with Photos and Drive on top.

Added

• End-to-end encryption — a Proton-style single-password model with libsodium; the server only ever stores ciphertext.
• Photos — a virtualized, continuous-flow library with encrypted thumbnails.
• Drive — folders, uploads, versioning, and trash, with encrypted filenames and bytes.
• Drive ↔ Photos shared storage — one stored object, two apps, zero duplication.
• Admin console — users, apps, per-user limits, groups, roles, branding, and an audit log.

Notes

• This is alpha software under active development. Keep your recovery code somewhere safe — without your password, encrypted data cannot be recovered.