Release Notes¶

Notable user-facing changes per version. For full commit history and downloadable assets, see the GitHub releases page.

v0.6.2 — April 13, 2026¶

Patch release with Quick Add UX improvements and a localization bug fix.

New¶

Quick Add placeholder text — The Quick Add app and category input fields now show placeholder hints when empty, making it clearer what each field expects.

Improved¶

Category sidebar label wrapping — Long category names in the sidebar now wrap instead of being clipped.
Control styling consistency — Refined shared styles for inputs, dialogs, and other controls to improve visual consistency across the app.
Theming granularity — Added finer-grained theme brushes for message dialogs, scrollbars, notification hover states, the prerelease badge, the missing-path badge, and the sidebar pin indicator, allowing themes to target these elements individually.

Fixed¶

Quick Add category localization — Category options in the Quick Add dropdown were not refreshing when the app language was changed. They now update immediately.

v0.6.1 — April 11, 2026¶

Patch release focused on category sidebar drag-and-drop stability and interaction polish.

Fixed¶

Sidebar DnD collapse consistency — Moved collapse decision handling into CategorySidebarControl so hover-zone, sidebar container, and drag-session-end paths now follow one consistent close behavior.
Drag transition collapse edge case — Prevented unintended sidebar collapse when the pointer transitions between the hover zone and sidebar container during launch-item drag operations.

Improved¶

DnD responsibility separation — Consolidated sidebar-local drag enter/leave handling in the sidebar control, while keeping category move/apply logic in MainWindow.

v0.6.0 — April 11, 2026¶

Stable release of the v0.6 update line.

Improved¶

Update apply flow consistency — Unified update apply triggers across Header, Banner, and Settings so all entry points follow the same workflow.
Safer update execution state — Prevented duplicate apply requests while apply is already in progress and improved in-progress UI state handling.
Update metadata resilience — Release metadata cache now recovers correctly after transient fetch failures.
Semantic version handling — Refined prerelease comparison precedence and tightened invalid semantic version parsing behavior.

Fixed¶

Icon-mode drag reorder threshold — Corrected icon-mode insert threshold axis handling during drag-and-drop reorder.
Icon-mode reorder animation — Added proper horizontal and diagonal transition animation when icon tiles are reordered.

Notes¶

Includes all changes validated in v0.6.0-rc.1 plus final stabilization fixes for update reliability and icon-mode interaction quality.

v0.6.0-rc.1 — April 11, 2026¶

Release Candidate for the next applanch version.

New¶

Prerelease update opt-in — Added a setting to opt in to prerelease update channels.
Selectable update targets — Improved update UX so users can choose from available update versions in Settings.

Improved¶

Prerelease visibility in UI — Added clearer prerelease labeling in the main window and refined prerelease badge styling, including better theme awareness.
Update metadata fetch workflow — Simplified release metadata fetch flow and cache behavior to avoid stale failure state after transient errors.
Update HTTP client lifecycle — Refined shared HttpClient usage and initialization behavior for update operations.

Notes¶

This is an -rc prerelease build intended for validation before stable release.

v0.5.7 — April 9, 2026¶

Fixed¶

Theme selection localization refresh — Fixed an issue where the selected theme label in Settings could remain in the previous language after changing app language.

Improved¶

Theme option update flow — Simplified theme option refresh behavior and reduced duplication in settings update paths.
Theme option lookup performance — Switched theme option resolution to dictionary-based lookups for more direct O(1) access by theme ID.
Internal settings model cleanup — Consolidated settings draft update paths to improve readability and maintainability.

v0.5.6 — April 8, 2026¶

New¶

Version display in UI — The current app version is now shown in the main header and in the Settings window.

Fixed¶

Settings window reliability — Fixed an issue where the Settings window could fail to appear and the app process might not shut down correctly in some flows.
Bundled config diagnostics — Added floating warning notifications when bundled configuration files are missing or invalid at startup.
Update restart loop — Fixed an issue where update application could trigger repeated restart behavior in some environments.

Improved¶

Theme palette config — Theme palette loading has been refactored for better maintainability, and user-defined themes now support an optional "disabled": true flag.
Getting started docs — The getting started guides now use richer UI screenshots and clearer walkthrough-style explanations.

v0.5.5 — April 8, 2026¶

Fixed¶

Config packaging — All files under Config/ are now included in build outputs and release artifacts. This fixes missing bundled samples such as the user-defined theme palette sample JSON.

v0.5.4 — April 8, 2026¶

New¶

Collapsible category sidebar — The category sidebar now collapses when unpinned. Hover over the left edge of the window to expand it temporarily; click the pin button to keep it open. The pinned state is saved and restored across app restarts.

Improved¶

Discord icon — Apps launched via the Discord Update path are now shown with the Discord icon instead of a generic fallback.
Icon-mode toggle — Refined the size and label of the icon-only mode toggle in the main window header.

v0.5.3 — April 7, 2026¶

Fixed¶

Icon-only list header layout — Fixed alignment issues around the icon-mode toggle and section header in item display settings.

Improved¶

User documentation — Added explicit guidance for the icon-only item list setting in both the Settings and Items pages.

v0.5.2 — April 7, 2026¶

New¶

Icon-only item list mode — Added an icon-only display mode for launch items, with a quick toggle in the main header.

Fixed¶

Icon-mode startup reliability — Fixed startup hang and initial blank-render issues that could occur when icon mode was enabled.
Icon tile layout stability — Fixed clipping and layout inconsistencies in the icon grid.

Improved¶

Icon list performance — Introduced virtualization for the icon-mode launch grid to keep scrolling responsive with larger item counts.

v0.5.1 — April 6, 2026¶

Fixed¶

Category edit dialog — Fixed an issue where the category suggestion ComboBox in the Change Category flow could remain hidden in some states.
Test stability — Fixed a race in WPF test host initialization that could intermittently fail CI and local full test runs.

v0.5.0 — April 6, 2026¶

New¶

Context menu startup — Settings → Startup now includes a toggle to add the Windows Explorer Register with Applanch context menu entry at startup (enabled by default).
Remove context menu — A Remove Applanch Context Menu Entries button in Settings → Startup removes existing Explorer context menu entries immediately.
Configurable quick-add limit — Settings → Item Display lets you control how many suggestions appear while typing in the quick-add box (10, 20, 30, 50 by default, or 100).

Improved¶

Utility Actions — Settings now includes Copy Diagnostics (copies app version, OS, locale, and log folder path to the clipboard) and Open Log Folder (opens the applanch log directory in File Explorer).
Installer — The Windows installer now supports Japanese. Wizard icon updated.
Documentation — Full bilingual (English / Japanese) documentation is available at docs.applanch.com.

v0.4.4 — April 4, 2026¶

New¶

Windows Explorer context menu — When registered as a sparse package, applanch adds a Register with Applanch entry to the Windows 11 right-click context menu for files and folders.
Update install behavior — Settings → Startup includes an Update Install Behavior option: Notify Only, Manual (default), or Automatically Apply.
Check for Updates — A Check for Updates action in Settings → Utility Actions triggers an immediate update check without restarting.
Unregister script — unregister-context-menu.cmd is included in the portable ZIP as a fallback for removing the context menu entry without reinstalling.

v0.4.3 — April 3, 2026¶

New¶

Report Bug — Settings → Utility Actions includes a Report Bug button that opens a pre-filled GitHub issue template in your browser.

v0.4.2 — April 3, 2026¶

New¶

Favicon cache — Icons for web items are cached locally. New settings control whether HTTP icon fetching is allowed and whether requests to private IP ranges are permitted.
Open Location — A Open Location context menu action on items opens the item's containing folder in File Explorer.
Delete missing item — When a missing item fails to launch, the notification includes a Delete button to remove it from the list immediately.

v0.4.1 — April 2, 2026¶

New¶

URL items — Web URLs can be added as launch items. applanch opens them in the default browser.
User-defined themes — Custom color palettes placed in Config/UserDefined/theme-palette/*.json appear as selectable themes in Settings.
System theme — The Follow system theme option now tracks the Windows light/dark setting in real time.
User-defined launch fallbacks — Custom fallback resolution rules can be placed in Config/UserDefined/launch-fallbacks/*.json.

Improved¶

A restoration notification appears when a deleted item is recovered via undo.

v0.3.0 — March 30, 2026¶

New¶

Japanese UI — The application is now available in Japanese. Language defaults to the Windows display language; change it in Settings → Appearance → Language.
Themed dialogs — Confirmation and message dialogs now follow the active color theme.

v0.2.0 — March 30, 2026¶

New¶

Automatic updates — applanch checks GitHub Releases on startup and can apply updates in-app.
Settings window — A dedicated settings window provides centralized configuration.
Structured logging — Detailed logs are written to %LocalAppData%\applanch\app.log.