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What’s New in v1.6.0

Working auto-update, a gradient generator, and a steadier cursor headline the latest release. Below is the full history — every feature and fix from the first cut to today.

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v1.6.0FeatureLatest

Auto-Update Finally Works, Plus a Gradient That Designs Itself

  • Auto-update is repaired. Every release up to v1.5.2 shipped without the update manifest electron-updater reads, so no installed copy could ever see a new version. This build carries the full metadata for both platforms — install it once and future updates arrive on their own.
  • Surprise me: the backdrop’s Gradient tab can now generate a gradient for you. It draws a random hue, pairs it with a harmonious partner, and holds saturation and lightness in ranges that flatter a recording sitting on top, so every result is usable. Recent draws stay as swatches.
  • The cursor no longer flickers when you click. With native cursor styling, an OS cursor-type change landing mid-click used to swap the drawn cursor — and because cursors have different hotspots, it jumped rather than just re-skinned. The shape is now held for the length of the click animation.
  • Update failures are no longer invisible: they are recorded in diagnostics.log instead of a console the production build strips.
  • For AI and MCP users: apply_edits gained the backdrop value vocabulary it never had, so an assistant can set wallpapers, colours, and gradients correctly. Captions gained a polish loop — generate_captions {apply: false} transcribes without touching your document, and get_transcript {format: "json"} round-trips cues losslessly. Several settings that silently reset their siblings when patched now merge properly.
  • Known limitation: caption generation runs on Apple-silicon Macs only, because the bundled Whisper binary ships for darwin-arm64. On Windows and Intel Macs the feature reports that it is unavailable rather than failing oddly. Writing captions still works everywhere.
v1.5.2Feature

Whole-Video Crop & a Much Faster Export

  • Crop your whole video non-destructively — drag and resize in the preview with 16:9 / 9:16 / 1:1 / 4:3 aspect presets, re-edit any time, and every effect (auto-zoom, 3D frame, lightbox, spotlight, edge-snap) follows the cropped frame.
  • Export speed repaired for narrated recordings: the WebCodecs fast path now kicks in from the first sample (~0.5 fps → 65–108 fps measured), with VP9 preferred when recording with audio.
  • Click effects land exactly on the cursor tip while zoomed, and auto-zoom regions now generate from your clicks automatically when a recording loads.
  • Sharper 3D device-frame preview and a fix for background music failing to load in some sessions.
v1.5.1Major

Real macOS Cursors, Elastic Click Effects & the 3D Camera

  • Real macOS cursors: the native cursor style now renders your OS’s actual cursor artwork, extracted at runtime and rasterized at 8× — razor sharp at any zoom level, with faithful replicas on Windows and Linux.
  • New elastic press click effect replaces the old ripple — a physical dent anchored to the exact cursor tip at the moment of the click, on by default.
  • Full 3D camera control: orbit widget, depth of field, camera motion blur, per-layer 3D tilt, and shots.so-style camera-path presets with buttery quintic easing.
  • Redesigned cursor presets with path smoothing and a soft 3D-raised shadow look.
  • 8 new background music tracks across corporate, epic, lofi, and tech-house moods; auto-transcription now filters out Whisper hallucinations.
  • Performance pass: the idle editor no longer renders on the GPU, and exports got faster via annotation decode caching and a ~radius× faster box blur.
v1.5.0Major

Instant (Live) Mode & the 3D MacBook Frame

  • Instant (Live) capture mode — a real-time recording experience with High / Max / Source bitrate tiers, live AnalyserNode audio meters, and focus-scoped global shortcuts.
  • Real 3D MacBook device frame built with three.js — silver or midnight models, animated 3D tilt regions, and a None / 2D bezel / 3D selector with Retina-sharp screen rendering.
  • Editor ⇄ Instant parity: shared backgrounds, canvas-rendered gradient previews, and matched webcam PiP behaviour (shrinks during zoom).
  • Major performance pass: playhead store, memoized panels, idle-gated preview ticker, decode-ahead export pipeline, and GIF decoding via mediabunny.
  • Exported audio re-encoded to AAC so MP4s upload cleanly to X / Twitter; hardened app quit/shutdown and a batch of crash/hang fixes.
v1.4.7Feature

Export HUD, Trim/Speed & Captions

  • Local Whisper captions transcribed entirely on-device (asset-gated).
  • Direct timeline trim and speed editing via a dedicated Cut / Speed tab.
  • Background music with real CC0 tracks and audio mixing on export.
  • Export HUD that always stays out of the recording, plus a faster export path and smoother webcam overlay.
v1.4.6Feature

Webcam & Playback Speed

  • Webcam preview during recording, with hover explanations.
  • Fast-play (speed-up) for selected sections of the timeline.
  • Automatic cursor-shape switching and audio included in exported MP4s.
v1.4.5Feature

License at Export & Edge Snapping

  • License activation moved to export time for a smoother trial-to-buy flow.
  • Edge-snapping algorithm that prefers continuous lines.
  • Windows timeline zoom-slider compatibility and refreshed typography.
v1.4.3 – 1.4.4Feature

Auto-Lightbox & Signed Builds

  • Auto lightbox generation and snap-to-edge in the editor.
  • macOS code signing and notarization wired into CI builds.
  • Public auto-update releases and enhanced UI typography.
v1.4.0 – 1.4.1Major

Spotlight, Lightbox, Permissions & Audio

  • Spotlight and lightbox attention effects join auto-zoom — the full attention stack.
  • Setup wizard for macOS permissions management.
  • Microphone capture and audio features for screen recording.
  • Content protection to keep sensitive windows out of recordings.
  • Area selection and recording-border windows.
v1.3.0 – 1.3.31Feature

Cross-Platform & Cursor-Free Capture

  • First Windows and Linux builds alongside macOS.
  • Cursor-free screen recording via the Windows WGC API and Linux X11 SHM.
  • Auto-zoom transition feature with keyframe interpolation.
  • A long run of crash-recovery, GPU-fallback, and cursor-tracking fixes.
v1.0 – beginningsMilestone

The First Cut

  • Initial ScreenBuddy release: screen recording with native macOS capture.
  • Smooth cursor tracking that replaces the system cursor for clean zooms.
  • Webcam overlay recording and the recording HUD.
  • Auto-zoom on clicks (1.25×–5×) and LemonSqueezy one-time-purchase licensing.