Release notes

Published entries are permanent. New releases and corrections are appended; existing notes are never rewritten.

Read the original CHANGELOG.md · Download PalShade

0.0.2 - 2026-10-01 UTC - streamlined shareware

Start the fixed 30-day trial automatically on first Dark Mode launch, with no account, email or credit card. Reinstalling does not reset the deadline.
Download the installer directly and buy through guest checkout without signing up for PalShade first. Account management remains optional.
Safely unlock the first PC after an in-app purchase. Website buyers use the emailed license key. Additional PCs, recovery and MFA-protected accounts still require verified activation.
Preserve pending purchases and recover late payment confirmations without overwriting a concurrently replaced activation. Never retry an ambiguous payment write.
Show trial reminders once at seven and two days remaining rather than at every launch. Continue Trial stays the default before expiry.
Preserve verified-member invite discounts, payment ownership, revocation, two-PC limits and eligibility for covered builds. Guest purchases do not consume unrelated referral claims.
Publish dual-signed stable update revision 15 with agreement revision 3. Local service, native licensing, updater, installer and source-archive checks passed, as did live API checks without submitting payment. Real Paltalk rendering, clean-PC installation and payment/fulfillment/refund/renewal remain separate rehearsals.

0.0.1 - 2026-09-30 UTC - first commercial release

Publish the first stable, dual-signed Windows installer and signed update feed (update revision 14).
Provide a fixed 30-day trial, a $29 one-time personal license for two active computers, twelve months of updates/support and optional $15 manual renewals. Covered builds remain eligible after update coverage ends.
Check signed license eligibility online at each new Dark Mode launch. Normal Mode and maintenance remain available; running Paltalk is not interrupted.
Enable production checkout, email activation-key fulfillment, optional member management and MFA-protected administration. Newsletter consent stays separate.
Publication and local validation do not establish clean-PC installation, real payment, key delivery, refund or renewal rehearsal.

Historical experimental and private previews

These entries describe older previews, not the current commercial offer or current compatibility evidence.

0.2.0-preview.12 - support, recovery and update resilience

Add Support and Recovery with Normal Mode, local allowlisted JSON reports, and an experimental embedded-browser darkening preference.
Preserve browser preferences across host reconfiguration, repair and upgrades. Add a per-launch override for the three-mode Featured comparison.
Default unrecognized-build launch prompts to Normal Mode; silent ordinary launches fall back to Normal Mode. Retain exact hash checks and require explicit approval for experimental theming. Limit the Settings paint replacement to the recognized host tuple.
Expand actual-package Sandbox checks and provide a second-PC handoff plus observation-only process timeline script for delayed Featured failures.
Featured's delayed blank-page issue remains unresolved. The existing browser flag remains a private-preview workaround; no supported controller access route has been identified for an end-to-end replacement.

0.2.0-preview.11 - native page repaint lifecycle

Remove the window-wide updates-disable/enable cycle from queued theme reconciliation. Effects already schedule their repaint after the callback; native WebView/camera children should retain their own update state when pages reopen. After installing the signed build, the owner confirmed both Featured openings work with an All Rooms visit in between.
Allow explicit, absolute --diagnostic-layout output through the normal desktop launch route. Existing five-minute diagnostics now include hidden and updates-enabled flags; they remain disabled by default.
No automated rendering or camera tests were added or run.

0.2.0-preview.10 - effect lifetime and normal browser launch

Defer graphics-effect changes out of Qt's Show/Polish child traversal and let QWidget own effects without QObject parenting. Use guarded window references during queued rebuilding. Addresses a likely cause of preview 9's Preferences > Appearance crash; live confirmation remains outstanding.
Relaunch through the normal desktop when PalShade starts elevated, allowing WebView2 to honor the existing process-only dark appearance settings. Maintenance actions and system-wide browser settings are unchanged.
No automated rendering or camera tests were added or run.

0.2.0-preview.9 - Settings background and selection contrast

Withdrawn locally after an Appearance crash and continued white Featured content. Preview 7 was restored before further work. See docs/FEATURED-APPEARANCE.md for the crash and launch-elevation findings.
Replace the Settings container's background-only paint when its descendant tree prevents a theme effect. The host paints two light rectangles itself, after the palette fill handled by preview 8; its child controls keep their normal paint path.
Darken blue selection background brushes in text editors, item views and chat logs to #36566e, and preserve light selected text. Link pen colors and image pixels keep their existing handling.
Add opt-in, time-limited local widget-layout diagnostics for the unresolved Featured background. Logs omit text, object names, titles, URLs and images. They are disabled unless PALTALK_DARK_DIAGNOSTICS names an absolute output file. Live diagnostics identified Featured as a native WebView2 surface.
Set WebView2's documented default background to #202328 for Dark Mode's child process. This covers blank/loading/transparent pages and preserves the inherited setting when launching Normal Mode.
Enable Chromium's WebContentsForceDark feature in this private preview to recolor Featured's loaded HTML content. Preserve other inherited browser options and restore them in Normal Mode. This applies to Paltalk's embedded browser content; browser updates can change its rendering. A supported browser-content integration remains necessary before commercial release.
No rendering or camera tests were run for this change.

0.2.0-preview.8 - uncovered Qt backgrounds

Theme Qt palette and stylesheet backgrounds on ordinary containers whose native/media descendants prevent a whole-subtree theme effect. Draw the background during the current paint event without cached widget snapshots, recursive rendering, palette changes, or camera readback.
Partition around application-owned graphics effects and continue theming their safe children instead of stripping child effects and stopping.
Exclude Paltalk's native WebView2 implementation and ad host from graphics effects. This does not implement browser-content dark mode.
The Settings gutter and Featured page still require live confirmation. Hard-coded backgrounds painted inside an excluded container's own paintEvent and white backgrounds baked into images are not covered by the fallback. No rendering or camera tests were run for this change.

0.2.0-preview.7 - maintenance setup and faster startup

Run a temporary copy of each prior NSIS uninstaller with its original installation root so setup waits for actual removal and receives its exit status. Ordinary ExecWait returned before NSIS's second process finished.
Exercise the production removal function with isolated synthetic packages: delayed completion, Unicode/spaces in paths, real failure propagation, residual plugin detection, missing uninstaller, and foreign/missing markers.
Use the Windows SHA-256 implementation for the plugin's startup fingerprint check as well as the launcher's. Every host file is still read and checked on every start, including watcher restarts; no hash cache is introduced.
Skip settings rewrites when their values are unchanged and check for an existing Paltalk session before doing launch-time file hashing.
In the local same-run comparison, the plugin fingerprint step's median fell from 1.98 seconds to 0.23 seconds. This measures one startup stage, not full Paltalk startup or login time. See docs/PERFORMANCE.md.
Add Upgrade, Repair, and Uninstall choices when setup detects an existing marked installation, plus /UPGRADE, /REPAIR, and /UNINSTALL silent options.
Repair can restore missing launcher, plugin, and uninstaller files. Setup includes a recovery uninstaller, and uninstallers include their cleanup helper, so removal can work after Paltalk or those cleanup files are gone.
Exercise the production installer script's maintenance flows in isolated filesystem and registry locations with a synthetic helper and plugin.

0.2.0-preview.6 - older-version replacement

Detect registered older PalShade/Paltalk Dark Mode installs and any marked install in the selected or default theme folder. Run each version's own uninstaller before copying the new package.
Remove a launcher left by an older uninstaller after its shortcut helper exits. Preserve unknown files and refuse an unmarked directory.
Run the new uninstaller's shortcut and busy checks from a temporary launcher copy so its installed launcher can be deleted reliably.

0.2.0-preview.5 - proprietary private preview

Replace the internal MIT draft notice with proprietary PalShade preview terms. The owner reports no earlier MIT-labeled package was delivered to another person; older signed candidates remain audit artifacts.
Present the preview terms in setup with an acceptance checkbox before installation. The terms include limited warranty and liability language subject to non-waivable rights.
Keep Qt, NSIS and other third-party notices separate. The commercial buyer agreement remains a draft and must replace the preview terms before sale.
Continue to build with pinned MSVC v143 14.44 for the current Qt SDK.

0.2.0-preview.1 — private release preparation

Preserve the existing renderer and native launcher behavior.
Create isolated, versioned build outputs and a private source archive.
Sign the plugin and launcher before packaging, the NSIS uninstaller during compilation, and the setup afterward; verify both signatures on each.
Include complete GNU LGPLv3/GPLv3 license texts and a private-preview notice.
Add a manual GitHub Actions build, commercial documents and storefront draft.

This is not a commercial launch. Package QA and live-camera coverage for the new installer remain separate from successful compilation/signing.

0.1.1 — experimental baseline

Theme ordinary collapsed camera-list controls while excluding real GPU/video renderers and their ancestors.
Retain neutral-surface/text recoloring and native launcher compatibility checks.
Preserve the earlier camera isolation, repaint and embedded-manifest fixes.

Historical automated evidence covers 0.1.0. Do not describe it as a fresh 0.1.1 or 0.2.0 test run. See docs/COMPATIBILITY.md.