Workscene for macOS

Release notes

What changed,
and when.

Every notable change to Workscene, maintained alongside the app. Releases follow semantic versioning.

Unreleased

Added

  • Window-level assignment of macOS windows to focused spaces inside named workspaces, persisted locally.
  • Workspace and space activation that restores saved layouts, including multi-display coordinates, and hides applications outside the selected context, leaving inactive windows from a shared app behind the raised selection.
  • Safari profile recognition with automatic assignment to a same-named workspace's browser space, plus a manual fallback.
  • Menu-bar switcher, top-center switcher HUD, and global Control-Shift-1 through Control-Shift-9 space shortcuts.
  • Relaunching of missing assigned applications and login-item registration.
  • Privacy-safe diagnostics that exclude window titles, URLs, and document contents.
  • Astro marketing website deployed to Cloudflare Workers.
  • Best-effort profile recognition for Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Chromium, and Firefox windows, reusing the existing profile rules without a data migration.
  • A workscene:// URL scheme that opens workspaces and spaces, saves layouts, and starts Smart Organize from Shortcuts, launchers, and scripts.
  • Schedule and display-arrangement automation triggers with a global pause, plus documented Focus-mode automation through Shortcuts.
  • Per-space launch items (applications, files, and links) that open when a space activates without windows, persisted as workspace schema version 4.
  • Pinned global shortcuts that follow a specific space or workspace, recorded in a new Shortcuts settings pane; numbered defaults remain for unpinned spaces.
  • Configurable previous and next space navigation, defaulting to global Control-Shift-Left Arrow and Control-Shift-Right Arrow shortcuts that wrap in visible sidebar order.
  • Opt-in automatic assignment of windows whose destination has a high score and three consecutive accepted suggestions, always with one-click undo.
  • Smart Organize undo that survives relaunching the app while the workspace structure is unchanged.
  • Export and import of workspace data as a versioned JSON document, with merge and replace modes and an automatic pre-import safety copy.
  • In-app updates through Sparkle for direct-download installs, verified with an EdDSA-signed appcast attached to each GitHub release.
  • A website changelog page rendered at build time from this file.
  • **Save & Close** for top-level workspaces, with privacy-safe suspended state, graceful shutdown of dedicated apps, selected Safari profile-window closing, shared-app preservation, and relaunch-on-resume.
  • An MRU hold-and-release quick switcher, previous-context shortcut, and configurable directional or sequential window-focus shortcuts.
  • Per-window always-visible rules, optional unassigned-window preservation, and display-under-pointer activation that leaves other displays untouched.
  • Adaptive activation reconciliation with privacy-safe timing and count diagnostics.
  • A bundled workscene CLI for context listing, validated commands, and privacy-safe distributed context-change events.
  • An accessible interactive website demo showing independent windows from one application switching between contexts.
  • A global Control-Shift-F window finder that searches current apps, titles, workspaces, and spaces in memory, activates the chosen context, and focuses the selected window.
  • A first-run setup checklist tied to real permission, workspace, assignment, layout, and switching milestones.
  • Privacy-safe workspace and space duplication recipes that omit observed assignments and layouts and pause copied automations for review.
  • Native App Intents for opening workspaces and spaces, saving layouts, and starting Smart Organize, with Shortcuts metadata embedded by the custom app bundler.
  • Opt-in iCloud Drive synchronization of the privacy-filtered workspace document, with whole-document last-writer-wins and a local safety copy before applying remote changes.
  • A complete 14-day trial and Lemon Squeezy license activation for up to three Macs, with Keychain storage, offline normal use, device deactivation, passwordless license recovery, and compatibility for previously issued offline keys.
  • Commercial website pricing at $10 for the first 100 licenses and $14 afterward, covering up to three personal Macs and all 1.x updates.

Changed

  • Managed windows is now the primary product experience and onboarding path. Native Desktop automation is no longer promoted or offered during first run; optional Desktop linking is clearly marked experimental and records only user-enabled Mission Control shortcuts.
  • Renamed the product from Workspace Organizer to Workscene. Existing bundle, storage, URL-scheme, and CLI identifiers remain compatible so upgrades preserve data and automations.
  • Workspace schema version 6 removes legacy observed browser titles, document matchers, and title-derived layout keys from persisted data.
  • Exports and imports strip observed title/document rules and session-only runtime bookkeeping; Smart Assist learning remains local unless explicitly included in a manual export and is never synced.
  • JavaScript lint now fails on warnings, native CI restores a dependency-keyed Swift build cache, and workspace editing, finder, App Intents, and sync behavior are separated from the central app model.
  • Native targets now use Swift 6 language mode with warning-free builds, including explicit concurrency boundaries for Accessibility discovery and main-thread application control.
  • Website checks now cover interaction, keyboard navigation, reduced motion, generated routes, and automated WCAG rules in Chromium before production deployment.
  • Desktop releases now verify the downloaded Sparkle signing tools against a reviewed SHA-256 digest before execution.
  • Future source and distributed builds are commercially licensed while preserving the MIT grant for source published through commit 008a0fcbecfa4c2b5042f9698d3b7ac0d3d55aae.
  • Workspace and space switching, plus startup context restore, now always hide inactive applications instead of minimizing their windows, so switching no longer leaves a growing pile of minimized windows in the Dock.

Removed

  • The optional "Fast hybrid switching" preference and its legacy per-window minimize switching path; application hiding is now the only mechanism for clearing inactive windows during activation. Save & Close still minimizes shared-app windows it cannot quit, restoring them on resume.

This page is the canonical public release history for Workscene.