The start page footer is reorganized. The "ready to move in?" checklist is now a Finish setup pill on the left of the footer that opens the list; its × hides the checklist for good, as before. Customize sits alone in the middle.
The Blanc Patron reminder is now one Upgrade to Blanc Patron pill in the start page footer. Its × hides it on this device for 90 days. Patrons and private tabs still never see it.
Billboard's clock, recent sites and groups are centered vertically in the window, and the clock no longer shows AM/PM.
Start page, onboarding and Settings headings use a narrower cut of Blanc's serif typeface, the same one as blancbrowser.com, and the Billboard clock is set in a lighter weight.
Private tabs are marked more consistently: the "private" chip in the Island, the tag in the expanded tab list and the marker in vertical tabs share one dashed style, and the tag lines up on every row.
Blanc 1.31.0 and later report two facts on their first day, if usage measurement is on: whether Blanc is your default browser, and whether you opened three web pages in regular tabs. Nothing about the pages is sent. The privacy page and FAQ explain the details.
Fixed
Opening the Island by clicking it no longer makes it blink, and a slow frame now pauses the expand instead of making it jump ahead.
The Tabs step of Bring Your Tabs shows every tab in each window. A window used to show only two or three, with no way to scroll to the rest.
The Island, Blanc's floating address and tab bar, grows slightly as your pointer approaches it. That movement is now smooth at any display refresh rate. It used to update about 60 times a second, which looked stop-start on 120 Hz and faster screens.
Activating a Blanc Patron license key while Polar, the payment service, is busy or down now says Polar is not responding and to try again in a few minutes, instead of saying the key could not be activated.
When Blanc checks an active Patron license and Polar reports that the key is missing, revoked, or expired, Patron now ends. Before, that answer was treated like an outage. A Polar outage still keeps Patron active for up to 30 days, as before.
You can drag to reorder tabs and groups, in the expanded Island and in vertical tabs. Drag a tab within its group, into another group, or out of its group. Dropping a tab on a group's header adds it to that group, even when the group is folded. Drag a group's header to move the whole group, and Cmd/Ctrl+1–9 follow the new order. Pinned tabs stay pinned, and releasing a drag over the page does nothing.
The same moves work from the keyboard: focus a tab or a group header and press Alt+Shift+Up or Alt+Shift+Down (Option+Shift on macOS). Folded groups are skipped.
Settings has a new About & Trust section. It shows facts about the installed build, checked on your device: the version, the Electron and Chromium versions, the blocker's filter sources and, on macOS and Windows, the app's code signature. It links to the release, the verification guide, the software bill of materials and the build provenance, and can export diagnostics. Opening it makes no network request.
Intel Macs get every release again. Each release now ships both an Apple Silicon and an Intel build.
Changed
Blanc saves its settings, Favorites, history and workspaces in the background instead of pausing the app while it writes to disk. Quitting still saves everything before Blanc closes.
In a Flatpak, Check for Updates says that Flatpak keeps Blanc current instead of showing an unsupported-channel warning.
Fixed
With uBlock Origin selected, uBO now restarts on its own if it fails while you browse. Pages wait while it restarts instead of loading unfiltered, and the shield shows that it is restarting. After three restarts in 10 minutes, Blanc offers to restart it for you instead.
With uBlock Origin selected, a moment when Blanc itself was busy no longer counts against uBO's time to decide on a request, so pages stop failing after a brief freeze.
On macOS, changing a setting no longer briefly freezes Blanc while it reloads the Dock icon.
On Linux under Wayland, Settings and other sheets appear every time you open them, not only the first time, and the page underneath keeps responding.
On Linux under Wayland, each permission prompt shows its own question instead of the previous one.
Dark websites: while Blanc is dark, it can darken websites that have no dark mode of their own, from the first paint. Turn it on in Settings → General. It is off by default and stays on this device. The Island shield's new Dark website switch, or /dark-site, darkens or restores a single site. It uses the open-source Dark Reader engine, bundled with Blanc. Embedded frames keep their original colors.
Match site colors, in Settings → General, controls whether the Island bar takes on the color of the page you're on. It is on by default; turn it off to keep the bar on your theme's background.
Interrupted downloads can be resumed, or retried from the original link when resuming isn't possible. Retry reuses the save location you already chose.
On local and private-network addresses, such as a home server with a self-signed certificate, the certificate warning offers Advanced and a way to continue. The choice lasts until Blanc quits, applies only to that site and certificate, and is never saved or synced. Public sites keep the warning with no way through.
Changed
The start page has one shared frame for all four layouts: the date and moving-in checklist at the top, centered content, and a Customize popover in the footer for the layout and dynamic wallpaper.
Ledger is a centered spread, with Favorites beside your tab groups and other devices. Billboard labels its tiles with short site names on one row. Shelf arranges its tiles and cards on one grid sized to how many you have. Tally balances its columns and gives its chart a warmer tint.
Fixed
With uBlock Origin selected, a slow first install no longer leaves a new start page loading until it finishes, and a slow first start on a fresh profile has 45 seconds, not 15, before it is treated as stalled.
With uBlock Origin selected, the first page you open right after it starts no longer fails to load on a slower computer. For its first 15 seconds, uBO gets 10 seconds instead of 2 to decide on each request; nothing is let through unfiltered while it decides.
A Settings, History or other sheet whose page never finishes loading is removed after 8 seconds instead of leaving an invisible layer over the page.
The new tab and private buttons at the bottom of the Island panel no longer overflow on Windows and Linux in small windows or at 125% zoom.
Optional full uBlock Origin 1.75.0 on Apple Silicon and native Intel Macs, Windows x64, and Linux x64. Click the Island shield, choose your blocker, then use Restart Blanc to apply the change.
Blanc styling for uBO’s popup and Dashboard, with filter subscriptions, custom filters, dynamic rules, picker/zapper, logger, and backup/restore. Filter lists can update automatically; executable resources stay pinned to reviewed Blanc releases.
Separate uBO configuration for each regular profile. Blanc Blocker remains the default and protects private tabs; the two blockers keep separate site exceptions. Provider selection and uBO configuration stay outside Profile Sync. General extension-store support is not included.
Automatic return to Blanc Blocker with an explanation if saved uBO selection is unavailable in the running build, preserving uBO configuration. Intel builds running under Rosetta use Blanc Blocker. An available uBO instance that crashes or exceeds its request deadline keeps traffic blocked until recovery or an explicit user choice.
Fixed
Provider restart and shutdown no longer lose an overlay callback when Electron removes a native child view.
Linux AppImage provider restarts use the upstream extraction launcher and retain Chromium sandbox enforcement. Normal close/relaunch preserves the selected blocker and saved uBO filters.
The Linux sandbox refusal dialog offers Open Setup Guide and Quit. X11 retains Copy Link; Wayland omits clipboard controls. A relaunch with the guide URL omits Open Setup Guide to prevent a loop. Sandbox requirements and system security settings are unchanged.
Settings → Help now shows the running Blanc, Electron and Chromium versions, platform and architecture. Links explain how Blanc works, privacy choices, source code and release notes. Check for updates uses the existing update flow; applying an update still requires restarting.
Refined
The background behind the Island follows wallpaper fades and page color changes after loading. Sampling stays on the device; private tabs retain their theme background.
Setup and privacy settings explain search suggestions and pseudonymous usage measurement, their recipients, and when sending starts. Fresh defaults and saved choices are retained. Opening the privacy explanation preserves unsaved setup choices.
Fixed
Ctrl/Cmd-click and middle-click open eligible website links in new tabs while preserving their navigation and sandbox restrictions.
A rejected Windows update can be retried through Check for Updates without leaving the restart action stuck.
Security
Windows requires a completed publisher check and matching verified installer bytes before installation. If verification cannot complete, installation is deferred for a later retry.
Linux refuses launches that disable Chromium's sandbox, including an AppImage launcher's automatic fallback. On systems that cannot provide the required sandbox, Blanc shows guidance instead of opening browsing windows. This does not change the system's user-namespace or AppArmor configuration.
Verify the download
Authenticate SHA256SUMS with its Sigstore bundle using the certificate identity anthony@bnfy.me and OIDC issuer https://github.com/login/oauth. The same values are published on Blanc's security page.
The folder picker opened by move ▸ in Favorites now stays above neighboring rows, opens upward when needed, and stays inside the window. With many folders, its options scroll inside the menu while the new folder… field remains visible. Opening the picker no longer scrolls the selected favorite out of view.
Escape closes the folder picker and returns focus to its move button; a second Escape closes Favorites.
Refined
Favorites group headings now use plain labels and count badges, without the curved bottom divider.
Verify the download
Authenticate SHA256SUMS with its Sigstore bundle using the certificate identity anthony@bnfy.me and OIDC issuer https://github.com/login/oauth. The same values are published on Blanc's security page.
A free, optional time-of-day wallpaper for the start page. Sunrise now follows your local clock through dawn, day, dusk, and night, with no location permission or network requests. Enable dynamic wallpaper beside the layout picker or Time-of-day wallpaper in Settings.
The wallpaper works in every start-page layout and private tabs. Turning it on or off fades over two seconds; reduced-motion settings switch immediately. If you use Sync, your wallpaper preference follows your devices.
Fixed
Linux AppImages no longer require FUSE 2. The packaged desktop shortcut also passes URLs correctly and no longer adds unintended command-line arguments. Existing shortcuts may need to be integrated again to receive that correction.
Security
Updated the official Electron runtime to 44.5.1, including upstream security fixes.
Updated dependency inputs to address brace-expansion advisories and the website's devalue advisories.
Verify the download
Authenticate SHA256SUMS with its Sigstore bundle using the certificate identity anthony@bnfy.me and OIDC issuer https://github.com/login/oauth. The same values are published on Blanc's security page.
Settings, Favorites, History, Downloads, Shortcuts, and Bring Your Tabs now share a clearer Sunrise sheet design. Roomier cards, easier-to-scan headings, and controls that fit the minimum window size make everyday tasks less cramped.
History groups visits by day, shows site icons, and lines up visit times. Favorites shows saved site icons or a domain-initial tile when no icon is available.
Downloads lines up status and actions across rows, identifies the source site, and keeps the extension visible on long filenames.
Privacy & Security settings are grouped by topic. Longer explanations can be expanded with More without losing any of their detail.
The moving-in checklist and welcome tour are easier to use in a small window or at increased zoom.
Fixed
A site permission request no longer takes keyboard focus away from the page or an open Island panel.
The Settings section marker now follows scrolling, and Shortcuts shows readable key labels instead of raw accelerator names.
Mahjong's completion screen has two clear next steps. Play Another starts a fresh deal with the current layout and rules.
Verify the download
Authenticate SHA256SUMS with its Sigstore bundle using the certificate identity anthony@bnfy.me and OIDC issuer https://github.com/login/oauth. The same values are published on Blanc's security page.
Navigate Blanc with customizable mouse gestures. Enable Mouse gestures in Settings → General, then hold the right mouse button and draw before releasing. On a trackpad, hold Alt/Option while clicking and dragging with one finger. Blanc includes gestures for Back, Forward, New tab, and Close tab, and lets you draw or reassign gestures for navigation, tabs, Reload, and the Island.
Improved
The onboarding dialog now fully covers the start page, uses rounder geometry, and shows a current miniature of the Island.
Billboard clocks use more natural digit spacing, keep the meridiem close to the time, and remain centered in 24-hour locales.
Fixed
Mahjong now keeps hints, Undo, and Rescue aligned with the current board while preserving its standalone-tab behavior and game documentation.
Blanc now remembers each window's size, position, and display mode. Quit and reopen Blanc to restore normal, maximized, or fullscreen windows where you left them on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Windows you explicitly close are forgotten instead of returning later.
Start pages now use the Sunrise visual system across Ledger, Billboard, Shelf, and Tally, with warmer artwork, more consistent controls, and clearer layout-specific character.
Newsreader typography gives start-page invitations and editorial moments a more expressive voice while the rest of Blanc retains its familiar interface type.
Fixed
Websites can no longer set or clear Blanc's operating-system app badge through the Badging API.
Mahjong now opens as its own tab. Launch it from the footer of any start-page layout. Your current start page stays open, and an unfinished game is still available through Mahjong's Continue prompt. Existing direct Mahjong links keep working.
Start pages now offer four layouts: Ledger, Billboard, Shelf, and Tally. If Mahjong was your selected layout, Blanc moves that preference to Billboard without changing other layout choices or saved games.
Mahjong keeps its familiar green lacquer table and tile artwork, with a Sunrise mark in its header and quieter framing. Private Mahjong retains its separate purple treatment and prominent private indicator.
Links that return a browser sign-in to an installed app can now discover its registered handler and ask for your permission, including callbacks beyond the previously reviewed app schemes. Browser-internal and dangerous system schemes remain blocked. Repeated page prompts wait for another click or activation key.
Choose Blanc as your default browser. macOS now recognizes Blanc's web browser role in System Settings. On Windows, the installer registers Blanc as a browser candidate and the Make default button opens Default apps, where you make the final choice. Linux desktop environments can also offer Blanc for web links. Availability in each system's picker depends on its desktop settings.
On macOS, an existing HTML document opened with Blanc from Finder opens in a tab.
Updated to Electron 44.4.3, which retains Chromium 152.0.7977.130 and includes upstream fixes.
Fixed
Windows checks the system's chosen handlers for both HTTP and HTTPS before saying Blanc is the default browser. Opening Default apps alone no longer makes Blanc report that it is the default.
Sync now tells you how to set it up. Settings asks whether this is your first device or another one, and explains what a sync name is before you pick one. Choosing "I already sync on another device" checks your name and passphrase against the server before anything is saved, so a typo no longer quietly starts a second, empty sync. When nothing is found, Blanc says so and lets you try again or deliberately start a new sync with what you typed.
Moving into Blanc feels intentional. A quiet start-page checklist brings Sync and Bring Your Tabs together, remembers each task you finish, and gets out of the way when you are done. You can hide it at any time. Sync also sits second in Settings, and /sync opens it from the command bar.
Improved
Updated to Electron 44.4.2 and Chromium 152.0.7977.130 for upstream fixes.
Sync's settings now list what is covered and when it last ran: your sync name, favorites and settings with the time of the last sync, and whether this device shares its open tabs. A sync problem appears in one place instead of two.
Blanc says "Sync" everywhere it used to say "Profile Sync" or "Tab Sync". What syncs is unchanged: favorites and settings, plus this device's open tabs if you turn that on. History, downloads, permissions, cookies, site data, and private tabs stay on the device, and sync remains end-to-end encrypted and Personal-only.
Blanc now exits cleanly after the last visible window is closed on Windows and Linux, so relaunching the app no longer requires ending leftover Blanc processes in Task Manager.
Blanc no longer shows its own username and password dialog for HTTP authentication challenges, including HTTP Basic, Digest, and proxy prompts. A website's own sign-in page and forms are unchanged.
Known limitation
Sites and proxies that rely on a browser-managed HTTP authentication prompt no longer get one in Blanc; without a site-provided sign-in flow, access may fail with a 401 or 407 response.
Named Workspaces preserve live drafts, history, and page state when you switch, with reliable saving, recovery, ordering, and deletion controls.
Sign-in flows can now return from Blanc to installed desktop applications such as Claude after browser approval completes.
Blanc's built-in 1Password fill stays inside the focused sign-in popup, including Google login windows.
Reviewed Claude and standard Microsoft and Google native OAuth callbacks ask before opening the installed application, preserve the exact callback through redirects and popup closure, and show a useful error when no handler is available.
Unknown application schemes remain blocked, and callback secrets never appear in confirmation prompts or persistent browser data.
Opening or restoring a Chrome Web Store page no longer crashes Blanc. Until Electron ships its upstream correction, Blanc shows a local explanation page before the affected site can trigger the native crash.
Restored Chrome Web Store tabs now recover safely without preventing the rest of the saved session from opening.
The macOS About panel now displays a distinct build number instead of repeating the public version.
Known limitation
Chrome Web Store pages are temporarily unavailable inside Blanc. Use another browser to browse the store until Blanc can adopt Electron's upstream fix.
Session recovery is visible in every New Tab layout. Links opened from email or another app can continue after you choose whether to restore your saved tabs.
Restoring tabs after closing and reopening the recovery window from the Dock no longer waits indefinitely. Recovery also keeps named profiles separate and avoids restoring tabs into windows closed during startup.
Improved
Onboarding now uses Sunrise artwork, with Sunrise Dark in dark mode.
Retired B-monogram app icons have been removed from Settings and packaged internal pages. Existing retired icon choices fall back to Sunrise. The B motif in Mahjong tiles remains as a nod to Blanc's origins.
Updated to Electron 44.3.0 and Chromium 152.0.7977.78 for upstream fixes.
Known issue
Opening some Chrome Web Store pages can still crash the browser because of an upstream Electron issue. This release fixes session recovery, but does not include the pending upstream Chrome Web Store fix.
Share your screen and system audio. When a website asks to present, Blanc opens its own centered confirmation before any capture begins. Choose a screen or window, decide whether to include computer audio, and stop each active share from the Island even when its tab is in the background. Linux continues from Blanc's confirmation to the system sharing chooser.
Bring Your Tabs opens in the current window. Import open tabs from a supported browser through Blanc's private handoff, review the proposed organization, and add them to the window you are already using.
Security
Chromium's actively exploited V8 vulnerability is patched. Blanc now runs on Electron 44.2.0, which carries the upstream fix for CVE-2026-85046. The flaw allowed a malicious page to execute code inside Chromium's renderer sandbox; it was not itself a sandbox escape. Update promptly.
Updated js-yaml to 4.3.2 to prevent excessive CPU use from malicious YAML merge input (GHSA-2883-xcg3-v3hh).
Improved
Screen sharing keeps website sessions deny-closed and grants capture only through a trusted Blanc helper after explicit approval. Direct and legacy desktop-capture paths remain blocked.
Links handed to Blanc from another app now restore and foreground the browser reliably.
Fixed
Thousands separators on the Mahjong Burst completion score now render cleanly instead of inheriting the score's dimensional text effect.
Profile settings now converge correctly during sync.
Five more Mahjong boards. Pyramid, Fortress, Butterfly, Bridge, and Cross join Turtle, Arch, and Peaks. Every deal is still solvable by construction, and the Daily deal now rotates through all eight layouts.
A Records sheet opens from a new dock control or the R key. It shows boards cleared, your current and longest daily streak, dailies cleared, the best Classic time and Burst score for each board, and the last four weeks of dailies. Everything stays on this device.
Pick up where you left off. A fresh Mahjong tab starts with your last layout, mode, and deal choice, and offers to continue an unfinished board from another tab instead of silently dealing a new one.
Updated
Shuffle can be undone. Shuffle records the board it replaced, so Undo restores it exactly, including from the Burst rescue dialog.
Tile faces keep JetBrains Mono. Character numerals and wind badges return to the bundled monospace at its full ExtraBold weight, while the game's meters and sheets stay in Inter.
Notices float as lacquer pills inside the table instead of loose text along its edge, and the desktop control rail now sizes itself to the embedded table so all six controls always fit.
Fixed
The first clear of a board reads "first clear" rather than "new record", hints survive arrow-key navigation, Daily layout cards read as disabled, the dead-end notice offers Shuffle, and the daily result appears in the Boards sheet and on the completion card.
Mahjong completion totals are counted exactly once, even when a storage write or an old-event prune fails.
Faster new tabs add a quiet Plus shortcut beside the Island's slash-command keycap. It opens one regular, ungrouped tab and puts the address field immediately in focus.
Updated
A calmer resting Island adopts the website navigation's compact 44px geometry, material surface, and shorter shadow while keeping the existing controls and unified proximity response.
Inter vertical tabs replace the remaining monospaced labels across the rail, including section headings, groups, private markers, and the New tab row.
Fixed
Vertical-tabs mode no longer reserves an empty shortcut gap when both Island keycaps are hidden on a page.
Frequently visited sites make Billboard useful automatically from local browsing history. Ranking and favicon artwork stay on the device, private tabs receive no history-derived row, and each tile can be hidden without deleting history.
Updated
Inter start pages replace the remaining monospaced typography across Ledger, Billboard, Shelf, Tally, Mahjong, onboarding, and the shared footer.
Sunrise branding now carries across Blanc's supported platforms and public brand surfaces, with a Windows-specific icon treatment for clearer small taskbar sizes.
Simpler macOS icon choices retain Sunrise, Sunrise Dark, Paper, and Ink while retiring the other legacy variants.
One-time presentation reset moves every existing profile to Sunrise and Billboard for this release. Users can change either setting afterward, and those choices remain preserved across future updates.
Fixed
A populated Billboard remains readable and scrollable at Blanc's minimum supported window size instead of pushing its date above the viewport.
Call audio buffering adds Automatic, Stable, and Resilient receive-buffer choices for WebRTC calls. Stable targets about 400 ms for smoother speech, while Resilient targets about 1 second for severe crackling or chopped audio at the cost of slower conversation.
Sunrise app icon becomes Blanc's default on macOS, with an appearance-aware light variant and a separately selectable Sunrise Dark variant.
Billboard start page becomes the default layout for new profiles. Existing layout choices remain unchanged.
Fixed
Reopening Blanc from the Dock after closing every browser window no longer leaves a blank macOS window.
On macOS, approving a website's microphone or camera request now also asks for the required system-level access before capture begins. This restores live microphone input for ChatGPT voice and other approved media sites.
Blanc's capture indicator now turns on only after both the website permission and the native macOS permission have been granted.
Mahjong is now available as a complete start-page layout. Fresh Mahjong tables begin with the deterministic Daily Peaks board in Burst mode, with scoring, timed combos, automatic clears, hints, shuffle, undo, records, sound controls, and a footer that can be hidden while playing.
Local crash diagnostics can now be exported from Settings, and an unclean shutdown offers explicit recovery choices without sending browsing data anywhere.
Certificate failures now use a dedicated Blanc surface with clearer site-trust information instead of falling through to a generic navigation error.
Changed
Mahjong has a more visual, responsive game experience: clearer rack tiles, dimensional score feedback, board-to-rack movement, stronger match and hint effects, polished dialogs and controls, reduced-motion fallbacks, and layouts that adapt cleanly to smaller windows.
Blanc's revised B mark now appears consistently across the desktop app, app-icon variants, internal pages, website, favicons, press assets, and social media artwork included in the repository.
The desktop blocker now ships with a verified precompiled seed for faster initialization while retaining the same bundled, hash-pinned filter inputs and fail-closed package checks.
Blanc is now distributed under the MIT License, with generated dependency notices, packaged compliance checks, and a CycloneDX software bill of materials for releases.
When optional usage measurement is enabled, packaged builds can record one bounded Mahjong-use event and the fixed start-page layouts rendered during an app session. These events contain no URLs, searches, page content, custom text, or game state and are never sent from private tabs.
Electron has been updated to 44.1.0.
Fixed
Mahjong completion actions remain reachable at Blanc's minimum window size, Daily acceptance respects the selected layout, and Undo or Shuffle can no longer leave stale motion or score feedback behind.
Windows update verification now releases installer handles reliably and avoids rearming the download watchdog while signature verification is in progress.
On macOS, the optional 1Password integration can now show a small key hint when the active page declares a visible current-password field. The bounded local check reads form structure only, never field values or page text, and does not contact 1Password. Filling still begins only when you explicitly choose the hint, use View → Fill Login from 1Password, press Option-Command-P, or run /1password.
The 1Password section in Settings now includes Verify, which saves the entered sign-in email or account ID and confirms the connection through the installed 1Password app.
Changed
1Password setup decisions, errors, and success feedback now appear in a Blanc-styled in-app capsule instead of stock dialogs. When several Login items match, the native picker opens beside the detected login field.
1Password setup copy now leads with the email address used to sign in to 1Password while continuing to accept an account ID.
Fixed
1Password fill attempts now withdraw cleanly when you navigate, switch tabs, open another Blanc surface, or dismiss an authorization prompt, preventing late results from appearing over or filling a page you have left.
The fill capsule now preserves keyboard cancellation, accessible status announcements, and success-message timing while hovered or focused.
Synced tabs no longer lose their favicons during startup. Blanc now waits for the restored tab snapshot before publishing tab and icon state, while still publishing removals immediately when tab sharing is explicitly turned off.
Sites with unusual favicon setups are handled more reliably, including pages that provide app or touch artwork, large source images, or PNG files served with a generic content type. When a site has no usable image, Blanc shows a domain initial instead of an anonymous gray square.
Permission prompts keep their surrounding surface transparent instead of briefly painting an opaque rectangle over the page.
On macOS, Blanc can now fill a login from the installed 1Password app when you explicitly ask it to. Enable the device-local option in Settings, then use Option-Command-P, View → Fill Login from 1Password, or /1password. Blanc never fills automatically, and Windows and Linux do not expose the integration.
Changed
Blanc's app icons now use a stronger, more legible mark across macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, the start page, Settings colorways, and exported artwork.
The browser engine has been updated to Electron 44 and its current Chromium release.
Fixed
Quiet tabs remain represented in the Island's tab dots, preserving their normal order and click-to-wake behavior while using a calm dimmed treatment.
Press Option-Command-Z on macOS to switch to the last active tab; press it again to jump back. The same action is also available from the Tabs menu.
Settings now includes a direct Report an issue link that opens Blanc's guided GitHub issue forms.
Changed
Settings dropdowns now use solid in-page menus that fit Blanc's interface, preserve keyboard navigation, and avoid macOS Liquid Glass showing the closed control through the open menu.
Settings privacy controls use clearer language, while Settings fields and Quick Switcher metadata use Inter consistently.
Downloads and Settings now live in the File menu instead of View.
Named Workspaces now stops non-Patrons at an upfront Patron prompt and links directly to Patron Settings instead of opening a workspace name editor that only fails after submission. The main process still re-checks every create/save write, while existing workspaces remain available to lapsed Patrons.
Named Workspaces let Blanc Patrons save a window's tabs and groups, switch between those sets in place, and rename or delete them from the command panel. Workspaces autosave as you browse and return after a relaunch; the /workspace command provides the same controls from the keyboard.
Patron Settings now includes a direct checkout path for becoming a Patron, with monthly and annual options. Existing Patrons can still enter their Polar license key when activating another device or reinstalling Blanc.
Changed
When another app asks Blanc to open a website, Blanc now brings the destination window to the front instead of loading the page behind whatever you were using.
Fixed
Website icons are substantially more reliable across the interface. Blanc now recovers icons through redirects and generic ICO responses such as App Store Connect's, heals previously iconless Favorites, paints Favorite results in the Quick Switcher, and carries decoded PNG icons through Profile Sync to the start page and Quick Switcher on another device.
Named Workspaces now protect private tabs and unsaved windows during a switch, keep editor focus stable while tab state updates, and avoid the save-first dead end when only private tabs are at risk.
The Recently Closed section's Clear action now uses Blanc's interface typeface consistently.
Right-click now opens a menu where it used to do nothing. Right-click the resting command pill for the active tab's actions; right-click a tab — whether in the ⌘L panel or the vertical tab rail — for that tab's actions, with Open in Glance and Quiet This Tab Now added for background tabs; and on macOS, right-click Blanc's Dock icon for the frontmost tab plus New Window and New Private Window.
Changed
Tab grouping moved off the tab row and into that right-click menu. The per-row group chip and its inline picker — the main thing that crowded long tab titles — are gone; you now group a tab, or start a new group, from the tab's right-click menu.
Fixed
Windows updates install reliably again. An update could previously download and then just sit there, sometimes for a very long time, without ever offering to restart. Blanc now fetches the update in one straight download instead of a slow block-by-block transfer, no longer trips over a too-short signature-verification timeout, and shows a taskbar progress bar while it downloads — then surfaces the restart prompt once the update is ready.
The command pill expands from its own centre again. After you resized the window, the pill-to-panel animation could grow out of the left or right edge instead of the middle; Blanc now re-measures the pill's position when the window resizes, so it always opens from centre.
Closing a tab now returns you to the tab you were actually on before it, not whichever tab happened to sit to its right. Blanc keeps a per-window history of which tabs you activated, and each close walks one step back through it — open something from mid-list, close it, and you're back where you started. When the history runs out (right after a relaunch, say), the old nearest-neighbor rule still applies.
The island is a steadier target. Its approach animation no longer pulls sideways toward your cursor, the remaining rise and growth are about half their old size, and the motion now finishes while your cursor is still on its way in — so by the time you click, nothing under the pointer is moving. The old motion could shift the pill's edge buttons by up to fifteen pixels mid-aim, which is exactly the kind of mis-click bait a browser's chrome shouldn't be.
Quiet tabs now show themselves by their fade alone. The quiet labels that repeated down the command panel and tab rail — one per dimmed row, which after a session restore meant most rows — are gone. A quiet row still dims to half strength, brightens when you reach for it, and still announces itself as quiet to screen readers.
Restarting to install an update on Windows no longer tears down Blanc's BrowserWindows and WebContents on a one-second forced-exit timer. Blanc now hands shutdown, installation, and relaunch directly to the signed NSIS updater, removing the native race that could leave 1.4.0 hung behind a Windows “Blanc is not responding” dialog.
The incoming Windows installer now gives an older Blanc build two seconds to complete its normal quit, then terminates a stuck old process and continues through the existing bounded process-close fallback. This installer-side compatibility path protects upgrades that begin inside 1.4.0, before the new app-side restart code is installed.
Check for Updates now responds as soon as it finds a newer version, confirming that the download has started instead of appearing to do nothing until the installer is ready.
A compiled blocker-cache file still held or refused by Windows after an interrupted upgrade no longer keeps browser protection offline. Blanc rebuilds from the bundled, hash-verified EasyList and EasyPrivacy snapshot and uses that in-memory engine immediately; cache persistence remains a startup optimization, while bundled-list verification still fails closed.
Windows packages now preserve the pinned EasyList and EasyPrivacy inputs with their required LF byte representation. The byte-verification gate introduced in 1.2.0 exposed an existing Windows checkout conversion: confirmed published 1.3.0, 1.4.0, and 1.5.0 installers carry CRLF list bytes, so their security hashes correctly fail closed and produce Blocking could not start; builds before that gate could still parse the converted lists. The native Windows workflow now verifies the blocker inputs before packaging, and startup failures expose their local diagnostic directly on the recovery card.
Recently closed tabs now behave like a bounded undo buffer instead of a hidden session archive. The internal recovery-tier label is no longer shown, each row can be explicitly forgotten, the section can be cleared at once, and untouched entries automatically expire after one hour. Forgetting an entry during its brief live-restore window immediately destroys the parked page.
Faster Windows updates
Packaged builds check on launch, every thirty minutes instead of every four hours, and when Blanc regains focus after the previous check is at least fifteen minutes old. Concurrent checks are coalesced so the faster schedule does not duplicate network work.
Differential Windows downloads are explicitly enabled and continue to use the signed release's installer block map when a patch can be applied; electron-updater safely falls back to the full installer when it cannot.
Downloaded updates remain eligible for automatic installation on a normal app quit, and an explicit Restart Now uses the silent installer path and relaunches Blanc after the update completes.
Release verification
Unit and packaged coverage lock the Windows NSIS handoff, installer-side graceful-quit window, bounded process-close fallback, blocker cache recovery, cross-platform filter-byte integrity, visible blocker diagnostics, duplicate-restart guard, closed-tab disposal and expiry, coalesced update checks, focus throttling, differential-download configuration, and manual-check feedback.
Before publication, the signed Windows build must complete real public upgrades from both Blanc 1.4.0 and Blanc 1.5.0 without a crash dialog, and the installed executable and installer must retain the expected Bananify Creative Authenticode identity.
SHA256SUMS is authenticated with a Sigstore bundle whose expected certificate identity is anthony@bnfy.me and whose expected OIDC issuer is https://github.com/login/oauth.
Other platforms
macOS Apple Silicon, signed Windows, and Linux are built from the same v1.5.1 source tag and published with one signed SHA-256 manifest.
Reopen Closed Tab now gives the tab back rather than reopening its address. For thirty seconds after you close a tab, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+T returns the page itself — the same view, with no reload, keeping scroll position, half-typed form text, video position, and pages that only exist because you submitted a form. After that window it restores from a snapshot instead: the address, the back and forward history, scroll position, group, pin, mute, and the tab's original place in the order.
Closing a group is one step to undo. /close-group used to cost one keypress per tab to reverse; the whole group now comes back together, with its name, its members in their original order, its pins, and its position among your other groups.
The command panel lists what you recently closed. Open it with Cmd/Ctrl+L and the last few closed tabs sit below your open ones, each reopening on click, so you can pick the one you meant instead of pressing Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+T repeatedly. A group entry shows how many tabs it holds.
/reopen joins the slash commands as another way to reach the same thing.
A new tab now shows where to type. The resting island reads "Search or type a URL" with a band of light washing through the words, and typing anywhere on a blank tab opens the island with what you typed already entered. A / chip beside the prompt opens the command list.
The start page offers three layouts, and first run walks through setup: theme, default browser, importing Favorites from another browser, and your privacy choices.
Privacy and compatibility
Private tabs are excluded from all of this, exactly as before. They are never recorded as closed tabs, never held, and never reopenable.
A tab held for reopening is silenced and frozen the moment you close it. It cannot open windows, cannot navigate, and is refused every permission it asks for — including ones you previously granted that site — so a closed tab can never quietly acquire your microphone or camera. Tabs using the microphone or camera are never held at all; closing one ends its access immediately.
Pages reached by submitting a form are restored exactly for the thirty-second window and then re-fetched as an ordinary page load. Blanc never silently resubmits a form, so a payment or a submission cannot be replayed by reopening a tab.
Nothing about closed tabs is written to disk, session restore, Profile Sync, telemetry, or crash reports. The list lives in memory and ends with the app.
Reduced motion is honored on the new-tab prompt: the wash is replaced by a stronger resting ink rather than simply being removed.
Fixed
Answering a permission prompt after closing its tab no longer grants or remembers that permission. Previously a prompt left open outlived the tab, and a late "Allow" saved a decision for a page that no longer existed — affecting every future visit to that site.
Quitting or relaunching on macOS no longer intermittently opens an Electron “Object has been destroyed” error dialog.
macOS raises one "change your default browser?" dialog instead of two.
Onboarding buttons stay readable on hover.
Release verification
The source gate includes 811 unit tests and 114 runnable desktop acceptance scenarios with 688 steps, covering closed-tab tier selection, the held-tab permission firewall, group-close undo, the new-tab prompt, and macOS shutdown visibility. Packaged verification exercises first run, release regressions, live favicon compatibility, and migration from public Stable v1.4.0.
Audio stopping when a held tab is closed, and the macOS microphone indicator clearing on close, were confirmed by hand on real hardware; the microphone result was independently corroborated against the operating system's own audio-device state.
SHA256SUMS is authenticated with a Sigstore bundle whose expected certificate identity is anthony@bnfy.me and whose expected OIDC issuer is https://github.com/login/oauth.
Other platforms
macOS Apple Silicon, signed Windows, and Linux are built from the same v1.5.0 source tag and published with one signed SHA-256 manifest.
Glance keeps one tab visible as a temporary reference while you work in another. Open it with View → Open Glance or Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+G, choose from the current window's tabs, then change the reference, make it the main page, resize the split, or close Glance without closing either tab.
The main page stays dominant in a 62/38 side-by-side layout, while narrow windows stack the reference below it. Glance includes a dedicated local-tab picker, keyboard-resizable divider, accessible labels and focus handling, and distinct dark and private-tab treatment.
Reopen Closed Tab is now scoped to the focused window. Closing a tab in one workspace can no longer consume or restore another window's recently closed tab, and private or blank tabs still leave no recovery trace.
Privacy and compatibility
Glance is temporary and device-local. Its tab relationship and divider position are not written to session restore, Profile Sync, telemetry, or crash reports, and its picker never searches history, Favorites, remote tabs, search suggestions, or another window or profile.
Quiet Tabs understands both visible Glance pages. A quiet reference wakes only after explicit selection, and a visible reference cannot be discarded by background housekeeping.
Fixed
Windows and Linux window controls remain above the Glance header and clickable while the side-by-side layout is open.
Glance now preserves focus when its reference closes under an open picker, keeps a known title visible during navigation, and applies every repeated keyboard resize step reliably.
Release verification
The source gate includes 752 unit tests and 104 runnable desktop acceptance scenarios with 639 steps, including six Glance scenarios, per-window recovery coverage, and window-teardown cursor and visibility regressions. Packaged verification exercises first run, release regressions, live favicon compatibility, and migration from public Stable v1.3.0.
SHA256SUMS is authenticated with a Sigstore bundle whose expected certificate identity is anthony@bnfy.me and whose expected OIDC issuer is https://github.com/login/oauth.
Other platforms
macOS Apple Silicon, signed Windows, and Linux are built from the same v1.4.0 source tag and published with one signed SHA-256 manifest.
Blanc now supports multiple independent browser windows. Each window owns its own tabs, groups, Island overlay, utility sheets, and restored workspace, while the application menu follows whichever window is focused.
Local profiles provide persistent, on-device browsing identities without requiring an account. Each named profile isolates cookies, site data, Favorites, history, downloads, remembered permissions, normal browsing, and private browsing from every other profile.
Profiles can be created, opened, renamed, and permanently deleted from Settings. The permanent Personal profile keeps all existing Blanc data in place, while named profile windows restore into the same isolated identity after relaunch.
Privacy and compatibility
Device-wide appearance, privacy choices, telemetry preference, and Supporter status remain shared. Profile Sync remains available only to Personal, so adding a local profile never silently expands cloud synchronization.
Session persistence now stores multiple independent window workspaces while retaining a rollback mirror for older Blanc builds.
Release verification
The release gate exercises the full unit and desktop acceptance suites, first-run and packaged regression smokes, live favicon compatibility, and same-profile migration from public Stable v1.2.5.
Other platforms
macOS Apple Silicon, signed Windows, and Linux are built from the same v1.3.0 source tag and published with one signed SHA-256 manifest.
Blanc now keeps the sharp declared SVG or Retina website icon when a site also supplies an earlier low-resolution ICO. This restores the crisp Blanc mark in the Island without reducing compatibility for ordinary site icons.
Website-owned favicon changes that happen after a page finishes loading, such as an unread-count badge, now remain visible instead of being replaced by the page's original icon declaration.
Apple touch icons are used only as an availability fallback when a page has no ordinary desktop favicon, preventing mobile home-screen artwork from displacing a site's intended browser icon.
Release verification
The signed packaged candidate checks Blanc's own icon pixels against Chromium's raster of its declared SVG, in addition to the two non-overlapping 25-site favicon matrices.
Other platforms
All three platforms are built from the same v1.2.5 source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
Website icons now load reliably across a much broader range of sites, including pages whose icon redirects, CDN behavior, request requirements, or mislabeled image types previously left a gray placeholder. Blanc keeps a working icon when a later candidate fails and still checks every resolved address before connecting.
Synced tab icons continue to use the sanitized pixels captured by the source device. Receiving devices do not contact the website again, and this release does not change the synced-icon format.
Tabs opened in the background as part of a multi-link handoff can no longer start playing sound unexpectedly. Media that first starts while a tab is hidden stays silent until you reveal that tab; media you started in the foreground continues normally when you switch away.
Release verification
Blanc now checks two non-overlapping 25-site favicon matrices against the signed packaged candidate before creating an immutable release tag.
Other platforms
All three platforms are built from the same v1.2.3 source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
Website icons load again. Blanc still checks every resolved address before connecting, while allowing the connection to fall back across the approved IPv4 and IPv6 addresses when the first one is unavailable.
Sites that check microphone or camera permission before asking can now show their recording flow normally. An undecided permission truthfully reports prompt; choosing Allow or Block updates retained permission status objects and fires their standard change event. Blanc continues to refuse access until you explicitly allow it.
Tabs restored from Blanc 1.1.1 or earlier no longer appear as identical “New Tab” rows when the older session file has no saved titles. Blanc derives a useful title from each website’s address until the page is opened and supplies its real title.
Other platforms
All three platforms are built from the same v1.2.2 source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
Blanc now gives back the memory of tabs you have not opened in a while. A tab left alone past the delay you choose hands its page back to the system; it keeps its place in the Island, the rail, and the switcher, and reloads when you come back to it. Choose the delay — off, 30 minutes, 1 hour, or 6 hours — under Settings → General → Quiet inactive tabs. It is set to an hour to begin with, and the choice stays on this device.
A quiet tab says so where you pick tabs: its row dims in the ⌘L panel and the vertical rail, and carries the word quiet. Screen readers hear the same word. The dim alone would not do — after a relaunch every restored tab is quiet, and a uniformly dim list reads as styling rather than as a state.
Blanc leaves a tab alone when quieting it would cost you something: anything playing or that has played sound, anything muted or pinned, a page with something typed into it or a checkbox you ticked, a page that asks before you leave, a result of a form you submitted, a tab waiting on a permission prompt, a window it opened or was opened by, and a page you have scrolled deep into. The new /sleep command quiets every eligible background tab straight away — it skips the waiting and nothing else, and it works even with the delay set to off.
Reopening Blanc is quicker. Restored tabs come back quiet with their titles and site icons already in place, and only the tab you were last using loads.
You can now see when a site is using your microphone or camera. While any tab or pop-out window is recording, a red microphone or camera mark appears in the Island; clicking it lists every site currently listening or watching, and each one has a stop button. Blanc knows a site started recording because it granted the permission itself, so the mark cannot be suppressed by the page — and if a site's own recording ends in a way Blanc cannot observe, the mark stays up rather than going quietly dark. A tab that is recording is never quieted.
Changed
Turning the quiet delay off stops Blanc quieting anything new. Tabs that are already quiet stay as they are and come back normally when you open them — switching the setting off never throws away what a quiet tab needs to return.
Permission requests now appear along the bottom of the page instead of beside the Island, where they crowded it, and a request for your microphone or camera shows which one it is asking for.
Fixed
Pinned tabs that belong to no group stay visible in the ⌘L panel.
Opening Settings, History, or Downloads while a page is still loading no longer risks a crash.
Site icons synced from your other devices are drawn sharply on high-resolution displays.
Other platforms
All three platforms are built from the same v1.2.1 source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
The stop button no longer draws a second ✕. While a tab was loading, the reload button became an ✕ sitting two buttons from the close-tab ✕ — two near-identical marks, one cancelling the load and one closing the tab. Stop is now a ring with a filled square, drawn at the same size as the reload arc it replaces, so nothing shifts as a page loads.
Fixed
Finishing a download no longer empties the downloads button. The button fills like a vessel as bytes arrive, but the level was drawn from the download still in flight — so the moment it completed, the fill drained away and the button looked as though nothing had happened. A completed download now tops the vessel out, marks it with a check, and keeps it full until you open Downloads.
Other platforms
All three platforms are built from the same v1.1.1 source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
The island now senses your cursor. Move toward it and it leans your way, rises slightly, and grows — reaching full strength as you arrive and easing back as you leave. It follows how close you are rather than switching on at a threshold, so there's no edge you can feel, and it stays completely still while another app has focus or the panel is already open.
Opening the command bar is now a movement rather than a cut. The panel grows out of the resting island — starting at its exact size and shape, corners rounding out as it expands — and shrinks back into it when you dismiss. The page underneath stays clickable the moment you press Escape; only the picture takes a moment to leave.
If you have "reduce motion" turned on in your system settings, both of these are off entirely rather than shortened.
Changed
The island has been rebuilt against the Blanc design system. The resting pill drops the group name it was repeating — group identity already reads from the dots and the ⌘L panel — and gains a close button in its action cluster. The address field is a capsule, tab rows drop their domain column so the title has room, and the panel's dismiss control is now a downward chevron that points the way the panel travels.
Ad and tracker blocking is now called Blanc Blocker throughout, and its icon is a shield cut by the diagonal from Blanc's own mark. The count sits on the shield's shoulder instead of floating beside it.
The Blanc mark is heavier across every icon — the Dock, the taskbar, and the favicon on Blanc's own pages. The previous drawing was too fine to survive being scaled down, and broke up at small sizes.
Every keyboard shortcut in the interface renders in the system font. JetBrains Mono draws ⌘, ⇧, ⌥ and ⎋ malformed, which was most visible on the start page.
Fixed
Fixed a crash that could quit Blanc when a tab was closed a moment before the application menu rebuilt itself. The rebuild is deliberately delayed to batch up rapid changes, and it could still be handed a tab that had just gone.
The island's shadow no longer gets sliced off where the chrome meets the page. The refreshed shadow was deeper than the band had room for, leaving a faint straight line under the island. The find bar had the same problem against its own edge.
Other platforms
All three platforms are built from the same v1.1.0 source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
Fixed a crash that could quit Blanc when a tab was closed immediately after changing ad and tracker blocking for that site — from the shield popover's toggle, or from /allow-ads and /block-ads. Changing those settings schedules the page to reload a moment later, and if the tab was gone by then, Blanc tried to reload something that no longer existed and shut down instead.
Other platforms
All three platforms are built from the same v1.0.10 source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
The shield's popover now tells you about the connection, not just the blocking. One new line states it plainly — "Uses HTTPS", "Not encrypted", or "Local" for development servers — and says nothing at all while a page is still loading, so it never carries a stale claim across a navigation. It reports what the address proves and no more: Blanc doesn't inspect certificates, so the line deliberately says "Uses HTTPS" rather than claiming the connection is verified.
The "Not secure" badge on the island is now a button. On a plain-HTTP site, clicking either the badge or the shield opens the same site controls, anchored under whichever one you clicked — and if the popover is already open, clicking the other control slides it over instead of closing it. Escape puts keyboard focus back on the control that opened it.
Changed
The popover's toggle is now labeled "Ad & tracker blocking" instead of "Protection". On an unencrypted site the old wording could read as a safety claim sitting right under a "Not secure" warning; the new label says exactly what the switch does.
Other platforms
All three platforms are built from the same v1.0.9 source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
The shield on the island is now a control, not just a readout. Click it to open a small popover and turn ad and tracker blocking on or off for the site you're on — the same thing /allow-ads and /block-ads do, without having to remember a command. The chip shows a quiet glyph when there's nothing to report, a count when Blanc has blocked something, and a slashed shield when the site is allow-listed.
You can bring your favorites over from another browser. Blanc reads bookmarks from an installed Chrome, Edge, Brave, Chromium, or Vivaldi profile, keeps their folders, and skips anything already saved, so importing twice doesn't create duplicates. It's offered during first run and stays available from the Favorites page. Blanc only goes looking when you press "Look for other browsers", and it only ever opens that browser's bookmarks file — passwords, history, cookies, and open tabs are never read. Firefox and Safari aren't read directly; use the existing "Import HTML…" route for those.
Fixed
Find in page now shows matches while you type. Before this fix the counter stayed blank and nothing was highlighted until you pressed Enter — Blanc was telling Chromium to continue a search session it had never started.
Changed
The optional launch ping now includes a coarse OS version alongside the platform, so it's possible to tell how many installs could run an OS-gated feature. It is deliberately a single major number — "26" on macOS, "11" or "10" on Windows, a kernel major on Linux — never a full version string, which would narrow a device more than counting audiences requires. It's still one ping per launch with no browsing data, and it's still a single switch in Settings under "Help improve Blanc".
Other platforms
All three platforms are built from the same v1.0.8 source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
/block-ads now works on sites that were previously allow-listed with /allow-ads. Before this fix, running /block-ads on an allowed site toggled the global ad-blocker but left the per-site exception in place, so ads kept loading.
The Dock icon mark no longer changes size between the quit-state bundle icon and the running app's dynamic icon. The vector mark in the Icon Composer source is now scaled to match the raster colorway PNGs' visual proportion (~63% of the visible tile).
Fixed a crash that could occur when /block-ads or /allow-ads reloaded the active tab during the settings fan-out. The reload is now deferred so it runs after the synchronous settings handlers finish.
Other platforms
All three platforms are built from the same v1.0.7 source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
Blanc 1.0.6 fixes the expanded-island click bug that 1.0.4 and 1.0.5 both tried and failed to resolve, and corrects the record on what was actually wrong.
Fixed
Fixed pinned tabs occasionally becoming unclickable when the expanded island overlapped a site's draggable interface regions. Some sites — typically those built from shared desktop-app UI — mark parts of their own interface as draggable. In a desktop shell those marks become operating-system-level regions that are resolved before the application's own windows are consulted, so a click meant for an island row was taken by the page underneath before Blanc ever saw it.
Clicking a row while a page was loading could be dropped for a second, unrelated reason: a tab-state update could rebuild the panel list between mouse-down and mouse-up, destroying the row being pressed, so the click was retargeted and the row's own handler never ran. List rebuilds are now held for the duration of a click and applied as soon as it completes.
Large tab collections now scroll inside the expanded island, keeping the footer and all controls visible.
Changed
Summoning the island with ⌘L now expands it in place, on the same anchor as clicking it. It previously opened lower down with the resting island still visible above it, which read as a separate floating window rather than the same control opening.
⌘L now closes the expanded island as well as opening it, so the same shortcut puts it away. A half-typed query is never discarded — pressing it again there re-selects what you typed, as an address bar does.
Removed the overlay background-colour workaround introduced in 1.0.4. Electron parses eight-digit colours as AARRGGBB, so the value it set was fully transparent and never had the effect its comment described. The 1.0.5 panel-centering change is kept — it was not the fix, but it is correct and simpler than what it replaced.
Known limitation
Shadow-DOM drag regions remain unsupported. A page can declare a draggable region inside a shadow root, and no styling the browser applies from outside reaches into one, so a region declared there still takes clicks aimed at the island. Closing this needs a fix below the web layer and is tracked separately.
Erratum
The release notes for Blanc 1.0.4 and 1.0.5 each claimed to have fixed this issue and were wrong. Neither the overlay background layer nor the panel's centering method was responsible. Both of those releases have been annotated with a correction rather than rewritten.
Other platforms
All three platforms are built from the same v1.0.6 source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
Blanc 1.0.5 is a maintenance release for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Fixed
Clicking a pinned tab in the expanded island panel now works across the full row width. The v1.0.4 fix resolved most click-through cases, but a CSS transform on the panel's centering wrapper created a GPU compositing layer that caused Chromium to misroute mouse events past roughly the first third of the row. Replaced with flexbox centering.
Updated
Electron 43.3.0 (Chromium 150.0.7871.212, Node v24.18.1). Includes a use-after-free fix in custom protocol stream handling and a BrowserWindow sizing fix on Windows multi-monitor setups with mixed DPI.
Correction
This release's flexbox-centering change did not resolve the pinned-row click issue. The layout change remains, but it was not causal. The actual fix shipped in Blanc 1.0.6.
Blanc 1.0.4 is a maintenance release for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Fixed
Clicking a pinned tab in the expanded island panel now works reliably on macOS. A fully transparent overlay base layer caused macOS to forward mouse events past the panel, so clicks on upper rows (pinned tabs, group headers) were silently swallowed.
Other platforms
The Windows and Linux application behavior is unchanged. All three platforms are built from the same v1.0.4 source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
Correction
This release's overlay-background change did not resolve the pinned-row click issue. The actual cause was native drag regions declared by underlying webpages and was fixed in Blanc 1.0.6.
Blanc 1.0.3 ships digitally signed Windows builds. There are no application
changes in this release.
Signed Windows installer
The Windows installer and application binaries are now code signed by Bananify Creative through Azure Trusted Signing.
New installs no longer trigger the Windows SmartScreen "unknown publisher" warning, and Microsoft Defender false positives on the unsigned installer are resolved.
Windows auto-update continues to work from earlier versions; updating from an unsigned install to 1.0.3 is seamless.
Release integrity
The macOS, Windows, and Linux applications are built from the same v1.0.3
source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
Blanc 1.0.2 improves the native Windows and Linux chrome and corrects the
optical size of Blanc's Windows taskbar icon.
Windows icon
Windows now uses one fixed Paper icon instead of exposing the macOS icon colorways in Settings.
The Windows icon is generated as a native nine-frame ICO from 16 through 256 pixels, with the macOS-style transparent margin removed and the Blanc mark enlarged for better visual parity with other Windows taskbar icons.
macOS keeps its existing selectable icon colorways, including the supporter colorways.
Windows and Linux chrome
The native application menu has a dedicated upper-left hamburger button that stays legible over light and dark web pages.
Alt+F opens the same native menu regardless of which Blanc surface has focus.
About Blanc is now available from the native application menu.
Release integrity
The macOS, Windows, and Linux applications are built from the same v1.0.2
source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
Blanc 1.0.1 is a maintenance release for macOS, Windows, and Linux. It fixes
the Windows restart handoff that could leave an old Blanc process running while
the installer tried to replace it.
Fixed
The Windows installer now closes the old Blanc process and retries for a bounded period before asking for manual intervention. This replaces the failure mode where the first install attempt said Blanc could not be closed and clicking Retry later succeeded.
Restart Now on Windows now tears down every Blanc browser surface after session data has been preserved, with a forced-exit backstop if Chromium does not finish shutting down promptly. This also prevents an old instance from reclaiming the relaunch and offering the same update again.
Other platforms
The macOS and Linux application behavior is unchanged. All three platforms are
built from the same v1.0.1 source tag and published with one SHA-256 manifest.
Blanc 1.0 puts the browser in one small Island: navigation, search, tabs, named groups, page actions, and slash commands stay close without a permanent horizontal tab strip or conventional toolbar.
What is new in 1.0
Optional vertical tabs. Turn on the resizable left rail from the Island, View menu, Settings, or with Command-Option-V. It preserves open pages and keeps the Island as Blanc's only address, search, and command surface.
A first-class Island. Press Command-L to navigate, search, switch among tabs, Favorites, history, named groups, and tabs shared by another device, or type / to run a browser command.
A menu on the command bar. Right-click the Island's address field for the usual editing items plus two Blanc actions. Copy Clean Link copies the address with known tracking parameters stripped, leaving every other parameter untouched. Paste and Go navigates straight from the clipboard through the same path as a typed address, then closes the Island.
View Page Source. Right-click a web page to read its source in Chromium's own highlighted view. It opens in a new tab, so Back never loses your place.
Named groups and private tabs. Groups organize tabs by name rather than color. Private tabs share a separate, non-persistent in-memory browsing session that is discarded when Blanc quits.
Built-in blocking. EasyList and EasyPrivacy filtering runs at the browser session layer rather than through an extension.
Profile Sync. Optional passphrase-based end-to-end encryption covers Favorites and settings. Per-device open-tab sharing is separate, read-only, and off by default.
Release hardening
Local browser chrome remains usable while blocking filters initialize. Failure offers Retry and an explicit Continue without blocking path.
A fresh profile presents Search suggestions and Help improve Blanc before either path may send; both choices can be changed before continuing.
Chrome and internal-page fonts are bundled locally.
Release publication verifies the exact signed and notarized package, updater metadata, blockmaps, and SHA-256 checksums before any asset is made public.
Availability and boundaries
Blanc 1.0.0 is for macOS on Apple Silicon.
Blanc has no extension runtime or password import.
Ad and tracker blocking is best effort.
Copy Clean Link removes a curated list of known tracking parameters from http(s) addresses. It is not a general query-string cleaner, and it does not affect tracking that lives outside the query string.
The address field's menu is pointer-invoked on macOS.
An optional US$19 one-time Blanc Supporter purchase unlocks three cosmetic app-icon colorways; browser features remain free.
Download the Apple Silicon DMG and its SHA256SUMS manifest from the release assets. Product, press, and private security feedback can be sent to support@blancbrowser.com; put Security in the subject for vulnerabilities.
Blanc v0.22.0 turns the Island into a full search surface. Start typing in ⌘L and Blanc now blends your open tabs, groups, Favorites, and history with live suggestions from the search engine you chose in Settings; arrow through the six-row list or press Enter to search exactly what you typed. Suggestions can be switched off, and private tabs, pasted text, addresses, local paths, and sensitive-looking input never leave the device for autocomplete.
Tabs synced from your other Blanc devices now carry their site icons too. The source device converts each favicon into a tiny inert PNG inside a separate end-to-end-encrypted sidecar, so another device never contacts a remote tab's site just to draw its row; strict budgets, cancellation, mixed-version compatibility, and graceful fallback keep this cosmetic layer from interfering with tab sync.
Blanc v0.21.0 clears the clutter out of the ⌘L command panel. Favorites, History, Downloads, Settings, and Shortcuts now open as a sheet that floats over the page you're on instead of taking up a tab — open one, glance or change what you need, and dismiss it with Esc or a click, leaving your tab strip for actual browsing. Anything you open from it, like a favorite or a history entry, still opens as a normal tab.
The panel's tab list is quieter too: every row now shows just the site's icon and title at rest and reveals the address and controls when you hover or focus it, while long titles fade out softly instead of being cut off with an ellipsis. The tab you're currently on keeps its address in view, so you never lose track of where you are.
Blanc v0.20.0 introduces Tab Sync: see your open tabs from your other devices. Turn on "share this device's open tabs" under Settings → Sync and each machine publishes a snapshot of its tabs — browse them from the ⌘L panel, the Quick Switcher, or the start page on any synced device, and open one locally with a click. It's a menu, not a mirror: nothing ever force-opens or closes a tab on another machine.
Sharing is off by default and per-device, private tabs never leave the machine, and like the rest of Profile Sync the snapshots are end-to-end encrypted — the sync server only ever stores ciphertext it cannot read.
This release also updates Electron to 43.2.0 for the latest Chromium stable.
Blanc v0.19.0 brings fully adaptive app icons to macOS 26 and later. Every Dock colorway is now an Icon Composer stack that follows the user's Icon & Widget Style — Default, Dark, Clear, or Tinted — including the system-selected tint color, while older macOS releases retain the existing flat icons.
This release also updates Electron to 43.1.1, electron-builder to 26.15.3, and Cucumber to 13.1.1, bringing the latest Chromium patch and a clean dependency audit.
Blanc v0.18.0 sharpens the everyday chrome. The resting Island pill is larger and easier to read, and each tab dot now blooms into a small disc showing that tab's favicon when you hover or focus it — so you can see which tab you're switching to before you click.
The Favorites page gets a quieter, ledger-style layout: row and folder actions become understated text revealed on hover or focus, folder names move into their section headers, and dates line up in a right-aligned column.
Blanc v0.17.0 adds two privacy features that respect the VPN or proxy you already use: WebRTC leak protection and optional encrypted DNS (DoH).
Encrypted DNS hides your DNS lookups from the network in transit to the resolver you choose. It does not hide the sites you visit — destination IPs stay visible to your network — and choosing a provider is a trust decision. Automatic mode upgrades opportunistically and can fall back to unencrypted DNS; only the named-provider and custom positions are strict.
WebRTC leak protection keeps WebRTC from exposing addresses beyond your default connection, with an optional "disable direct UDP" mode for use behind an application proxy.
Light mode: warm-stone light palette (now the default), with a System/Light/Dark appearance setting that themes the chrome, internal pages, and web content together.