What's changed on the Mac.

0.1.34

Fixed

• A beam never goes to a host you didn't choose. If the host you beam to disappears from `~/.ssh/config` — a stopped container, an `Include` that isn't there right now, an edited file — Hostbeam used to quietly switch to the first host in your list. Now it keeps your host, marked "Not in ~/.ssh/config", and beams stop with a note in the popover saying why until it's back or you pick another. Hostbeam also notices a host coming back as soon as you open the popover, with no restart.
• The popover opens on the screen you're using. With more than one display, clicking the menu-bar icon or the Dock icon on another screen, or pressing the shortcut, opened the popover on the main display. It now opens where the pointer is — under the icon you clicked — and so does the beam confirmation.

0.1.33

Added

• See what your agent is building. When the agent starts a dev server on your server — Vite on 5173, a Next.js app on 3000 — the popover lists it under "Running on <host>" when you open it. Click Open and it opens in your Mac's browser, at `127.0.0.1` and the same port. Stop ends it, as does the "Stop forwarding" line in the menu-bar menu; it also ends when the dev server stops or you quit. Hostbeam only ever looks when you open the popover, only lists servers your own user runs, and installs nothing on the server. It works on servers that forbid SSH port forwarding, too.

0.1.32

Changed

• Your agent now gets the picture itself, not a line of text. After a beam, Hostbeam copies just the file's path on your server. Paste it into Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI or OpenCode there and it is attached as the image — `[Image #1]` — exactly as if you were working locally. With the old "Use this screenshot: …" line around it, only Claude Code did that; the others saw text. Nothing is installed on your server for it.
• Several files paste as several pictures in Claude Code and Gemini CLI: their paths now go on one line, a space apart. Codex and OpenCode take one picture at a time, and see several paths as text they can still open.
• The sentence is still there if you want it: Preferences → General → "Add a sentence around the path". If you wrote your own sentence, it is kept and stays on. Copying a beam again from Recent now gives exactly what the beam copied, sentence or not.

0.1.31

Changed

• Hostbeam is free to use, with no daily limit. Every feature, as many beams as you like. Instead of stopping you after five a day, Hostbeam now asks now and then: after your first week, a line under a beam that has landed — "Enjoying Hostbeam? Get a license". It never blocks or slows a beam, and the popover says "Unlicensed" beside the name until you have one.
• **A license is $29 once, for up to 3 Macs, and every Hostbeam 1 update is included** — no year of updates to run out, nothing to renew. Preferences → License says so instead of showing a date.

0.1.30

Added

• Beam any file, not just screenshots. Drop a PDF, a log, a CSV or an archive on the popover or the menu-bar icon, open it with Hostbeam, or copy it in Finder and press your beam shortcut: it lands in the same folder, with the same paste-ready line — "Use this file: …" for anything that is not a picture, unless you have written your own. Up to 100 MB a file; folders are still not beamed, and one gesture is still one beam.
• A second look before a secret leaves your Mac. A `.env`, a private SSH key, a `.pem` or a credentials file is held rather than sent: Hostbeam asks first, and nothing goes unless you click Send anyway. Return answers "Don't send", so a stray keystroke cannot send it for you.
• Show in Finder from Recent. A beam that came from a file on your Mac — dropped, opened with Hostbeam, or copied in Finder — has a folder button in the popover's Recent list and in Preferences → Recent that shows the file in Finder, or every file of a drop at once. If it has moved since, the row says so. A screenshot beamed from the clipboard never was a file, so it has none.
• iPhone: share any file, not just pictures. The share sheet now offers Hostbeam for a PDF, a log or a screen recording from Files or Photos, and sends it as it is, keeping its name — up to 100 MB. A `.env`, a private key or a credentials file waits for "Send anyway", as on the Mac.

Changed

• Clean up only ever touches what Hostbeam named. Storage and Clean up now recognise a beamed file by the time stamp in its name, so a `hostbeam-notes.txt` — or a `hostbeam-diagram.png` — that someone else left in the folder is never counted or deleted.

Fixed

• Copying a file in Finder no longer beams its icon. Finder puts the file's icon on the clipboard beside it, and the beam shortcut — and automatic beaming — sent that icon as if it were a screenshot. The shortcut now sends the file itself, and automatic beaming, which is for screenshots, leaves a copied file alone. A capture tool that puts both a picture and its file there, like CleanShot X, still beams the picture as before.
• A file that cannot be sent no longer blames the host. When a beam from the shortcut or the Dock could not send a file, the floating overlay said the host "didn't answer". It now says the file was not sent, and why.

0.1.29

Changed

• Several screenshots at once arrive about twice as fast. A beam of several files now goes over one connection instead of one per file — five screenshots on a slow link went from 7.6 s to 3.2 s — and starts sending straight away: the Recent previews are made while the files travel, instead of all of them first with the progress stuck at "0 of 4". A single screenshot is as quick as before.

Fixed

• Your agent never picks up half a screenshot. A file used to appear on the host under its final name while it was still arriving, so a prompt sent at that moment could hand your agent a partial image. Each file now arrives under a hidden name and takes its real one only once it is complete.
• A host's "authorized" badge no longer outlives the key. Preferences → Hosts learned which devices a host accepts only when it opened, so a key removed from the host afterwards still showed as authorized, with no way to authorize again. It now asks the host again when you open its row and when the Preferences window comes back to the front.

0.1.28

Changed

• A new version is shown when Hostbeam starts. If the check Hostbeam makes shortly after starting finds a new version, the popover now opens on its own to say so, instead of leaving it to a dot on the gear. Only at start: the daily check stays quiet as before. A version you skipped, or one already installed in the background, never opens it.

Fixed

• Beaming no longer quits Hostbeam now and then. Reading the screenshot for the beam and for the overlay's thumbnail at the same moment could crash the app mid-beam — more often when the beam came from another app, such as Raycast. The clipboard is now read one step at a time, and if macOS still fails to read it, that one beam says so instead of the app quitting.
• The beam overlay speaks your language. The small overlay that shows a shortcut beam in flight followed the Mac's language, not the one chosen in Preferences → General. It now uses your choice, like the rest of Hostbeam.
• The last few English labels are translated. "Click to enlarge", "Back", "Diagnostics failed" and a handful of labels read aloud by VoiceOver were English in every language; they now follow your language too.
• The popover and the beam overlay stay on screen with mixed displays. With a Retina screen and a standard one side by side, the popover opened from the keyboard shortcut could appear off screen, and the overlay half off it, when Hostbeam had started while the standard screen was active.

0.1.27

Fixed

• Diagnostics and Test connection in Preferences now really connect. The Hosts pane's *Diagnostics* sheet and the *Test connection* button when adding a host showed made-up results — a random latency, a key that was never checked — whatever the host was doing. Both now run the same real checks the popover runs.
• Beaming to a host you typed in works from the popover. A host added by name and address (rather than from `~/.ssh/config`) was asked for by its nickname, which `ssh` cannot resolve; the popover now connects the way Preferences always did — to beam, to check the host, and to pull.
• Recording a shortcut with ⇧ held saves the key, not the symbol it typed. ⌘⇧7 used to be saved as `⌘⇧&` on a US keyboard, a combination that could not be registered.
• A setting changed in Preferences stays changed. The popover kept the copy it loaded at launch and could put it back on its next save, undoing the edit; it now re-reads the config whenever Preferences writes it.
• Reset to defaults no longer plants two example screenshots in Recent.

0.1.26

Added

• Hide from Dock, from the Dock. Right-click Hostbeam's Dock icon and the menu offers *Hide from Dock* — the same as turning off *Show in the Dock* in Preferences, one step closer to hand. The menu-bar icon stays, so Hostbeam is always one click away.
• The shortcut shows on the empty popover too. With nothing on the clipboard, the popover now says which keys beam, so the first screen tells you the fastest way in.

Changed

• `hostbeam://` links work out of the box. *Let other apps control Hostbeam* is now on for new installs, so Raycast, a script or the agent can beam and switch host without a first trip to Preferences. It is the same switch, one click to turn off.

0.1.25

Added

• Open source licenses, under About. Hostbeam is a small app on a large stack of open source, and every package inside the Mac app is now listed there with its license and copyright — the same on the iPhone, and at hostbeam.app/licenses. Nothing to do; it was owed.

0.1.24

Added

• iPhone: a beam you can feel. The phone taps when a screenshot lands, buzzes when a host refuses it, and gives a third, different tap when only part of a batch arrived — which matters most in the share sheet, where the answer shows for two seconds over a photo you are still looking at.
• iPhone: the Home Screen widget says where a tap would send, instead of being a button wearing a widget's clothes.
• iPhone: Shortcuts can beam to a *named* host. Leave the new Host field empty and it behaves as before, using your current host — so an automation can send somewhere specific without changing what the phone does next time.

Fixed

• Beams are faster, the upload step most of all. macOS was running the transfer at background priority and throttling it: the same `scp`, to the same host, took about three times longer from inside Hostbeam than from a terminal. A beam is something you pressed a key for and are standing there waiting on, so it now tells the system exactly that.
• A finished beam no longer waits for the menu-bar animation. The spinner ran in fixed steps and only checked between them, so a beam that landed early still held on until the current step ran out, with the file already on your host.

0.1.23

Added

• `hostbeam://host?id=<host>` switches which host beams go to, so a script or a launcher can pick one without opening the app. It needs the same permission a URL beam does, which is now called *Let other apps control Hostbeam*, and it can only choose between hosts you have already added.
• `hostbeam://preferences` opens Preferences — at a named tab with `?tab=general`. It is the one link that works without the permission above, because it is how you grant it: a tool that finds Hostbeam ignoring it can now offer a button rather than directions.

Fixed

• `hostbeam://beam` works when Hostbeam was not already running. The link launched the app and then did nothing, because the window it asks was still starting. It now waits a few seconds for it — and only a few, so a beam can never surface later out of nowhere.

0.1.22

Added

• Beam screenshot is the first item when you right-click the menu-bar icon, with your shortcut printed beside it. Beaming no longer starts with opening the popover when your hand is already on the mouse — and the menu you open anyway is now where the shortcut is easiest to find.
• Switch host, under it, lists your hosts with a tick on the one beams go to; picking another switches to it, exactly as the popover's host selector does. Manage hosts… at the foot of that list opens Preferences → Hosts, where hosts are added, renamed and removed.
• Recent lists your last few beams by file name — a drop of several counts its files (`shot.png ×3`). Picking one puts its paste-ready text back on the clipboard, the whole drop at once, the same as the copy button on its row. Show all… opens Preferences → Recent, where the same shots can be seen full size. Each row carries its thumbnail, so a list of `hostbeam-…png` names is still recognisable at a glance.
• About Hostbeam and Check for updates… are in the same menu. The check opens About and runs there, so it can tell you that you are up to date as readily as that you are not.
• Drop a screenshot on the menu-bar icon and it beams — the icon is where you were aiming anyway. The Dock icon and the popover already took drops; now the one you can always see does too.
• ⌥-click the menu-bar icon to beam without opening anything. A plain click still opens the popover, a right-click still opens the menu.
• Other apps can start a beam, if you let them: switch on Preferences → General → Beaming → *Let other apps start a beam*, and `hostbeam://beam` works from a script, a Raycast command, a Shortcut or your agent. It is off by default, because a web page can open a link like that too. Separately, and always available: `open -a Hostbeam shot.png` beams a file.

0.1.21

Changed

• Changelog in the popover, after an update, opens the notes for the version you are now on rather than the top of the list. About's link opens the Mac releases on their own.
• Share to iPhone shows a code the iPhone's Camera app recognises: scanning it opens Hostbeam for iPhone with the host filled in, rather than having to find the app's own scanner first. Copy link puts the same link on the clipboard, to AirDrop or message to the phone. The iPhone app is still in testing — this is ready for the day it ships.
• Removing a host in Preferences → Hosts is a bin, not a minus. A minus next to a row that also expands reads as a collapse control, and got clicked expecting the drawer. Forgetting a paired device matches it.

0.1.20

Added

• Install updates automatically, in Preferences → General → Updates. Off unless you turn it on. Hostbeam downloads the update in the background and relaunches into it when you are not using it — never with the popover or Preferences open, while a beam is on its way, or while automatic beaming is on. A version past your year of updates is never installed.
• Check for updates automatically can be turned off, for a Mac that should not ask download.hostbeam.app anything. About → Check for updates still works.
• After an update, the popover says which version you are on now, with a link to what changed.
• Request a feature and Share Hostbeam, in About. The first writes to support the way Send feedback does, so a request lands in the same inbox. The second shares hostbeam.app on X, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Reddit or Hacker News, copies the link, or opens the macOS share menu for AirDrop and Messages.
• iPhone: Settings → About has Rate Hostbeam and Request a feature. After a few beams, the app asks for a rating through Apple's own prompt — only right after a beam from inside the app succeeds, and at most once per version.
• Send Feedback… in the menu bar menu, right above Quit.
• iPhone: long-press the app icon for Beam last screenshot and Send feedback.

Changed

• Skip for now skips an update everywhere, the dot on the gear included, until a newer version comes out. It is still there to install from About.
• Screenshots are scaled to 2000 px on their longest side by default, down from 2048, and the 2048 choice in Preferences → General is now 2000. Once a conversation holds more than 20 images, Claude refuses any image larger than that, which could end a long session with an agent in an error.
• Hostbeam no longer beams into a remote folder that belongs to another user. On a shared server, someone else can create `/tmp/hostbeam` before you do; beams would have landed where they could read them. You get a clear error and nothing is sent. A folder Hostbeam creates is now private to your account.

Fixed

• The Remote folder writable check in a host's diagnostics reported a failure for every folder, even ones beams were landing in. It now checks the folder for real.

0.1.19

Added

• Beam several screenshots at once. Drop a handful on the popover, or select them in Finder and choose Open With — they all go, and the whole thing counts as one beam, because the free tier counts gestures rather than files. The pasted line carries one path per screenshot. More than 25 at a time is refused outright rather than quietly trimmed.
• Recent gives every screenshot its own entry and folds a single drop into one row with a count on it. Click that row's thumbnail to step through the whole drop with the arrows or the ← → keys; its copy button takes every path. Preferences still lists them one by one.
• A beam of several shows how far it has got, in the popover and in the floating overlay, with a bar that fills to the count instead of sweeping back and forth.
• If a beam stops part-way — the connection drops, the host stops accepting — it says so instead of calling the whole thing a failure. What arrived is listed, copied and in Recent, and Hostbeam offers to send just the rest. That retry costs no extra beam: it is the same drop continuing.

Fixed

• Preferences could open as a blank window once Recent had built up enough thumbnails. They live in the settings file, which outgrew what the app can cache, and the window waiting on that gave up before drawing anything. Recent now keeps its newest thumbnails within a budget and drops older pictures rather than whole entries — and the window opens either way.
• "Try again" after a failed drop retries the files you dropped. It used to quietly beam your clipboard instead.
• Recent shows a thumbnail for a dropped JPEG, GIF, WebP, BMP or TIFF, not just a PNG. Those used to beam fine and then sit in the list as a grey square with a file name. Pulled images get the same treatment. HEIC, HEIF and AVIF still show the placeholder — decoding them would mean shipping C libraries for a 38-pixel picture.
• Clean up on a host now removes the JPEGs, HEICs and other images it beamed, and the Storage figure counts them. Only PNGs were matched before, so anything else you dropped was sent and then left behind, with the size readout saying it was not there.

Changed

• A beamed file keeps the name it had. Drop `shot-2.png` and it lands as `hostbeam-<timestamp>-shot-2.png`, so you can tell screenshots apart in Recent, in the line you paste, and in the folder on your host. Awkward characters are replaced and long names trimmed, since the name has to be safe on the other end. A screenshot beamed from the clipboard has no file name and is unchanged.

0.1.18

Added

• Screenshots are scaled down before they are sent, to 2048px on the longest edge by default. A vision model downsamples on arrival anyway — Claude's limit is about 1568px — so the extra pixels of a 5K capture cost upload time, disk on your host, and tokens without ever being seen. Preferences → General sets the size, or turns it off. Files you drop are still sent exactly as they are.
• Beam screenshots automatically, whichever tool took them. Switch it on in the popover and every screenshot you take goes straight to your host — no second keystroke — whether you capture with ⌃⌘⇧4, CleanShot, Shottr, or anything else that leaves an image on the clipboard. It starts off every launch and switches itself off after an hour by default; Preferences → General changes that. The menu-bar icon carries a dot while it is on, so it is never running unnoticed. Nothing new is asked of macOS: Hostbeam watches a counter that tells it *something* was copied, and only looks at what once it is going to send it.
• An optional shortcut for that switch, so you can start and stop automatic beaming from any app without opening the popover. Off until you record one in Preferences → Shortcuts — three global combos claimed by default would be greedy on a machine that already runs a launcher and a screenshot tool.
• Bring back images your agent left on the host. Turn it on in Preferences → General and the popover gets a Check button: press it and any images written into that host's beam folder — a browser test's screenshot, a chart a script made — come back to your Mac, where a click opens them. Hostbeam's own uploads are skipped, so a check never re-downloads what you just sent. Nothing is fetched unless you ask, and images only: Hostbeam is a screenshot bridge, and whether it carries anything else is a decision for another day.

0.1.17

Added

• Beam a screenshot that is already a file: drop it on the popover, drop it on the Dock icon, or right-click it in Finder and choose Open With → Hostbeam. Images up to 50 MB, sent as they are.

0.1.16

Changed

• The QR code you point your iPhone at now has the Hostbeam icon in the middle, so it is recognisably ours rather than an anonymous square.

0.1.15

Fixed

• The popover no longer sits in a grey rectangle. Its drop shadow was wider than the window holding it, so macOS cut the shadow off square at the window's edge. Invisible over a dark desktop, plain over anything light.
• With "Show in the Dock and ⌘⇥" on, switching to Hostbeam with ⌘⇥ now opens the popover. It brought nothing forward before, since the app has no ordinary window.

0.1.14

Fixed

• "Launch Hostbeam at login" now lists Hostbeam under System Settings → General → Login Items → Open at Login, with its icon, like any other app. 0.1.13 had registered it as a background item under "Allow in the Background" instead; that entry is removed the first time this version starts.

0.1.13

Added

• "Show in the Dock and ⌘⇥" in Preferences → General → Startup. Off by default; when on, Hostbeam has a Dock icon and an entry in the app switcher, and a click on the Dock icon opens the popover. One of the two icons, menu bar or Dock, always stays on.
• A second global shortcut shows or hides the popover from any app. Record it in Preferences → Hotkey; it stays off until you do, and Clear turns it off again.
• Hostbeam can be installed with Homebrew: `brew install --cask punkabeat/tap/hostbeam`. It is the same signed build the download button serves, and the app keeps updating itself.

Changed

• The update panel in About lists what changed in every version since the one you are running, not only the newest.

Fixed

• "Launch Hostbeam at login" and "Show icon in the menu bar" now do what they say. They had been switches with nothing behind them. Launch at login registers a login item that System Settings lists under Login Items; if the switch was on in your settings, Hostbeam registers itself at its next start.
• A long host address (an EC2 hostname, say) no longer wraps onto several lines inside the popover's "Beam to" picker; it is cut with an ellipsis and the host name keeps its place. Hovering a cut address shows the whole of it, in the picker and in its dropdown.

0.1.12

Fixed

• iPhone: a freshly installed app could reach a host it was perfectly able to reach, and report it as unreachable. The phone's own SSH identity is created once, on first launch, instead of waiting for you to open the screen that happened to create it — so beaming works from the first host you add, however you got there.

0.1.11

Added

• Both: adding a host that isn't your default now asks whether it should be. Adding a host is usually the prelude to beaming to it, but the hotkey on the Mac, and the widget, shortcut and share sheet on iPhone, all kept beaming to the previous one — silently, which is how a screenshot ends up on the wrong server. Asked, never switched for you.
• Mac: adding a host from the SSH-config list now opens it, the way adding one by hand always did. Its settings — including which host is the default — were behind a row you had to know to click.

Fixed

• Mac: searching your SSH config for a host and adding it no longer answers with "no matching hosts" — it says you have added everything matching, and offers to clear the search. The host had simply left the list by being added.
• Mac: the pairing sheet fits the window again. Sharing a host to your iPhone meant scrolling to reach the part that authorizes it — the QR and the authorize step were stacked in a narrow column while half the window's width sat empty. They sit side by side now.

0.1.10

Added

• Mac: Hostbeam remembers an iPhone you have authorized, so putting it on another host is one click — you no longer need the phone in your hand or a key to copy across. Offered per host, never automatic: which servers your phone can reach stays your decision.
• Mac: each host says whether your iPhone is already on it, and offers to authorize it right there if it isn't — in the host's own row, next to Diagnostics and Open Terminal.
• Mac: Preferences → Hosts lists the devices you have paired, when each was last used, and lets you remove one.
• iPhone: adding a host offers the key that host needs, there and then.

Fixed

• Both: a host you have just added is checked straight away, instead of sitting grey until you think to press Test.
• iPhone: the authorize step asks the host before it tells you anything. If your Mac has already installed the key, the step no longer appears at all; if the host can't be reached, it says so, rather than telling you to add a key that may well be there already.

0.1.9

Fixed

• Mac: pairing your iPhone to a host on a non-standard SSH port now sends the right port. The QR always claimed 22, so the phone was set up with a port that couldn't connect — and the failure looked like the host being unreachable, which sent you looking at your network instead of the one field that was wrong.

Added

• Mac: the SSH port is shown next to a host when it isn't the usual 22, in Hosts and on the pairing sheet, so you can check what your iPhone will receive against what it actually got.

0.1.8

Added

• Both: a "What's new" link in About, for the full history rather than just the pending update.
• Mac: an update is announced in the popover itself now — one quiet line you can dismiss — instead of only a dot on the gear you had to notice and then go looking for. Dismissing it hides that version, not the next one.

Fixed

• Mac: the update dot on the menu-bar gear actually appears. The popover is a non-activating panel, so it never received the event it was waiting for, and the dot stayed stuck at whatever was known when the app started — which was nothing, since the first check runs shortly after launch.

0.1.7

Added

• iPhone: a home-screen widget and an iOS 18 Control that beam your latest screenshot in one tap, without opening the app first.
• Mac: see what an update contains before installing it — the release notes now appear in About, next to the Install button.

Fixed

• Both: a refunded or suspended licence can be removed from the app again. It previously reported "Couldn't reach the license server" — about a server that had answered immediately — and left the dead key in place, with no way to enter a new one.
• Both: a licence is described as covering 3 devices, Macs and iPhones together, rather than 3 Macs. Corrected everywhere, in all eight languages.
• iPhone: widget and Control taps reliably open the app and beam.
• iPhone: the Hostbeam action shows its icon in the share sheet.

0.1.6

Added

• iPhone: beam an image straight from the clipboard — the row appears only when there is actually an image to send.
• Both: Website, Privacy and Terms links, plus Send feedback, in About.

Fixed

• iPhone: result cards now anchor inside the action section instead of drifting out of place.

0.1.5

Added

• Both: see how much space Hostbeam's own screenshots use on a remote host, and clean them up — owner-invoked, confirmation-gated, and never touching anything Hostbeam did not upload.
• iPhone: appearance switcher (System / Light / Dark), matching the Mac.

Fixed

• iPhone: the appearance setting now applies to sheets as well as the main screens, and changes take effect immediately rather than on next launch.

0.1.4

Added

• iPhone: add hosts by scanning a QR code from the Mac at any time, not only during first-run setup.
• iPhone: beam from the share sheet in any app, via a Hostbeam action.
• Both: a friction-free way to get your SSH key onto the iPhone, authorised from the Mac.

Fixed

• iPhone: the uploading animation actually animates.

0.1.3

Added

• Mac: an update indicator — a dot on the popover gear and in About when a newer version is available.

0.1.2

Fixed

• Mac: "Open Terminal" opens Terminal rather than handing the connection to whatever claimed the `ssh://` URL scheme.

0.1.1

Added

• Mac: working About links, Send feedback, and Open Terminal.

0.1.0

• Beam the screenshot on your clipboard to your own server over your existing SSH config, and get the paste-ready URL back on your clipboard.
• Menu-bar app with a global hotkey and a floating beam HUD.
• Host discovery from your SSH config, per-host remote folders, reachability checks and diagnostics.
• Recent history, and a diagnostic log you can read and copy.
• Eight languages: English, French, Japanese, Spanish, German, Simplified Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese and Korean.
• Free tier of 5 beams a day, metered entirely on your own machine — no account, and no network calls for free users.