What's new.

refern clipper 3.4: Full-Resolution Saves & Clip Details

• Saving now tracks down the original full-resolution image and falls back gracefully when a guess misses, so saves stop failing on sites like Pinterest, Twitter, Danbooru, DeviantArt, and Pixiv
• Twitter GIFs are saved as their actual video files instead of a static frame
• A new details row in the save popup lets you set creator, NSFW, and Pixelated on each clip, and they arrive on the saved file in your workspace
• Mark a clip as a favourite with the heart in the details row; it lands on the saved file once the app update that follows 1.5.0 is installed
• New settings and shortcuts: one-click save, configurable save buttons, remembered tags for Save to, hover button visibility, Cmd or Ctrl plus Enter to save, and keyboard autocomplete in the tag editor
• Batch saves now record each image's own source link instead of just the page you saved from
• Typing in the clipper's panels now works on sites that pull keyboard focus back to their own inputs
• Fixed stale saves after single-page-app navigation, dropdowns not closing on outside click or Escape, and tag autocomplete skipping existing tags with spaces in their names
• Refreshed icons with the new refern logo

Index Any File Type, Drag Out & Custom Shortcuts

• Index any file typeA workspace is no longer just images and video: choose what it indexes, from audio, documents, design and painting app files, 3D, fonts, archives, and code to simply every file in the folder. Your existing workspaces can turn this on too, from Edit workspace on the workspace selector.
• Drag files outDrag anything from the grid straight into another app, a chat, or your file manager. Multi-selections, folders, canvases, and groups all come along as real files.
• Selection, the familiar wayThe grid now selects like a file manager: click selects, Ctrl or Cmd click toggles, Shift click extends, and double-click or Enter opens. The corner selector is retired.
• Make the shortcuts yoursA new Shortcuts page in settings (beta) lets you rebind app commands to the keys you prefer, saved with your profile.

• You now choose what each workspace indexes. Beyond images and videos, turn on audio, documents, design files (such as Photoshop and Sketch), drawing and painting files (such as Clip Studio, Krita, and Procreate), 3D and CAD, fonts, archives, and code, add your own extensions, or switch on all files
• Your existing workspaces can index more too: on the workspace selector, choose Edit workspace on a workspace's card, then pick what it should index under File types shown
• Files refern can't render (a .blend, an archive, a font) now show a proper file-type icon in the grid instead of being invisible, keep a small type badge, and can be given a cover image of your choice from the right-click menu or the metadata sidebar. Covers show in the grid, folder previews, and the viewer
• Drag files out of refern and drop them anywhere: another app, a chat, your file manager. Works for single files, multi-selections, folders, canvases, and groups, while drags inside refern still organize as before
• The grid now selects the way a file manager does: click selects an item, Ctrl or Cmd click toggles it, Shift click extends the selection, and double-click or Enter opens. The corner selector on each tile is gone
• A new Shortcuts settings page (beta) lets you rebind app commands, saved with your profile. It includes new commands such as reloading the app and docking the history bar
• Importing a file whose name is already taken now asks what to do: keep both, skip, or replace the existing file, per file or for the whole batch at once. A new Filename Conflicts setting under Import can make Keep both or Skip the standing answer instead of asking
• The tag manager handles bulk cleanup: drag a selection box across tags, then style or delete the whole selection together, making empty and duplicate tags quick to clear out
• The tag manager can now count how many times each tag is used. Refresh the counts on demand and they stay cached for the workspace, so unused tags are easy to spot
• Canvases now have configurable backgrounds: grid lines, dots, or a plain surface, plus a custom background color per canvas. Snapping and exports follow your choice
• GIFs in the viewer get a frame timeline with exact seeking, plus a playback speed control from 0.25x to 4x
• Timed study sessions can run in a chosen order (name, date added, size, or random), and skipping now advances through that order instead of jumping past it
• Random sort has a shuffle button next to the sort dropdown, so you can deal a fresh arrangement without restarting the app
• Asset pickers can now step into subfolders, so you can grab files from anywhere in the workspace without leaving the picker
• Creating a workspace is now a short set of focused steps: the basics, folder placement, then which file types to show
• New setting: open the workspace selector on launch instead of restoring your last workspace
• Every purchase screen now shows the price up front ($30 plus local tax) and notes that checkout runs through Polar, our merchant of record
• Saves from the browser clipper can now carry clip details (creator, NSFW, and Pixelated) onto the imported file, ready for the next clipper release
• Indexing a huge library no longer stalls near the end: a step that could hang for 20 minutes on a 167,000 file library now finishes in under a second, and cancelling indexing takes effect immediately at every stage
• Closing a video now stops its download right away. A stopped video could keep streaming in the background until the app closed, which on a network drive saturated the connection and could knock the drive offline
• The Windows installer now actually installs the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime it bundles, which some systems need for refern to run. It was silently skipped before
• Fixed a startup crash on Linux with NVIDIA graphics on Wayland
• Auto Tagger: an item whose suggestions were wiped is no longer skipped forever by untagged-only passes, and removing an item's last suggestion no longer leaves it counted as tagged. Replacing a file on import also clears the old file's suggestions and its search-by-meaning entry
• Fixed transparent animated WebPs rendering with blocks of opaque garbage in their animated thumbnails; soft shadows now stay clean
• Fixed web images referenced by an imported PureRef file failing to download from some sites
• Pasting text into a tag field now behaves like typing it: suggestions update and you can create a new tag from the pasted text
• Double-clicking a file shows its details in the sidebar immediately instead of waiting through a transition
• A canvas element whose file went missing can now be relinked to a new file in place, and missing references no longer break saving link updates
• Full-screen overlays no longer trap the window: you can still move it and use the window buttons while one is open
• Linux: resizing the window by its edges and corners now works reliably, with proper grab zones and the correct resize cursor
• Windows: fixed thin seams around the window edge when maximized
• Fixed flipping quickly through files briefly showing an image at the previous file's size
• Fixed canvas input getting stuck mid-gesture (such as a held pan) when the window lost focus during a drag
• Drop a folder into refern and its contents now stage in the import overlay for review before anything is imported
• Fixed the app sometimes freezing while browsing through videos, reported on Linux: preview and decoding work no longer piles up in the background after you leave a video
• Settings reopens on the page you last had open

Video Playback, Thumbnails & Network Drives

• Video plays on LinuxPlayback failed on every video, on every Linux build, before a single byte was read. Video now loads through refern's own local connection, and the .deb and .rpm install cleanly instead of colliding with your system's ffmpeg.
• Thumbnails that show the videoVideo thumbnails used to come from one second in, which is the fade-up or logo card on most edited footage, so they came back black. refern now takes a frame 10% in and falls back to 25% then 50% when that one reads blank. Your library is re-checked automatically after updating.
• Hover scrubbing without the CPU spikeScrubbing a video by hovering it in the grid no longer pins the CPU. Preview building stops the moment you move on, pauses while you scroll, and can be switched off entirely in settings.
• Choose your viewer backdropThe frosted glass behind an image or video tinted it with whatever was on the page below. The viewer now sits on a solid background by default, and you can set it to translucent or black in settings.

• Added a 'Viewer Backdrop' setting so the area around an image or video can be a solid background, translucent, or black. It now defaults to a solid background: the old frosted glass tinted whatever you were looking at with the page behind it
• Hold Alt (Option on macOS) and scroll over a video to scrub the timeline, one second per notch. Scrolling on its own still zooms. Both are listed in the ? shortcuts sheet
• Copying a file now behaves the way your file manager does: paste it into another app as the file itself, or into an image editor as the picture. Videos can be copied too
• refern now recognizes 11 more video file types, so clips it used to skip are indexed with everything else
• A video with no usable preview now shows a 'No preview' tile in the grid instead of blank space, and a video whose decoder quietly produces no picture is now reported as unplayable, so the button to create a playable copy is actually reachable
• Fixed video not playing at all on Linux. Every file failed before a single byte was read, for every codec and size. Linux now loads video through refern's own local connection, so playback works
• Fixed refern's bundled ffmpeg colliding with the system's own on Linux, which blocked the .deb and .rpm from installing outright. The AppImage now also carries the decoders it needs, and the .deb and .rpm point at your distribution's codec packages
• Fixed a crash loop on Linux where opening a video crashed the app, and refern reopened that same video on the next launch. A view that hard-crashes the app is no longer restored automatically
• Video thumbnails are no longer black. refern now takes a frame 10% into the clip, and falls back to 25% then 50% when that frame reads blank, instead of always grabbing one second in and landing on the fade-up or logo card. Existing videos are re-checked after updating, and a thumbnail you set yourself is kept
• Fixed .m2ts, .mts, and .m2t videos never getting a thumbnail at all, and fixed the hover filmstrip coming back mostly black. Affected videos are retried automatically after updating
• Hovering a video in the grid no longer spikes the CPU. Preview building stops as soon as you move on, pauses while you scroll, and runs at low priority. A new 'Build Video Previews on Hover in Grid' setting turns that generation off entirely, and previews already built stay scrubbable either way
• Animated thumbnails are now capped at 20 frames per second, so high frame rate GIFs stop bloating the thumbnail cache while indexing. Playback length is unchanged, only smoothness
• Windows: 'Open in Explorer' now works for files on a mapped network drive, and a mapped drive used as a content root keeps its drive letter instead of being rewritten to a network path. A drive waking from sleep no longer gets reported as offline on the first slow response
• Fixed panning a zoomed image cutting out partway through the drag
• Fixed the taskbar sitting on top of a fullscreen video on Windows when the window was maximized
• A video whose thumbnail fails no longer throws away the dimensions and duration refern already read for it

Native Video, Hidden Folders & a Unified Viewer

• Native videoImport and organize videos alongside your images. Step frame by frame, loop a section, drop labelled markers, and export clips, all in a player built for reference work.
• One viewer for everythingImages, GIFs, and videos now open in the same viewer, so the controls, shortcuts, and sidebar are identical wherever you came from.
• Hidden foldersHide a folder, or an entire content root. It stays indexed but stays out of search, grids, and pickers, so drafts and private material keep out of the way.
• A sharper canvasImages swap to full resolution as soon as they are drawn larger than their thumbnail, instead of at a fixed zoom level, and scaled-down images no longer look washed out.
• Holds up at scaleSelecting tens of thousands of items no longer stalls or crashes. Bulk move, trash, restore, rename, drag, and metadata edits all stay workable at that size.

• Added native video support: import and organize videos alongside your images, with a player built for reference work. Step frame by frame, scrub a storyboard preview straight from the timeline, read the waveform and filmstrip, set speed and volume, loop, resume where you left off, and pop the video out into picture-in-picture. Videos your system can't play are converted to a playable copy automatically
• Mark an A and a B point on a video to define a section, then loop it, export it as an .mp4 clip, cut it losslessly with no re-encode, save it as an animated .webp loop (up to 30 seconds), or trim the original (undoable)
• Add labelled markers anywhere on a video, save any marker's frame as an image, and export your markers and section to .otio and .edl timeline files for your editing app
• Copy or save the current frame, pull a color palette from it (and search your library by those colors), set a custom thumbnail or display image, and build a canvas board from a video or from its markers
• Videos are organized like everything else: filter by duration, frame rate, and codec, sort by duration, use them in smart folders, add them to groups, and hover one in the grid to scrub through it. The Auto Tagger samples frames so videos get suggestions too
• Drop a video onto a canvas and it plays in place, with scrubbing and frame stepping from the selection panel
• Images, GIFs, and videos now open in one unified viewer, so the controls, shortcuts, and sidebar are the same wherever you came from. Opening a file from inside another file's view now stacks properly, so closing returns you exactly where you were
• Animated GIFs can now be stepped frame by frame, in the viewer and on the canvas, with a playback row for landing on the exact frame you want
• You can now hide a folder, or an entire content root. Hidden content stays indexed but is grayed out in the sidebar and kept out of search, grids, pickers, similar images, counts, and suggestions, so drafts or private material stay out of the way. Unhide in one click. Trash and direct links are exempt, so nothing becomes unreachable
• Added a 'Pixelated' flag for pixel art and other low-resolution images: flagged images render crisp with hard edges instead of blurry when scaled up, everywhere including the canvas. Mark it from the metadata sidebar (single or bulk), or find them with is:pixelated
• Sidebar rows can now have their own icon and background image, separate from the folder page's cover. Set them from 'Customize look' in any row's right-click or ellipsis menu
• Auto Tagger review gained a Discard action (Shift+D) and a 'Discard all' button, plus a 'Selected images' pipeline scope so you can tag a hand-picked set. Also fixed review counts getting stuck on 'N left' when the queue was already empty
• Added 'Remove entry' in the trash: it clears an item out of refern but leaves the file on disk, so you can drop something from your library without deleting it. The file is picked up again as a fresh item on the next sync
• Pop-out windows now come back: refern remembers which ones were open, plus their size and position, and reopens them on the next launch
• Search filters now live inside the floating search island instead of a separate bar, so filter chips sit with the query they belong to
• Folder preview tiles now include videos, with a small badge in the corner marking the file type
• Linked references, groups, canvases an image sits on, and items created from it now show real thumbnails in the sidebar instead of generic icons, with a cleaner layout
• Canvas text can now be edited directly on the board, with Ctrl/Cmd+B, I, and U formatting while you type
• The canvas pen moved to B, matching the brush key in other drawing tools, and your last pen color is now remembered between sessions
• Importing with 'Move' now works across drives instead of failing, and any file that fails to import is listed by name with the reason, plus a Details button to copy the whole report
• PureRef imports now recover images whose source files were moved or renamed after the board was saved, falling back to the copies stored inside the .pur file, so far fewer items arrive as missing
• Destructive confirmations (deleting a workspace, a root, or a user) now ask you to type 'confirm' instead of retyping the exact name
• Fixed random crashes on Windows caused by other software hooking into the app's drawing. These showed up as crashes when restoring from the tray, and as seemingly random crashes while refern sat in the background
• refern no longer keeps drawing, and using your GPU, while minimized or hidden in the tray on Windows
• Fixed animated GIFs looping early, playing at different speeds in different places, and leaving afterimages when they have transparency
• Fixed a crash and long stalls when selecting tens of thousands of items at once. Bulk move, trash, restore, purge, rename, drag, and metadata edits now hold up at that scale. Grouping and linking stay switched off above 10,000 selected items, where they were never workable
• Canvas images now stay sharp: an image swaps to its full resolution as soon as it is displayed larger than its thumbnail (instead of at a fixed zoom level), and scaled-down images no longer look washed out or faded, matching how other reference tools draw them
• Fixed workspaces silently going read-only when the database file gets marked read-only, which happens with a full OneDrive account. Creating folders or tags failed with no explanation; refern now repairs it at startup, or tells you exactly what is wrong
• Fixed .jfif, .pjpeg, .pjp, and .apng images (Windows saves many downloaded JPEGs as .jfif) never getting a thumbnail. Existing ones repair themselves on the next pass
• Fixed date filters stopping at yesterday, so a search up 'to today' now includes today
• Fixed pressing Escape while fullscreen on macOS both closing what you were viewing and dropping the window out of fullscreen
• Fixed only one folder showing when two content roots each have a top-level folder with the same name, and fixed folders copied between roots disappearing after a resync. Navigating from search, groups, links, or similar images no longer lands you in the wrong root
• Quitting refern now closes any open pop-out windows too, instead of leaving them behind keeping the app alive
• Fixed the trial badge sometimes staying visible after activating a license
• Toasts raised in one workspace are now dismissed when you switch workspaces, so a stale Undo can't act on items that are no longer loaded. A finished timed study's summary is cleared on the switch too, instead of showing the previous workspace's images
• Fixed timed study summaries inflating the session duration every time you came back to them
• Fixed the folder tree showing blank gaps or missing rows after unhiding a large root
• Fixed pasting into canvas text putting the cursor in the wrong place, and fixed a duplicated text element not following the cursor on its first drag
• Removed the group: search filter, whose IDs were never shown anywhere in the app. 'Show all members' from a group's menu still works
• Stopped the 'File changes detected' prompt firing over and over for non-media files, such as a drawing app autosaving inside a content root
• Polish: a lone image in a justified row no longer stretches across the window, returning to a folder restores the true top of the grid, the last row of search results is no longer tucked under the floating island, and a group's bottom sheet now slides open instead of feeling stiff

Multi-Root Workspaces & a Smarter Auto Tagger

• A workspace can now hold several separate content folders at once instead of exactly one. Add, rename, re-point, or remove each root from workspace settings, and browse, search, and import across all of them together. Useful when your references live in more than one place on disk
• Upgraded the Auto Tagger's models: general tags, art tags, and 'Search by meaning' all got a big quality boost, text recognition now reads longer lines more accurately, and noisy filler tags (like '1girl' or 'no-humans') are filtered out automatically. Run a fresh pass from the Pipeline tab to re-tag and re-index with the new models
• Added a Configure tab to the Auto Tagger: browse every tag the models can produce, then block the ones you don't want or rename them to fit your library, so you can shape suggestions instead of accepting raw output
• You can now re-tag items that were already tagged (a Pipeline option), and wipe all suggested tags from a single item or a whole selection in the metadata sidebar, so refreshing or clearing tagging data no longer means starting over
• Auto Tagger review can now be scoped to specific folders, so you can accept or skip suggestions for just the part of your library you're working on
• When importing from PureRef or Allusion and the source images already live inside your workspace, refern can now reference them in place instead of copying, so you don't end up with duplicate files. It's on by default, with a toggle in the import confirmation
• 'Find similar' now has a Folder / All toggle, so you can limit visual and by-meaning matches to the image's own folder instead of always searching the whole workspace
• Copy and paste elements on the canvas: press Ctrl/Cmd+C to copy your selection, then Ctrl/Cmd+V to paste clones centered on the cursor. Pasting an image copied from another app still imports it as before
• Added canvas drag shortcuts: hold Ctrl/Cmd+Space and drag left or right to zoom, or, while the pen or eraser is active, to scrub the brush size up and down
• Added an 'Always load full resolution' canvas setting: skip the zoom-based level-of-detail so every image stays fully sharp, for those who prefer detail over faster board loading
• Launching refern while it's already running, even when minimized or closed to the tray, now brings the existing window back to focus instead of opening a second copy
• Improved pop-out canvases: closing the window now asks you to confirm, the side panels have proper top and bottom spacing, and images added from the main app are no longer overwritten by the pop-out's auto-save
• Added an option to blur thumbnails flagged as sensitive (on by default) across the grid, folder previews, and folder covers, until you open them
• Folder preview tiles now show a nested folder's cover image with a small folder badge, instead of a plain folder icon
• Added 'Expand all' to the library's menu in the navigator, so you can open or collapse your entire folder tree in one click
• Fixed mouse-wheel panning and zooming being far too fast on Windows, and added a 'Scroll & zoom speed' setting so you can tune it to your mouse
• Fixed timed study continuing to count time after a session ended, and its custom duration and image-count fields now accept whole numbers only
• Fixed the metadata sidebar blanking for a frame and jumping back to the top while you quickly page between images. It now holds the previous panel and scroll position until the next one loads
• Sped up large image grids, both loading and scrolling, and improved scrolling in the navigator sidebar's folder tree, so big libraries stay responsive
• Made permanently emptying the trash much faster, especially with a large number of items
• Fixed a crash during thumbnail generation on very large libraries, caused by image decoding starving the app's main thread on Windows
• Fixed trash bin corruption that could happen after renaming files outside the app, which could delete the wrong folder when emptying trash or fail to restore items
• Fixed animated GIFs continuing to use CPU while the app was minimized on Windows
• Fixed a search query typed in one workspace carrying over when you switched to another
• Fixed deleting an auto-generated tag leaving a stale tag chip in the sidebar until it reloaded
• Hardened workspace recovery: refern now fully flushes its database when the app closes, and a workspace whose database can't be opened (for example after copying a library between computers) is no longer mistaken for corruption and rebuilt from scratch
• Browser extension: the clipper's folder picker now understands multi-root workspaces and makes saving a single click (navigating to a folder selects it, with no separate save step), plus per-root folder creation and clearer '@user / workspace' labels
• Browser extension: improved which images get a save button, so small on-screen images like avatars and icons no longer get one by mistake
• Browser extension: added an auto-scroll toggle that gently scrolls a page so lazy-loaded images stream into the clipper without manual scrolling
• Browser extension: fixed removing a tag not sticking, so deleted tags no longer reappear when you reopen the popup

Multiple Windows, Custom Data Folder & Recovery

• Added multiple windows: pop out any image or canvas into its own window to view or edit it side by side with the main app. Pop-out windows support drag-and-drop and paste to import, theme syncing, and window opacity, and canvas pop-outs always auto-import dropped files
• Added a custom data folder: choose a separate location for refern's generated files (database, thumbnails, and backups) while your original images stay where they are. Useful for keeping a large library on a slow drive but its index on a fast SSD. Pick it when creating a workspace, move it later from workspace settings, or re-point your content folder if you moved it. Workspaces that don't set one work exactly as before
• Added one-click workspace recovery: if a workspace's database is ever lost or corrupted, refern now shows a recovery screen when you open it, and a single 'Recover workspace' action on the workspace card, to restore from an automatic backup or a refern export. It also detects corruption and offers to auto-recover
• Added renaming from the multi-select sidebar: rename a single item in place, or give many items a shared name with an automatic numbered suffix (the file extension is preserved). Press F2 to rename the selected item, folder, canvas, or the image you're previewing
• The rename dialog now selects the whole name when it opens, so you can start typing to replace it instead of appending
• Added canvas export: save any canvas as a high-resolution image from the metadata sidebar
• Reworked the full-screen image page: its controls now match the preview overlay's order and include a copy button, and closing it (Esc or the X) reliably returns you to where you came from (folder, search, smart folder, or group) with your scroll position kept, instead of stepping back one image at a time
• Renamed 'Views' to 'Smart folders' throughout the app for consistency
• Items pulled into a folder's grid from its subfolders (when 'Show subfolders' is on) now show a small badge, so you can tell them apart from items that live directly in the folder
• When no default import folder is set, imports now go to your library root ('My library'), which you can also pick as the default in Settings. refern no longer auto-creates an 'Unsorted' folder
• The Eagle import summary now lists every file that couldn't be imported, each with a 'reveal in file explorer' action, plus a 'Copy report' button, so the details aren't lost when you close the dialog
• Fixed deleting a tag in the tag manager leaving images that had it in a half-tagged state, where they showed no tags but were also missing from the 'Untagged' filter. Those images are now properly untagged
• Fixed importing a refern export (.zip) sometimes restoring an empty workspace. Restored workspaces now correctly rebuild their links, search index, and tagging data
• Fixed the Auto Tagger's downloadable models failing to load on macOS release builds
• Fixed library imports (Eagle, Allusion, PureRef) not showing thumbnails on workspaces that use a custom data folder
• Added the running app version to Settings > Diagnostics so you can confirm what you're on at a glance

Auto Tagger, Search by Meaning & Library Imports

• Added the Auto Tagger, a fully on-device engine that suggests tags, recognizes text inside your images, and can describe them, so you can label a large library without tagging everything by hand. It's completely offline and opt-in: open the Auto Tagger from the sidebar and download only the parts you want. Nothing runs or installs until you choose to
• Review suggestions in a fast, keyboard-driven game: accept or skip with the arrow keys, tweak recognized text, and undo with Ctrl/Cmd+Z. Run the tagger across your whole workspace or just selected folders, and watch live progress as it goes
• Added a Suggestions section to the metadata sidebar: see suggested tags and recognized text for the selected image (or a folder's combined tags), click a suggestion to apply it, or press Auto-fill to tag an item on the spot
• Added 'Search by meaning': describe what you're looking for in plain language (like 'a cozy reading nook' or 'a misty mountain at dawn') and refern surfaces matching images even when the words aren't in any tag, name, or note. Toggle it on in the search overlay
• Added 'Find similar by meaning' to the image right-click menu, alongside the existing visual-similarity and duplicate modes
• Added Import from PureRef: pull the images out of a PureRef board (.pur) and into your workspace from Settings > Import
• Added Import from Allusion: bring in an Allusion library from its exported backup file, recreating your folder structure and carrying across Allusion's colored, nested tags. Find it in Settings > Import
• Rebuilt Import from Eagle on a faster streaming pipeline: large libraries import using far less memory, with live progress and a cancel button, and a hung external or USB drive is now reported as an error instead of freezing the import
• Added horizontal and vertical flip for images: flip on the canvas (right-click or the selection panel) and in the image viewer, preview overlay, and timed study from the adjustments menu
• You can now collapse and reorder the metadata sidebar's sections: drag the handle to rearrange them and click a section header to collapse it. Your order and collapsed sections are remembered across sessions
• Set the minimum macOS version to 12. On older system webviews that can't run them, graph view and the canvas editor now show a friendly notice instead of crash-looping
• Fixed dragging an image into the app skipping the import staging area when it was already open over a folder. External drops now always go through staging instead of silently auto-importing
• Fixed a doubled progress card when dragging files into the app: importing and indexing now show in one card, with feedback while large or HEIC images are being read
• Stopped stray browser shortcuts from disrupting the app: Ctrl+P no longer opens a print dialog, and save-page, view-source, find, and download shortcuts are suppressed too
• Fixed search, folder picker, crop, graph, and import overlays collapsing or sizing incorrectly on older macOS
• Fixed more Linux rendering issues following the invisible-window fix: removed a GPU workaround that was itself causing trouble on some setups

Startup & Linux Window Hotfix

• Fixed the app failing to start when an older version left behind an empty profile file — refern now detects it and heals itself on the next launch with no data loss
• Fixed an invisible app window on some Linux setups (Wayland on Fedora/GNOME) by shipping an opaque window. The see-through window opacity feature is turned off on Linux to match
• Resolved a batch of under-the-hood reliability and performance findings — timer cleanup in effects, more stable list rendering, and fewer unnecessary re-renders

Canvas Find Similar & Fix

• Added 'Find similar' on canvas. Right-click an image (or press Ctrl/Cmd+F) to bloom a radial wheel of visually similar images, then click one to drop it onto the canvas right above the original and into its group
• Fixed graph view crashing the app on older macOS versions

1.0 Full Release

• refern is officially out of alpha. Welcome to 1.0
• Redesigned the home dashboard with a hero layout: a greeting, command-bar search, and quick-stat cards over a customizable per-workspace background (none, color, or image). What's new, the extension guide, and help now open in modals
• Rebuilt the onboarding experience with a new welcome flow, including dedicated import and browser-extension setup steps, plus an osu-style workspace selector wheel
• Added workspace icon customization: pick a colored letter, an emoji, or an image for your workspace, shown in the workspace switcher and the selector card
• Added a first-run 'Get started' checklist that walks you through importing, migrating from Eagle or refern v1, creating folders, tagging, color search, canvas, and the browser clipper
• On canvas, the selection editor now opens automatically the first time you select something so it's easier to find. Your show or hide choice still sticks once you set it
• You can now target your library root ('My library') everywhere you pick a folder: the move dialog, asset picker, import destination, and the canvas 'add to canvas' panel
• Added a 'remove all tags' option to the bulk and import metadata editors
• Large workspaces open quickly again. Removed a full database integrity scan that could stall multi-GB libraries on hard drives for over 20 minutes on every open. The deep check now runs in the background only when needed, and offers a one-click restore from backup if it ever finds a problem
• Improved 'Show subfolders' performance on large hard-drive-backed workspaces. Flattening a deep folder no longer slows down thumbnails and other reads, and the subfolder controls now respond instantly
• Fixed switching the tag mode (Add, Remove, or Replace) wiping a typed-but-unsaved note or other in-progress edits in the metadata editor
• Fixed the 'linked' and 'not linked' search filters missing one side of a linked pair
• Toned down the highlighted 'Unsorted' option in the import destination picker so it no longer stands out so brightly

Library Import & Subfolders

• Import your tags and metadata — refern now reads embedded keywords, ratings, descriptions, and source info (EXIF/IPTC/XMP) when you add images, so you keep your tags when moving from another app. Includes a Settings re-scan to backfill existing images
• Added Import from Eagle — bring an Eagle library's folders, tags, ratings, sources, notes, and images into refern from Settings > Import
• Added 'Show subfolders' — a per-folder toggle to flatten everything from nested folders into the grid and/or the in-folder search, with a depth control (1 / 2 / 3 / All levels)
• Added a setting to always animate GIFs in the grid or only play them on hover — hover-play keeps GIF-heavy folders fast, and grid GIFs now show a small badge. GIFs also play in graph view now
• Faster indexing and thumbnails on hard drives — refern now detects spinning disks and tunes itself so they no longer bog down, with an Auto / SSD / HDD option on the progress card
• The app now checks for updates periodically in the background, not just at startup
• New app icon, and the workspace switcher moved to the top of the navigator sidebar as an easy-to-find account-style row
• Fixed smart folder sorting — picking a sort other than the saved one is now respected
• Fixed smart folders and search showing group cards and unrelated members of a matching group instead of just the items that match
• Fixed the tag editor not creating a new tag whose name is part of an existing one — pressing Enter now creates 'log' even when 'geology' already exists
• Fixed new tags added from the browser clipper not showing on the saved image until a refresh
• Fixed deleting an image on a canvas sometimes trashing the original file in your library
• Blocked AVIF images from import (refern can't decode them yet) and fixed the clipper saving YouTube thumbnails as broken .jpg files
• Fixed the crash banner appearing after a successful update, and made update prompts reachable even from the crash screen
• Fixed a memory leak on the canvas, and idle canvas tabs no longer keep a CPU core spinning
• Fixed trash — the toolbar no longer disappears when you click an item, and the sidebar trash count now updates
• Fixed drag-and-drop reordering of tags in the tag hierarchy
• Fixed the metadata sidebar showing stale info after renaming a file in the preview overlay
• Graph view fixes: clicking empty space no longer deselects the focused image, clipper-saved images now show at full resolution without a reload, the embedded graph shows a loading state instead of collapsing and no longer re-renders when you change the subfolder setting, and long labels stay on one line
• Improved tooltips and screen-reader support — adjacent tooltips now open instantly as you move between them

Right-Click Save & Per-Site Controls

• Right-click any image to save it to refern — 'Quick save' sends it to your last-used folder (shown in the menu), or 'Save to refern…' opens the folder picker
• Per-site disable — turn the clipper off on sites where you don't want it, or manage a full blacklist of domains. Settings persist across tabs and restarts
• Choose the hover button's size (small / medium / large) and which corner of the image it sits on
• Reworked the folder picker's save action into a clear 'Save to: <folder>' button so the active destination is unmistakable, and save toasts now show the destination folder name
• Warns before batch-saving many images at once, since that can trip a site's rate limits
• Fixed the hover button cluster disappearing when the cursor moved off the buttons but stayed over the image
• Fixed the settings panel clipping on short browser windows

Backups & Link Basket

• Added periodic workspace backups — automatic snapshots saved to disk with one-click recovery from Settings > Diagnostics, plus an NDJSON last-resort archive for full re-import
• Added cross-device safety for workspaces on cloud-sync folders (Drive, Dropbox, iCloud): warning on workspace creation and a blocking modal when the same workspace is opened from another device, to prevent SQLite corruption
• Added a workspace JSON archive recovery action on the workspace card — hover a workspace to rebuild it from its NDJSON archive if the SQLite file is lost
• Added a link basket — right-click any image, canvas, or folder to drop it into a corner panel, then commit the collected set as cross-references. Solves cross-folder linking that previously required a single multi-selection in one location
• Added right-click context menus to folders and canvases in the grid (rename, delete, favorite, link, show in graph view, reveal in file explorer, and more)
• Added 'Show in graph view' to folder and canvas right-click menus (was image-only before)
• Added a 'Create' call-to-action in empty directories and All Content so you can add folders, canvases, or images without going to the navigator sidebar
• Replaced the metadata sidebar's quick-action ellipsis with a visible File section (Rename, Move, Reveal in file explorer, Move to Trash) so the actions are discoverable at a glance
• Reworked the bulk metadata sidebar — added labels above each editable field so multi-value inputs stay identifiable when the placeholder collapses to 'Multiple values', and merged Grouping + Linking into one section so the sidebar no longer flickers in height as selection changes
• Major grid scrolling performance improvements — eliminated per-scroll re-renders so wide-column and group-heavy folders stay smooth, and shared drop-target subscriptions across all visible cells
• Smoother canvas pan and zoom — removed allocation churn in the camera controls hot path
• Made long settings rows wrap on narrow panels instead of overflowing
• Improved screen reader support for icon-only buttons across the app
• Fixed the graph view's 'limit reached' disclaimer overlapping with the control bar — moved to top-left on both the overlay and the full graph page
• Fixed graph overlay opening with the wrong focal node when triggered in quick succession from a right-click menu

Graph View

• Added graph view — visualize your workspace as an interactive map of folders, images, canvases, groups, and tags, with all the links between them
• Open the full graph from the navigator sidebar, see a focused view inline in the metadata sidebar's Connections tab, or pop it open from an image's right-click menu
• Drag nodes to reposition, click to select, double-click to open the item
• Customize node and edge colors per kind in graph settings
• Fixed sluggish scrolling in folders with many groups

Hotfix

• Fixed drag-and-drop in the search overlay leaking through to groups in the grid beneath the overlay
• Fixed poor performance when linking and grouping items
• Fixed trashing items then resyncing with disk causing duplicate items to appear
• Fixed groups in the grid showing as a blank solid color while searching
• Added a reorder group button to the group bottom sheet control area
• Fixed tag autocomplete missing existing tags when the query contained spaces or special characters (e.g. typing 'new tag' now finds the existing 'new-tag')
• Fixed workspaces failing to open after upgrading to 0.4.0 when they contained images cropped from a source that was later permanently deleted — affected workspaces auto-heal on the next launch with no data loss

Linked References & Image Grouping

• Added image grouping — select images in a folder and group them together into a fan card in the grid
• Added cross-grid linking — select items in any grid to link them together
• Adding images to canvases now creates a link between the image and the canvas automatically
• Added a 'Linked References' section in the metadata sidebar showing groups, cropped-from source, canvases the image is placed in, and manually linked items — click any entry to jump to it
• Added an image grouping carousel in the grid for groups with multiple members
• Added a per-folder caption preference — show file name, path, size, dimensions, or item count under each grid item
• Reworked the canvas 'Add image' flow into an inline page with drag-and-drop support
• Unified canvas layers into groups — every layer is now a group that can be nested, named, and optionally backgrounded. Cmd+G wraps the selection into a backgrounded group, Cmd+Shift+G ungroups
• Made canvas group backgrounds draggable — grab the group label to move the entire frame and its contents
• Added folder right-click actions: rename, delete, open source in browser, reveal file, add to canvas, favorite, show similar images, group/ungroup, link items, and preview in overlay
• Added canvas right-click actions: reveal file, group/ungroup
• Fixed orphaned files appearing as empty folders after the dedupe repair — a one-shot parent-orphan repair runs on workspace open and is also accessible in Settings > Diagnostics

Workspace Open Hotfix

• Fixed workspaces failing to open after upgrading to 0.3.9 when they contained pre-existing duplicate entries — the dedupe repair now completes correctly and affected workspaces auto-heal on the next launch with no data loss
• Update-available notifications now appear even when the app falls back to its top-level error screen, so a fix can be installed without manually restarting

Canvas Tools & Workspace Dedupe Repair

• Added freehand drawing, shapes (rectangle, ellipse, line, arrow, triangle, polygon, star, diamond), and color swatches to canvas. Pen has armed pen/eraser, pressure, Shift for straight lines
• Added canvas group backgrounds — toggleable frames behind group layers with configurable color, opacity, padding, corner radius, and label
• Added image filters (brightness, contrast, saturation, etc.) on canvas and in timed study
• Added non-destructive image cropping on canvas — inline crop frame with aspect ratio presets, Reset to natural size, and full undo. Works alongside the existing destructive crop in folders
• Reorganized canvas UI: layer panel moved to the left, selection sidebar moved into the canvas toggle, per-element lock + ancestor-of-selection highlight in the layer panel
• Canvas QOL: scroll-zooms by default, drops/pastes land at the mouse position, text and shape tools stay armed across multiple placements, larger initial text size and higher size cap, normalize selection size, entire bounding box is draggable, toast jump-to-canvas button after adding an image from a folder
• Added 'Launch on startup' option in settings
• Added a setting to toggle the navigator sidebar dropdown button between overlay and inline, plus a hover trigger delay before the sidebar pops out
• Made grid scrollbars always visible in directory, all content, and trash views, and improved scrollbar visibility overall
• Asset picker now auto-selects the current folder when picking covers and backgrounds
• Removed the similarity distance slider in similar images and raised the result cap
• Split the settings menu into focused submenus (Canvas, Grid, Import, Navigator, etc.) so options are easier to find
• Fixed duplicate file and folder entries created when the indexer was interrupted in v0.3.7+. Affected workspaces are automatically cleaned up on first launch — no data is lost; metadata is merged into the surviving entries
• Added a partial unique index on (workspace, kind, path, name) so any future regression that re-introduces this bug fails loudly instead of silently doubling your library
• Added Schema Maintenance section in Settings > Diagnostics showing migration history and the dedupe repair status for the open workspace
• Added a forensic dedupe audit log next to refern-db.sqlite so support can trace exactly which rows were collapsed if a question comes up
• Fixed large-workspace navigator sidebar tree flickering between skeleton states and slow load when switching from collapsed to docked
• Fixed rapidly dragging and dropping an image item leaving the drag ghost stuck on screen
• Fixed drag-drop and paste directly into canvas triggering a 'File changes detected' resync toast
• Fixed 'Reveal in Explorer' failing on SMB shares due to the Windows extended-length path prefix

Image Cropping, Grid Drag & Drop, and Extension Release

• Added image cropping with aspect ratio presets, save-as-new or replace modes, optional metadata transfer, and a 10-second undo on replace
• Added drag and drop from the grid to move items, add to canvases, or send to trash
• Released the refern clipper extension to the Chrome, Firefox, and Safari (pending) stores
• Reworked the refern clipper extension folder picker with the ability to create new folders inline
• Added a 'derived' search query to find cropped images
• Added a 'is:duplicate' search query to find visually identical images
• Added a context menu option to set an image as a folder cover or background when in folder page
• Added a 'scope to folder' context menu option to bring the active folder to the top of the directory tree
• Added indent adjustment and indent guide toggles in settings for directory tree
• Added more color options to the color label palette
• Added a 'include subfolder' option in timed study to include all images in subfolders
• Auto-focus the search field when opening the folder, canvas, and asset picker
• Added a access to the default context menu option to all custom context menus
• Grouped canvas items after folder items in grids
• Optimized workspace load time for large workspaces
• Improved navigator sidebar tree rendering performance on Linux
• Standardized font sizing in the refern clipper extension across different websites
• Fixed browser extension panel showing 'connect' state while the save button still worked
• Fixed grid sometimes only showing placeholders when dragging and dropping images into the app
• Fixed image flicker caused by fade-in re-triggering when moving items
• Fixed bulk extension imports incorrectly opening the pipeline card and breaking the import flow
• Fixed extension hover button briefly appearing in the top right of the page on first load
• Fixed folder sort order not being applied when inline search was active
• Fixed renaming a file from the metadata sidebar not updating the displayed name
• Fixed canvas occasionally failing to load

Streaming Indexing & Navigator Virtualization

• Reworked indexing pipeline using a streaming process to support workspaces with up to 10 million items
• Added workspace reconciliation during resync with disk
• Added virtualization to the navigator sidebar directory tree for improved performance
• Added error boundaries across app layers to prevent instant crashes
• Added a recovery tool to restore tags into existing items
• Added default context menu with window controls, refresh data, navigation, and panel toggles
• Updated the resync workspace button to offer 'Refresh Data' or 'Resync with Disk' options
• Added custom tree icons and an option to show covers and backgrounds for folders and canvases in the directory tree
• Added an option to show item counts by type on directory tree items in the navigator sidebar
• Added a 'Collapse all' button to My Library to collapse all folders
• Grouped folders together and display on top, separating them from other items in all grids
• Hidden expand buttons on empty folders in the directory tree
• Updated styling and added tooltips for truncated text on directory tree items
• Fixed displayed tags not updating automatically when modified in the tag manager
• Fixed arrow keys scrolling the background grid while in image preview
• Fixed duplicated 'Unsorted' folders being automatically created
• Fixed 'no content found' issue when loading into a workspace with an active inline search tag filter

Hotfix

• Fixed unable to index workspace that has 500k+ items

Hotfix

• Update check now runs before workspace load (no need to load into workspace to update)
• Fixed unable to search tags after update
• Fixed resync workspace when a file change detected gets rid of tags
• Fixed renaming files crashes the app
• Fixed fresh installs unable to get into the app because missing save.json
• Fixed unable to open tag filter menu after clear all in search overlay
• Fixed unable to close app in workspace selector screen
• Replaced eye icon with exclamation shield for NSFW indicator

Hotfix

• Changes merged into v0.3.5

SQLite Migration & Performance

• Migrated to SQLite database (automatic migration from JSON save files)
• Support workspaces of any size
• Instant workspace loading after indexing regardless of size
• Instant grid page loading with any number of items
• Significantly faster bulk editing
• Much faster image page keyboard navigation
• Horizontal and justify layout modes for all grids (configurable globally and locally)
• All grids in the workspace now respect global grid configurations
• Primary color placeholder while fast scrolling through grid before images load
• Fixed image thumbnail rotation not matching actual image rotation
• Fixed unable to delete color filter in filter bar when it is the only entry
• Fixed search bar overlapping with multi-select control bar
• Fixed Ctrl+A selection triggering when image preview overlay is open
• Fixed RAW image thumbnails missing
• Fixed staging image previews not respecting EXIF orientations

Performance, Tabs & Grid Preferences

• Faster workspace switching and first-time indexing
• Per-directory and per-workspace grid preferences (configurable in Settings)
• Pin tabs from the tab bar, close all tabs, and tab behavior modes (new tab, preview, hidden)
• Reveal in file explorer from grid right-click, image page, and metadata sidebar
• Browser zoom support (Ctrl + / -) and adjustable text size in settings
• Canvas: toggleable option to use scroll for zoom instead of pan
• Drag and drop from web now saves the source URL automatically
• Quick preview override toggle in the floating toolbar per directory and view
• Create new tags directly while building tag hierarchies and tag groups
• Append, overwrite, or delete tag modes in import overlay and bulk editor
• Tag macros now available in bulk select edit and staging metadata editor
• Tag creation forms now suggest pleasing random color combinations
• Image preview overlay now also opens the corresponding metadata sidebar
• Search: single space allowed after operators, floating toolbar always visible in search mode
• Clearer workspace path guidance in onboarding and the create-workspace flow
• Fixed dragging items inside the app triggering the drop overlay
• Fixed fail to copy images to clipboard that has its extension name changed from original
• Fixed shift-scroll and ctrl-scroll not working on Linux
• Fixed NSFW search filter only applies true on initial selection

Clipboard & Import Improvements

• Copy image to clipboard (right-click on image page, metadata sidebar, or directory)
• Theme follows system preference option
• Double-click in metadata sidebar to rename file
• More prominent back button in image page
• Shift+Click to multi-select first item in grid instead of triggering open action
• Option to change image page default open mode (full page or overlay)
• Fixed v1 import breaking on malformed data
• Fixed drag and drop images from web (e.g. from X) not being picked up
• Fixed renaming file format (e.g. webp to png) breaking thumbnail generation
• Fixed drag and dropping folder into another folder not applying folder preset
• Fixed moving nested folder then deleting parent folder causing moved folder content to also be deleted
• Fixed Linux app showing native window title bar
• Fixed ability to create new folder when previous folder at the same path was soft deleted