Affection decides how long she stays, not only whether she starts.
- A low Affection setting now means shorter visits, not just more refusals. Around ten seconds at Aloof, half a minute at Choosy, a minute or two at Usually willing. A Needy cat still has no time limit, because a cat that wants to be there does not get up.
- If she falls asleep on you first, she stays. She meant to leave and dozed off instead.
Why: the slider only ever decided whether she started. After that the purr ran until you moved your hand, so an Aloof cat who said yes sat there exactly as long as a Needy one. The bottom half of the slider was doing something real and nothing you could feel: you asked for less cat and got the same amount, just less often. Refusing more often is not the same as wanting you less.
She tells you when she brings something.
- A notification when a gift arrives, with a picture of whatever she found, so the thing is visible before you open anything. Clicking it opens the shelf. macOS asks permission the first time a gift actually turns up, not on the day you install.
- A Check now button beside the update switch, which ignores the six-hour wait and says whether you are up to date or whether it could not reach us.
- A new app icon.
Why the permission prompt waits: a gift arrives about once every three weeks. Asking for notification access on first launch, for something you have not seen exist yet, is a tax on people who may never reach it. Asked at the moment it is about to be useful, the question explains itself.
Being told an update exists, from inside the app.
- Updates now show in the window. A row in Settings with the waiting version and a download button, and a small dot on the sidebar's Settings row so it is visible from any panel.
- This changelog.
Why: the update notice lived in the menu bar popover and nowhere else, which was fine when the popover was the whole app. Since 0.4 the window is the app, so anyone working in the window never saw it. Worse: the window exists for people whose menu bar icon is hidden behind a notch or Bartender, and those were exactly the people who could not be reached.
Cats you can recolour.
- Six coats for every cat, chosen per cat, so the tomcat can be midnight while the kitten is snow. Part of the adoption; the original coat stays free.
- Every portrait is bigger. The art carried transparent padding, so a cat only ever filled 80% of her tile. That is cropped away.
- The window grows to fit the panel you opened, instead of leaving controls below the fold.
Why the colours change nothing else: the six cats differ in how they breathe, which is the actual product. A coat is paint. A black cat and a white one purr identically, and the app says so where you pick them.
It became a real app instead of a menu bar toy.
- A proper window with five panels: Purr, Cats, Record, Shelf, Settings. The popover shrank to a switch, two sliders and a door.
- Purr on demand. Switching the purr on by hand used to last two and a half seconds before the cat's own behaviour cancelled it. Now it stays on until you switch it off.
- Real portraits for all six cats, and art for the things she brings you.
- Recordings are deleted. The app promised on three separate screens that your cat's recording was thrown away, and nothing ever removed the file. It is now erased the moment the pitch is read, and any file left behind by an older version is cleared at launch.
- The strength scale was measured rather than guessed, with fifteen paired comparisons. The tap ids turn out not to sit on one scale at all.
The recording one matters most. It was a promise the app made and did not keep, for every version before this. If you used Record Your Cat before 0.4, updating deletes what was left behind.
A way in, for people who could not find the paw.
- Double-clicking PurrPad opens a window. Before this it did nothing at all.
- The update check runs at launch, not only when the popover is opened.
- Licence keys survive email. A key wrapped onto two lines by a mail client was being rejected as invalid.
Why: the first real support email. A menu bar app whose icon is hidden behind a notch or a crowded menu bar has no door, and the person who wrote in had paid for six cats he could not reach.
Quality of life.
- Launch at login, hover previews on the cat list, named cats, and the purr receding politely while you type.
The first public release.
- Six cats, Record Your Cat, the shelf, and the cat's own moods. Signed and notarised by Apple.