Product Updates

What's new?

Browse the updates I've shipped and see what's new. Your feedback drives these improvements and helps make Orbit better for everyone. Follow me on X for more frequent updates.

Changelog 0 8 0

New

  • Data Export: You can now export your screen recordings and metadata month-by-month from Settings. Choose between different export formats. Each export includes a manifest and simple instructions to help you use your data outside of Orbit.

Improved

  • App Filtering: Use @AppName in your search queries to filter results by application. Type something like @Slack Michael to find everything you did in Slack that's related to Michael.
  • Deep Links: Open Orbit directly from various deep links. Jump straight to search, settings, or the timeline without opening the app first.

Fixed

  • Search Stability: Cleaned up how search handles special characters like periods and slashes, preventing errors when searching for file paths, URLs, or technical terms.
  • Timezones: Standardized the date display across timezones and fixed related issues with invalid hours in the time picker.

Changelog 0 7 0

New

  • Website Exclusions: Take control of what gets captured. Block specific websites by domain and automatically skip private browsing windows across Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Arc.

Improved

  • Timeline Access: Open the timeline directly from the menu bar and get there faster with a new search hint.
  • Timeline Navigation: Scrolling through your timeline now feels more natural. Regular scrolling moves through time, while holding Cmd and scrolling lets you zoom in and out.

Changelog 0 6 0

New

  • Accent Color Customization: Orbit now lets you change the accent color throughout the app, so you can make it feel more personal.

  • Timeline Hotkey: Open your screen history timeline instantly with a keyboard shortcut. Defaults to Alt+Shift+T

  • Time Picker: Jump to a particular time of day when choosing a date in the timeline view.

Improved

  • Offline Authentication: Orbit now works better when your internet connection drops. You can keep using the app without getting kicked out or losing access to your data.

  • Permission Change Detection: If you revoke or change permissions after setup, Orbit now picks up on that and guides you through fixing it.

Fixed

  • Screen Capture Errors: Resolved an issue causing screen capture errors on certain configurations. Orbit should now run more reliably without unexpected crashes.
v0.5.0 banner

New

  • Launch at Startup: You can now have Orbit automatically launch when you log in to your Mac. Simply enable the new "Launch at startup" option in Settings → General. Orbit is set to launch at startup by default, but you can change this at any time.

Improved

  • Better Keyboard Navigation: Browse your recordings like you would in Finder. Use arrow keys to select screenshots, Space to preview them, and Enter to open the detail view. Click once to select a frame, double-click to open it.

  • Session Switching: If you use Fast User Switching on your Mac or log out while Orbit is running, recording automatically pauses and resumes when you return to your session. Your recordings stay associated with the correct user account.

  • Keyboard Shortcuts: Recording keyboard shortcuts now works properly across different keyboard layouts. If you use an international keyboard, shortcuts will display with the correct symbols for your layout.

  • Empty States: When your search doesn't return any results, you'll now see a helpful empty state instead of a blank screen.

Fixed

  • Screen Playback: Fixed an issue where some screenshots could appear corrupted or display incorrectly during playback.
v0.4.0 banner

New

  • Quick Preview in search results: Press Space on a selected frame to instantly preview it.

Improved

  • Customizable hotkeys: Tailor key commands to match your workflow and muscle memory.
  • Adjustable scrub speed: Change how fast you move through the timeline (with easy controls and a reset), making both precise scrubbing and fast scanning more comfortable.

Fixed

  • Sign-in from Settings: The Settings sign-in flow is now more reliable and smoother to use.

New

  • Telemetry consent prompt so you can control whether crash data is shared.
  • In-app survey integration to make it easier to give feedback at the right moment.

Improved

  • More helpful recorder error messages, making it clearer what went wrong when the recording crashes.

Fixed

  • Frequent sign-outs by investigating the underlying cause and improving session stability.

New

  • Crash report uploads. When something goes wrong, Orbit can now securely send an anonymized crash report so issues can be diagnosed faster and fixes can reach you sooner.

Improved

  • More reliable error handling behind the scenes. Orbit now handles failures more gracefully, reducing the chance that a small hiccup escalates into a broken workflow.
  • Stronger privacy protections in error reporting. Sensitive information is scrubbed from analytics error events, so diagnostics are more privacy-conscious by default.

Fixed

  • Time picker performance. The time picker is now much more responsive, especially when adjusting values repeatedly.
  • Update issues. Fixed an error that could block or disrupt updating, making updates more dependable.

New

  • Recording crash alerts: Orbit now notifies you if the recording process crashes, so you can quickly restart and avoid losing time (or missing a recording without noticing).

Improved

  • Update flow: Updates are smoother and more reliable, with clearer behavior during the install/restart process.
  • Changelog visibility: The changelog now focuses on meaningful releases (major and minor), so you’re not interrupted by noise on smaller patches.