Release Notes

v1.0.0-beta.5 September 2026

The About window really does show your version now

Choosing Vesper Orbit → About Vesper Orbit reported 0.1.2 on every build, no matter which version was installed. It now shows the version you are running, matching the rest of the suite. The About window also credits Vesper Technologies, LLC.

v1.0.0-beta.4 September 2026

A new app icon. Vesper Orbit now wears the refreshed Vesper mark on its own product tile, matching the rest of the suite. No functional changes.

v1.0.0-beta.3 September 2026

Scan one page instead of a whole site, and know where every file came from.

Single Page mode

A new Full Site / Single Page selector sits under the address field. Single Page scans the page you entered and nothing else: it captures every PDF, image, audio file and video that page references, and never follows a link to another page. Point it at one publications page and you get that page's files, not the whole archive behind it.

Every file now records where it came from

_manifest.csv gained nine columns alongside the originals: the page the file was found on, that page's title, the link text, the image alt text, the title attribute, any caption, the ARIA label, the filename the server declared, and the file's original name. Client sites often name files 0001_1.jpg or 1907.pdf; the manifest is what tells you which is which. Nothing is renamed, and nothing is guessed - every column holds text that was actually attached to that file on the page.

Organize by media type or by site structure

Keep the familiar pdfs/ and images/ folders, or switch to Site structure and get the page's own path underneath them - pdfs/about/board/. The path follows the page the file was linked from, not where the server happens to store it.

Options are remembered

Scan scope, media types, subdomains, the manifest toggle and the folder layout all persist between scans and between launches.

Fixes

• The updater could install an older version over a newer one. Pinning the update channel had the side effect of allowing downgrades. Fixed, along with a second guard that checks the version of any downloaded update against the version running before installing it.
• Images linked directly with a text link (rather than displayed on the page) are now captured.
• A URL matching one of your exclusion patterns can now be scanned when you type it in yourself. Exclusions apply to crawling, not to the page you asked for.

v1.0.0-beta.1 May 2026

First public beta of Vesper Orbit. A new tool in the Vesper suite that crawls a single domain and downloads its media (PDFs, images, audio, video) into a per-site folder.

What it does

• Crawls one domain (or its subdomains, optionally) breadth-first.
• Captures every linked PDF, image, audio file, and video. Toggle types on or off independently.
• Original filenames preserved when present in the URL. Numeric collision suffixes (-2, -3) and short-hash fallbacks for nameless URLs.
• Output structure: [chosen folder]/[site-name]-[YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM]/{pdfs, images, audio, video}/ plus a _manifest.csv mapping every source URL to its local file with status flags (ok, too_large, error, skipped_type).
• Defaults: all four media types ON, subdomains OFF, 100 MB per-file cap, max 5,000 pages per scan.

Smart URL exclusions

Skip dynamic-page traps that would otherwise generate thousands of pointless page loads (event calendars, faceted search filters, date pickers).

• Defaults match Vesper Audit's defaults so library and civic sites work cleanly out of the box.
• New Edit link on the idle screen opens a settings panel where you can add, remove, or toggle exclusion patterns. Three categories: path, query string, and regex.
• Patterns import/export to JSON files for sharing across machines or with Vesper Audit. Reset returns to defaults.
• Universal always-skip patterns (mailto:, tel:, javascript:, /wp-json/, /feed/, /tag/, /author/, ?s=) are always on.

Custom save folder

• New Change folder link below the Start button lets you pick where downloads go. Default is still ~/Downloads.
• Output folders always include a date-and-time stamp so re-scans of the same site never collide.

Persistent settings

• Output folder, exclusion patterns, exclusions on/off, and media-type toggles all survive across launches.
• Settings live in ~/Library/Application Support/Vesper Orbit/settings.json.

Polished macOS experience

• Branded DMG installer with the Vesper Orbit wordmark, nebula background, and amber arrow pointing to the Applications shortcut.
• Smooth Luna animation during scans. Luna rests at her crescent pose between scans (matches the Vesper logomark) and only animates while a scan is running.
• Live X pages scanned count - monotonic, no inflated discovered numbers that bounce as the crawler filters URLs.
• Closing the window or quitting during an active scan asks before aborting. Keep scanning is the default; Stop scan and close aborts the crawl cleanly.
• Apple menu includes About Vesper Orbit and Check for Updates... items.

Auto-Updates

Vesper Orbit checks for updates automatically against https://vesperapps.com/releases/orbit/. New versions download silently in the background; a slim banner at the top of the window prompts you to restart when an update is ready.

Requirements

• macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel).
• Google Chrome installed (used as the rendering engine for crawled pages).