Changelog

Site update — August 14, 2026 · Headlines in one color

Website only; no change to the app.

• The headline no longer fades from one color into another across the letters. A gradient poured through text is the house style of every generated landing page on the web, and it was on the hero here, on the small uppercase label above each section, and on the license label in the purchase panel. The words are one solid color now — the accent this page already used everywhere else — so the headline finally matches the page under it.
• The figures on the download-stats page were faded the same way and are plain white now. The color belongs to the bars beside them, not to the digits.
• Gradients are kept where they belong — the buttons, the app tile and the rule above the support panel are untouched. It is only text that stopped fading.
• No change to the app.

Download update — August 12, 2026 · Opens without an internet check

• The copy of Scrubbr in the download now opens without needing the internet. macOS checks that an app has been approved by Apple before it runs for the first time. That approval can travel inside the app itself, and in the download it did not — so the first launch had to reach Apple to confirm it. Offline, behind a hotel or campus login page, or when Apple’s service was slow, that check could fail and macOS would report that Scrubbr “cannot be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software.” The approval now travels with the app, so the first launch works with no connection at all.
• Automatic updates were never affected — the copy they install already carried its approval.
• The installer window opens at the right size. It was one title bar too short, so the artwork behind the drag-to-Applications arrow was cut off along the bottom and the window opened already scrolled. It now fits exactly.
• The app itself is unchanged: same version, same signature. Only the download was repackaged, so there is nothing to do if you already have Scrubbr installed.

Site update — August 12, 2026 · How updating really works

• The update instructions were out of date. They described downloading a new copy and dragging it over the old one. Scrubbr updates itself — it checks about once a week and offers to install the new version in place, refusing any download that isn't signed by us. You can still replace it by hand, and you can turn the automatic check off.
• Nothing else changed. What this page already said about your files — that they are never uploaded, and that there is no account and no telemetry — was accurate and is unchanged.
• No change to the app.

Site update — August 12, 2026 · Readable buttons and small print

• The buttons in the header say what they say. The Tip and Download pills were drawing their label at 55% opacity over a colored fill, which measured as low as 1.6:1 against it — well under the 4.5:1 the accessibility guidelines ask for. Their labels are now solid, and the fill behind them is set a shade deeper so the text genuinely clears that bar.
• The Subscribe and Support buttons too. Their labels were colored for one end of a two-color gradient and disappeared into the other end. Both now use a single fill that the label is legible on all the way across.
• The newsletter note, the “More apps” caption and the version line under the download button were all set too faint to read comfortably; each is now above the AA threshold.
• Keyboard shortcut chips are legible against their own background.
• No change to the app.

Site update — August 11, 2026 · Clearer search results

• The description under this site in Google is no longer cut off. It ran past the length Google shows and broke mid-word; it now reads as a complete sentence.
• The page title was also long enough to be truncated in search results, and has been shortened to fit.
• Sharing a link to the privacy, terms or changelog page now shows a proper preview card instead of a bare URL.
• The sitemap now reports when each page actually changed, so search engines re-check pages that have been updated instead of assuming they are stale.
• No change to the app.

August 11, 2026 · A new look

• Changed: Scrubbr has a new app icon. Every twoplus11 app moved to one generated palette, so the color in your Dock, on this site and on the download page is now the same color — they had drifted apart.
• Changed: refreshed the site to match, including the tab icon and the link preview image.

Site update — August 10, 2026 · Real screenshots of the app

• The product page illustrated the app with a hand-drawn mock-up of a window rather than showing Scrubbr itself. It now shows the running app: the hidden location, identity and device fields a sample photo was carrying, and a short animation of stripping them into a clean copy. No change to the app.

1.1.11 — August 9, 2026 · Automatic updates

• New: Scrubbr updates itself. When a new version is out you get a prompt with the release notes and can install it in place — no more visiting the site and dragging a new copy over the old one. This is the last update you have to install by hand.
• New: refreshed appearance — Scrubbr now uses the shared twoplus11 palette and a regenerated app icon, so it matches the rest of the family.
• Fixed: contrast and keyboard-navigation problems (WCAG 2.1 AA) — faint text is now readable, and every control can be reached and used from the keyboard.
• Fixed: the Check for Updates button spins while it checks, instead of flashing an empty window.

1.1.10 — July 20, 2026 · Icon refinement

• Refined the app icon: two clean plus-mark sparkles and a crisp eraser, tuned to stay legible all the way down to Dock and favicon size.
• The in-app icon, the Dock icon, and the website icon are now generated from a single source, so they always match.

1.1.9 — July 17, 2026 · Icon refresh

• Refined the app icon: the sparkle trail is now three fading stars instead of plus-marks, and a stray line in the shine has been cleaned up.

1.1.8 — July 17, 2026 · 13 languages

• New: 13-language localization with an in-app flag picker (auto-detects your Mac's language, override anytime).
• Fixed: "Location only" mode now actually keeps non-GPS metadata (Author/Company/Artist, etc.) — previously it was removed the same as "Everything" mode.

1.1.7 — July 16, 2026 · Appearance override fix

• Fixed: pinning the appearance to Light or Dark (instead of following the system) now restyles the whole window — previously the translucent header and footer kept the system's appearance, leaving hard-to-read text when the override and the system disagreed.

1.1.6 — July 15, 2026 · “Tip”

• Renamed the “Donate” link to “Tip.”

1.1.5 — July 15, 2026

• Refined the dark-mode Dock icon: now a true near-black, monochrome-style background with just a hint of purple, instead of a deeper tint of the same color.

1.1.4 — July 15, 2026

• Fixed: the app icon could show the wrong light/dark variant in Finder, Spotlight, Launchpad, and the Dock while Scrubbr wasn't running. It now updates everywhere immediately, not just the Dock tile of an already-open app.

1.1.3 — July 14, 2026

• New: the Dock icon now follows your Mac's light/dark appearance automatically — or pin it to Light or Dark from the new appearance toggle.
• Fixed: the Dock icon rendered edge-to-edge with no padding, making it look larger than every other app in the Dock. It now follows Apple's standard icon grid, sized and spaced to match.

1.1.2 — July 13, 2026

• twoplus11 wordmark credit in the footer and update panel.
• Occasional, low-pressure prompt to support twoplus11 after extended use — never more than once, easy to dismiss for good.

1.1.1 — July 12, 2026

• New: clearer Help and Review buttons in the header, so support and feedback are one click away.
• Fixed: re-scanning a folder no longer skips a file just because its name happens to contain "(scrubbed)" — that guard now only applies to Scrubbr's own scrubbed copies, not files you drop or pick directly.

1.1.0 — July 11, 2026 · Deeper reveal, more thorough strip

A deep polish and capability pass. The reveal got more powerful, the strip got more thorough, and everything got faster and friendlier.

• Audio really scrubs now. Dropping an MP3 or AAC strips its ID3v2 (and legacy ID3v1) tags with a pure-stdlib rewriter — artist, "encoded by," encoder software, comments, embedded private frames and timestamps all go, and the audio bytes are preserved exactly (no re-encode). Previously inspect-only.
• Office comments & tracked changes are actually removed. With the option on, Scrubbr now deletes the comment parts and their relationships, content-type overrides and in-body anchors, and accepts every tracked change (keeps inserted text, drops deleted text, strips the revision markup) — leaving clean, valid OOXML. Formatting and tables are preserved.
• PDF wart minimized. PDFKit re-stamps a generic Producer and fresh dates on every save; Scrubbr now blanks those (and any reachable XMP) in place, byte-for-byte, so a re-inspect comes up empty — and it's honest in the UI about what a PDF writer can't reach.
• Folder & bulk drops. Dropping a folder now recurses into it and adds every supported file; drop many at once. A progress bar shows the scan and big batch scrubs, and there's a per-file thumbnail/preview.
• Privacy summary headline. A banner up top tells you the scary truth at a glance — "3 of 7 files reveal your location" — with a one-click Scrub.
• Select & scrub the ones you want. Checkbox-select files (keyboard-friendly) and Scrub selected, or Scrub all.
• Reveal in Finder for the original, not just the clean copy.
• Replace original (keep backup). Opt-in in-place scrub that overwrites the file and keeps a "(original)" backup beside it — never lossy, off by default. If a source folder is read-only, Scrubbr offers to save the clean copy in a folder you pick instead of failing.
• Remembered options. Your last-used strip settings persist across launches.
• Friendlier everywhere. Recoverable, plain-English messages for read-only folders, full disks, permission issues and unreadable files — never a raw traceback. Progress announcements and the privacy summary are surfaced to VoiceOver.

1.0.0 — July 11, 2026 · Initial public release

The first release. Drop a file, see what it's hiding, strip it — with your original never touched.

• The reveal. Drop a photo, PDF, Office document or video and Scrubbr shows the hidden metadata it's carrying — GPS location, author, camera make/model and serial, software, tracked changes, comments, timestamps — grouped into Location, Identity, Device, History, Timestamps and Other, with everything privacy-relevant flagged red and explained in plain English ("reveals where this file has been").
• The strip. One click writes a clean copy next to the original — the source file is never overwritten or deleted, and if the "(scrubbed)" name is taken it disambiguates instead of clobbering.
  • Images (JPG/PNG/HEIC/TIFF/GIF): pixels re-encoded to a fresh file with no EXIF/GPS/XMP; ICC color profile kept and orientation baked in so it looks identical.
  • PDF: document info dictionary and XMP cleared (info dictionary only — not embedded object streams; the UI says so).
  • Office (DOCX/XLSX/PPTX): authorship blanked, custom.xml dropped, comments and tracked-change parts optionally removed; zip order and compression kept.
  • Video/audio (MP4/MOV/M4V/M4A): passthrough remux with metadata cleared — fast and lossless. The QuickTime GPS tag (the big iPhone location leak) goes with it.
• Options. Strip Everything or Location only; toggle Remove comments & tracked changes and Keep color profile.
• Batch. Drop many files (or a folder); each gets its own card; Scrub all cleans them in one go with a before → after summary and a Reveal in Finder link on each clean copy.
• 100% local. No file — or metadata — ever leaves your Mac.
• Bespoke, accessible UI. Native macOS look, light and dark mode, full keyboard navigation, focus-trapped modals, ARIA labels and live announcements, honoured Reduce Motion, helpful empty state, toast on every action, and a confirm modal for clearing the list.
• Free for personal use forever (including updates); one-time $5 business license.