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 Stapl 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 Stapl “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 Stapl installed.

Site update — August 12, 2026 · What actually connects to the internet

• A privacy answer on this page was wrong, and is fixed. It said Stapl “makes no network connection” and worked “fully offline” — which stopped being true once Stapl gained the ability to update itself. Conversions, and everything you open, were never sent anywhere and still aren't; the claim about connections was the part that was false.
• Every connection Stapl makes, in full: a check for a new version about once a week, and nothing else. Nothing about your files is in any of them, and the update check sends the app version and nothing more.
• The update instructions were out of date. They described downloading a new copy and dragging it over the old one. Stapl 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.
• 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.
• 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: Stapl 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 Stapl itself. It now shows three captures of the running app: the tool grid you land on, the Merge queue with a thumbnail, page count and size for each document, and a short animation of four documents being reordered and merged into a single 11-page file. The documents on screen are samples, not real records. No change to the app.

1.2.9 — August 9, 2026 · Automatic updates

• New: Stapl 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.
• Stapl now uses the same updater as the rest of the twoplus11 apps, so updates behave identically everywhere.

1.2.8 — July 18, 2026 · Merged-PDF text fix

• Fixed: text in a merged PDF could become unextractable — copying, searching, or "Extract text" would find nothing on a file that looked perfectly normal. Merged files now keep a valid page structure.

1.2.7 — July 17, 2026

• New: 13-language localization with an in-app language picker.
• Fixed: "Find & mark" redaction now shows a truncation warning instead of silently capping at 2,000 matches on very large documents.
• Fixed: export now waits for any in-progress redaction box to finish before saving, so a box drawn mid-export can't be missing from the saved file.

1.2.6 — July 16, 2026 · White dark-icon glyph

• The dark-appearance app icon now draws the staple in white, matching the rest of the twoplus11 apps, instead of keeping the full coral color.

1.2.5 — July 15, 2026 · “Tip”

• Renamed the “Donate” link to “Tip.”

1.2.4 — July 15, 2026 · Dark icon refinement

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

1.2.3 — July 15, 2026 · Icon fix

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

1.2.2 — July 14, 2026

• New: the Dock icon now follows your Mac's light/dark appearance automatically.

1.2.1 — July 13, 2026

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

1.2.0 — July 12, 2026

• New: Fill & Sign — a 17th tool. Type into a PDF's form fields and drop your signature onto the page, typed in a handwriting-style font or drawn with the trackpad, entirely on your device.
• New: Drop a PDF straight onto Home — drop a single PDF and pick which tool should open it; drop several and they go straight to Merge.
• New: Open a page up close to redact — click any page (or its expand button) to open it in a full-window view where you can zoom right in and pan around, so tiny text, numbers, and signatures are easy to black out precisely. Zoom with the buttons, the slider, +/− keys, or ⌘-scroll / trackpad pinch toward the cursor; pan by dragging in Pan mode, holding Space, or using the scrollbars. Boxes you draw here appear on the page grid too, and flatten away for good on Redact.
• New: Zoom in while you redact — a zoom slider above the pages enlarges them so you can draw precise black boxes over small text, signatures, or numbers. Pages now render at higher resolution, so they stay sharp when blown up; drag any page up to fill the whole working area. Your zoom level is remembered between sessions.
• New: Automatic update checks — the app quietly checks about once a week and badges the update button when a newer version is available (never a pop-up; nothing is downloaded or installed automatically). Turn it off with the toggle in the update panel.
• Improved: the header's Report-an-issue icon is now a clearly-labeled Help button, alongside a new Review button to leave feedback in one click.

1.1.5 — July 9, 2026

• New: Keep original file dates — edited files keep the source PDF's original “Date Created” and “Date Modified” instead of resetting to now. On by default, with a toggle in the new Settings dialog (header gear or ⌘K); applies to every single-file tool — compress, crop, encrypt, unlock, metadata, rotate, watermark, page numbers, redact, and split
• Personal use now says so plainly: the licensing screen spells out that Stapl is free for personal use and includes free updates forever — no catch, no expiry

1.1.4 — July 2026

• Fixed: you can once again drag the window from anywhere along the top bar to move it — previously only a thin strip at the very top would move the window.

1.1.3 — July 2026

• Under the hood: Compress, OCR, Redact, and PDF → Images now run on a new, self-contained rendering engine — page rendering and image compression are handled entirely in-app. Same tools, same 100%-on-device privacy; nothing changes in how you use them.

1.1.2 — June 2026

• Check for Updates is now a button in the toolbar (next to About) — no need to remember the ⌘K shortcut. It tells you whether you're on the latest Stapl and links you to the download page when a new version is out.

1.1.1 — June 2026

• New: Check for Updates — from the ⌘K palette, check whether you're on the latest Stapl; when a new version is out it links you straight to the download page.

1.1.0 — June 2026

• New tool: Extract Text — pull a PDF's selectable text into a plain .txt file, entirely on your device. If the PDF is a scan with no text layer, Stapl says so and offers to open it in OCR first. (Brings the toolkit to 16 tools.)
• Tools now remember your last settings between sessions — compression quality, export resolution, crop margins, watermark text & opacity, and page-number style & position all come back the way you left them.
• Password fields (Protect & Unlock) now warn you when Caps Lock is on, so a mistyped-case password doesn't silently fail.
• New: a Recent row on the home screen puts the tools you've used lately one click away, and the ⌘K palette lists them first.
• New: every result you save now offers a one-click Open (in Preview, or whatever opens PDFs on your Mac) right alongside Reveal in Finder — no more digging for the file you just made.
• New: a ⌘K command palette — press ⌘K from anywhere (even mid-tool) to jump straight to any tool, switch the theme, open About or your license, report an issue, or return home, all by keyboard.
• New: search the toolbox right from the home screen — start typing to filter all 16 tools by name or by what they do. "password" finds Unlock and Protect, "shrink" finds Compress, "split" finds Organize. Press the / key to jump straight to search.

1.0.1 — June 2026

• Merge no longer dead-ends when one file in the set is corrupt or password-protected — the readable files still merge, and the bad one is shown as skipped.
• Password-protected PDFs now offer a one-click "Open in Unlock" across every tool (Merge, Compress, Crop, Protect, Watermark, Page Numbers, PDF→Images) instead of a dead-end error.
• Fixed: the Batch tool could get stuck on "running" if a file failed mid-batch.
• Fixed: in Batch, two input files with the same name (from different folders) no longer silently overwrite each other — outputs get a numbered suffix.
• Fixed: a damaged 0-page PDF no longer leaves Reorder/Rotate stuck on "Reading pages…".
• Fixed: starting a second OCR while one is running no longer makes the first job impossible to cancel.
• Fixed: dialogs no longer occasionally pull keyboard focus back to the button behind them while you're interacting with them.

1.0 — June 2026 · Initial public release

• 15-tool PDF toolkit that runs entirely on your Mac — nothing is ever uploaded
• Merge, split, reorder, and rotate pages
• Compress PDFs to shrink file size
• OCR to make scanned PDFs searchable
• Permanently redact text and images
• Password-protect with AES encryption
• Add watermarks
• Signed and notarized by Apple — macOS 12+, Apple Silicon & Intel
• Free for personal use; one-time $5 business license per computer