Release notes

What's new on alphaTrack: the home page, sign-in, and the cross-app activity hub. (Each tracker keeps its own release notes on its More info page.)

alphaTrack

2026-09-02

Plainer wording, and every app can install itself

  • “Get an invite” is now “Sign up” in the header and the hero. The old label promised a way to request an invite, which has never existed — the form has always wanted a code you already hold.
  • The sign-up form now says so up front: alphaTrack is invite-only for now, so you need a code from someone who already has an account.
  • pTrack and yTrack say that they play things, not just keep lists of them. Podcasts stream in pTrack and YouTube videos play in yTrack, in a built-in player, which the tracker cards and menu gave no hint of.
  • rTrack is described as a news reader rather than an “RSS reader”. It is still RSS underneath — but that is the mechanism, and the acronym was doing the explaining.
  • Every app now offers to install itself. Open any tracker in a browser and a strip at the top says it can be installed — own window, own icon, no address bar, launched from your home screen or dock. Tapping it opens your browser's install dialog where there is one, and shows you the right menu where there isn't (on iPhone and iPad that is Share → Add to Home Screen). It is offered once per app: the × dismisses it permanently, and it never shows up in an app you have already installed. On this page it waits until you are signed in — there is nothing to install until there is an account behind it.
2026-08-31

Settings moved to the avatar menu

  • Theme, density, week start, units, reminders and the weekly note are now a Settings dialog, opened from the avatar menu in the top right. That is where every tracker has kept its settings all along, and they were the only ones sitting in the middle of a page instead.
  • Your account is now just your account: what you have access to, and what you can take with you or delete. Nothing changed about any setting or its value.
  • Fixed: the sections of the account page ran into each other. Each heading sat flush against the block above it, so “Preferences” read as part of the access list.
2026-08-30

Tick things off from the dashboard

  • Anything in Needs you that can be finished now has a checkbox. Tick off an overdue task or a habit without opening the tracker. A recurring task still rolls forward to its next date, exactly as it would inside tTrack.
  • Links go to the actual thing. Clicking a game, show, book, note, article or podcast on the dashboard, or in ⌘K search, now opens that item in its tracker, instead of dropping you on the tracker’s front page.
  • Fixed: “keep watching” counted episodes that haven’t aired. A show you were completely caught up on could still say you had three left to watch. It now counts only episodes that have actually been broadcast, so being caught up looks like being caught up.
2026-08-29

Quick add, settings that follow you, and reminders

  • One box for everything. Type into the box at the top of your dashboard and it goes where it belongs: 182.4 is a weigh-in, #work call the bank friday is a task due Friday, -84.12 Kroger is an expense, a YouTube or podcast or feed link subscribes you, and anything else lands in today’s note. It shows you what it’s about to do before it does it, with the other options one click away, and nothing is created until you pick.
  • Your settings belong to your account now. Theme, density, week start and units are set once and follow you to every tracker and every device, instead of being set eleven times per browser. Under Your account → Preferences.
  • One reminder, not ten. Switch on push reminders and you get a single notification for anything overdue or due today across every tracker, not one buzz per app. Quiet hours are respected absolutely, and nothing due later in the week interrupts you now. Off until you turn it on.
  • A weekly note by email. One message on Sunday with what you did across everything and a link back in. Also off by default, and a week with nothing in it sends nothing at all.
  • Patterns. On the Activity tab, comparisons the data actually supports, and it stays quiet unless a difference is both big enough to matter and unlikely enough to be chance. Every one shows both groups and how many days each has, and none of them claim one thing caused another. Most weeks it will have nothing to say, which is the honest answer.
  • mTrack moved to All-access, and rTrack is now free forever. mTrack was only ever free because of a licensing constraint that no longer exists. rTrack takes its place on the free tier, and existing access is unchanged for anyone who already has it.
2026-08-29

A front door, and a hub that looks forward

  • A real navigation bar, on every page. Trackers (with a menu listing all ten and what each is for), Desktop, Pricing and Privacy, plus a footer that is a proper sitemap. The site is also laid out for a desktop screen now, rather than a phone column with wide margins.
  • Search everything with ⌘K. One box that reaches every tracker you have access to, across books, shows, games, notes, payees, episodes, feeds and channels, grouped by app and ranked best-match-first. Opening a result takes you to that tracker with its own filter already set. The same shortcut works inside each tracker, where it searches that app.
  • New Today view, and it is now what you land on. What needs you, what is happening today, and what you are part-way through, assembled from every tracker at once instead of you opening six of them. The old activity feed is still there, on its own tab.
  • New Loose ends tab. Things the trackers noticed together and cannot decide for you: a subscription you pay for but never use, a feed you never open, a charge that outlived the thing it paid for. Each row shows the arithmetic behind it, and says so plainly when a tracker did not respond and the answer is therefore incomplete.
  • Any single thing, seen from every tracker. Open a subject from a loose end to see what it cost, how much you used it, when you last did, and which apps had anything to say.
  • Download everything in one click. Your account page now offers a single archive containing every tracker’s export, with a manifest listing what is inside, including anything that could not be reached, rather than quietly leaving it out. Per-tracker downloads are still there under a disclosure.
  • The theme picker moved to the footer, and the landing page now shows a link preview when you paste it into a chat.
2026-08-27

Desktop apps

  • A second kind of app. A new Desktop apps section on the home page lists four native tools for Windows and Linux: jex (file explorer), jit (git client for many repos at once), jtm (task manager) and jxt (text editor). These are programs you download and run, not web apps you sign in to: no dependencies, no telemetry, and no account needed once you have the binary.
  • A storefront at alphatrack.net/desktop, with a page per app covering what it does, what it needs, and its complete version history, taken from each app's own release notes, so it always matches what actually shipped.
  • Downloads for both platforms, with the file size and a SHA-256 for every build so you can verify what you downloaded. Older releases stay listed even where no build was kept, rather than quietly disappearing from the history.
  • jtm is free and is added to every account automatically. It shows up under Your access alongside your trackers.
  • Prices are listed ($19.99 for jex, $9.99 for jit and jxt), but there is no checkout yet: while alphaTrack is invite-only, every desktop app is free to anyone with an account. Ask and it’s granted.
  • Desktop apps appear on your account page as licensed rather than as a subscription tier, being a one-time purchase with every future version included.
2026-07-31

A refreshed interface across every app

  • Everything got redrawn. Buttons, inputs, checkboxes, radios, toggles, sliders, tabs, menus, and dialogs share one look now, across alphaTrack and all ten trackers. Controls are tighter and line up with each other, and they render identically on every browser and phone. Previously checkboxes, dropdowns, and sliders fell back to whatever the operating system drew, which is why they looked different on a Mac, an Android phone, and a Linux desktop.
  • Dropdowns and date fields are ours now. Picking a category or a date used to open the browser's own grey list or calendar, the two bits of the interface that never matched the app around them. Both are now themed, keyboard-friendly, and follow your accent colour. Dropdowns support type-to-jump and arrow keys; the date picker has month navigation plus Today and Clear.
  • Small stuff that was quietly ugly. The up/down arrows on number fields, the file-picker button, and the search clear-× were all operating-system widgets; they've been restyled or removed. The header is now translucent and blurs the content scrolling behind it, and your account avatar is a soft tint rather than a solid disc.
  • Delete buttons are outlined, not solid. A destructive button is now a red outline that fills in when you hover it. It reads unmistakably as "this deletes something" without shouting louder than the main action on the page, which mattered most in nTrack and yTrack, whose own accent colours are red.
  • Each app looks more like itself. Hover states, active tabs, selected filters, and switched-on toggles now pick up that app's colour, so fTrack feels green and mTrack feels blue rather than every app sharing the same grey.
  • New: a compact density. Where an app offers it, controls shrink about 10% for denser screens without changing text size.
  • All 35 themes still work, light and dark, and your saved choice carries over untouched.
2026-07-22

A richer activity feed and a desktop dashboard

  • On desktop, your logged-in home is now a dashboard: your weekly insight cards run across the top, with your recent-activity feed beside quick links to your trackers. Phones and small screens keep the familiar stacked layout.
  • The activity feed surfaces much more of what you do across your trackers: reading sessions ("Read 42 pages of …"), completed fasts, finished games and platinum trophies, tasks and notes you create, new subscriptions and library adds, account reconciliations, and more. Busy days stay tidy: chatty activity is grouped ("Watched 5 videos", "Read 70 pages of …") so the feed doesn't flood.
  • Filter the full log by tracker. Open See all activity and pick a single tracker to see its complete, un-grouped history: every individual item, not the per-day summaries the combined feed shows.
earlier

One account, and your activity hub

  • Single sign-in across every alphaTrack app. One account opens every tracker you have access to, and you manage it all from Your account.
  • Your logged-in home shows a cross-app activity feed, plus insight cards for subscribers (streaks, weekly totals, spending, read-vs-watched, and cross-tracker patterns) drawn from everything you track, all in one place.
  • Your data stays yours. Download a copy or permanently delete your account any time from Your account → Your data. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy are linked from the footer of every page; service status is public.
  • Full theme support with 35 palettes, and installable as an app (PWA) on iOS and Android.