HandshakeBeta

Changelog

Every release, newest first. The beta moves fast – subscribe via RSS or watch releases on GitHub.

v0.9.5Latest

⚡ Snappier board

The board filter and staleness-fade no longer fire a JavaScript animation spring on every card at once — they now use lightweight CSS transitions, and person/goal cards are memoized so toggling a tag or tie-strength filter doesn't re-render the whole board. Noticeably smoother, especially on Linux.

Downloads & details on GitHub

v0.9.4

🔍 Sharper on HiDPI Linux

The App scale slider now goes down to 50% (was 80%). On fractional-scaled Linux displays (e.g. Hyprland at 1.6), GTK3 — which Tauri is built on — can't scale fractionally, so the app renders blurry. Workaround: launch with GDK_SCALE=2 to render at a crisp integer 2x, then dial App scale down to bring it back to true size. Settings → Appearance → App scale.

Nothing else changed — a small quality-of-life release.

Downloads & details on GitHub

v0.9.3

Handshake now updates itself. 🎉

✨ In-app updates

On macOS, Windows, and Linux (AppImage), Handshake checks for new versions and offers to install them in place – a prompt appears, it downloads, and the app restarts into the new version. No more manual reinstalling. On .deb/.rpm you get a heads-up with a download link.

Heads up: this is the first self-updating release, so you install it manually just this once. Every version after this updates in place.

🎨 A deeper dark

The default dark theme is now a richer, deeper charcoal – matched to the website, so the rose accent and your cards stand out more.

🔤 Typographic polish

Small voice-and-punctuation cleanup across the interface.

Download the installer for your platform below. Your data stays plain Markdown on your machine, as always.

Downloads & details on GitHub

v0.9.2

Local-first network mapping — free, open source, macOS · Windows · Linux.

Fixes

  • Vault creation — creating a new network into a fresh folder no longer fails with "no longer exists"; it seeds your owner card correctly now.
  • Won't open a non-vault folder — opening an arbitrary folder as a vault is refused (checks for the owner card / minimal structure).

Changes

  • App scale is now a slider (80–300%), replacing the fixed steps.
  • "Fade inactive cards" defaults to off — calmer out of the box.

Plus the earlier 0.9.x work: [[backlinks]], the always-on board toolbar, and resizable slide-in side panels.

Download

Grab your platform's installer below — .dmg (macOS, Apple Silicon + Intel), .msi (Windows), or .AppImage / .deb / .rpm (Linux).

Unsigned: on first launch macOS (Gatekeeper) / Windows (SmartScreen) may warn — right-click → Open (macOS) or More info → Run anyway (Windows). On a Wayland compositor (Hyprland/sway), if the window comes up blank, launch with WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1.

Downloads & details on GitHub

v0.4.0

Handshake 0.4.0 — photos 📷

Real faces. The board stops being silhouettes and starts looking like your people.

New

  • Set a person's photo — click the avatar in their note (or the camera in the note's action toolbar) to pick an image. It shows on the note and their board card instantly.
  • Add a face while creating — the new-card flow (the faint +) has a photo slot, so a new person can arrive with their picture already on.
  • Photos are copied into the network's own attachments/ folder — local, yours, and they travel with the network.

Also

  • The note gains a small per-note action toolbar (the camera lives there now) — a home for more note tools to come.

Installers attach below as CI builds them.

Downloads & details on GitHub

v0.3.0

Handshake 0.3.0 — settings & themes 🎨

Make Handshake yours. A real Settings surface plus a proper theme system — deep when you want it, invisible when you don't.

Settings

  • A near-fullscreen Settings modal (section rail + content), from the nav gear or ⌘P.
  • Per-network — settings live in each network's .handshake/, so Work and Personal can look completely different.
  • Inline controls (the density toggle, the note-mode pin) and the modal share one store — change things wherever you are.

Appearance

  • Themes: Dark (resoftened — a warm charcoal, not near-black, easier on the eyes), Light, Paper, and System.
  • Paper comes in two styles: Soft (gentle ivory) and Vintage (aged sepia + a faint paper grain).
  • App scale (90–125%), Font (System · Serif · Mono — Serif is a bundled, cute Fraunces), and Text weight (Light · Normal · Medium).
  • Reduce motion, and list density.

Board & notes

  • Toggle goal cards on the board, set the default connection strength, and pick the default note mode (panel / float / tab) — all in one place.

Try Paper Vintage + Mono + Medium for a typewriter-on-aged-paper feel. Installers attach below as CI builds them.

Downloads & details on GitHub

v0.2.0

Handshake 0.2.0 — networks 🤝

Handshake now manages multiple networks — open, create, and switch between them without ever touching a config file.

New

  • Front door — launch into a welcoming picker (New / Open / Recent) instead of a hardcoded vault. Your last network reopens automatically.
  • Create a network — name it, name yourself, pick a location. By default it makes a dedicated folder named after the network and seeds your "self" card so the board opens rooted on you (or override to use the chosen folder directly).
  • Switch anytime — a network switcher lives at the far right of the tab nav; pick from recents, or open/create from there or the command palette (⌘P). Each network keeps its own board layout, tabs, and splits — switch from Personal to Work and the whole workspace follows.
  • Local-first, still — every network is just a folder of Markdown files; recents live in your OS app-config dir, outside any vault.

Under the hood

  • Cross-platform release CI (push a v* tag → installers build for macOS/Linux/Windows) + a test/build check on every push.
  • Switching clears the in-memory board cache so a new network never inherits another's card positions.

Installers attach below as CI finishes building them.

Downloads & details on GitHub

v0.1.0

Handshake 0.1.0 — first release 🤝

Obsidian for your network. A local-first desktop app for mapping the people you know — who they are, how you're connected, and who introduced whom. Your whole network is a folder of plain Markdown files on your disk; nothing leaves your machine.

The board

  • A clean card-graph of your people, rooted on you — parent links follow who introduced whom.
  • Drag a card to arrange it; its whole subtree moves with it. Pan, and zoom way in or out.
  • Ties are colored by warmth (shades of rose), so closeness reads at a glance.
  • A faint + on any card creates-and-connects a new person in one move; drag one card onto another to link them.
  • Goals ride along as faint dashed cards you can tick to promote into a real connection.

Notes & people

  • Inline-editable person notes — name, role, company, tags, handles, connections, and a free-form body.
  • Type-the-name delete, per-connection settings (strength · introduced-by · unlink).
  • People view (search · sort · density · pagination · locate-on-board) and a Goals view.
  • Command palette (Ctrl/⌘-P) to jump to anyone or type a new name to create them.

The workspace

  • Obsidian-style tabbed panes with resizable splits and multiple independent boards.
  • Floating note windows, and an inline switch to move any note between panel ⇄ float ⇄ tab (with a remembered default).
  • Drag tabs between panes, or to a pane's edge to split — with a lifted, spring-following drag.
  • One-tap "note left, board right" split. Everything (tabs, splits, floats) persists across restarts.

Under the hood

  • Tauri 2 + React 19 + TypeScript; a pure, tested engine (the "Switchboard") with the filesystem as the source of truth.
  • 103 tests green.

The foundation is here. Next on the horizon: real photos on the cards, richer notes, and more.

Downloads & details on GitHub