Changelog

Added

• Crate speaks your language. The app is now fully translated into 18 languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, English, Filipino, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Latin America), Swahili, Swedish, Turkish and Vietnamese. It reaches every screen in the app, from the drop bay, packing and restore through the menu-bar Quick Bay, the Receive dock, sign-in, sharing, Settings and the guided tour. Crate offers your system language the first time it opens, you can change it any time in Settings, and right-to-left layouts are properly mirrored. This website's main pages are available in the same 18 languages.
• Video-editor turnovers (AAF and OMF) with embedded audio now pack dramatically smaller: the audio inside the container is compressed losslessly, and every file is still verified bit-exact on both ends. It applies at the Smaller and Smallest presets, with Standard storing these files as they are, and a package that uses it needs this version or newer to restore.
• Crate tells you the moment a job is done. A new "When a job finishes" section in Settings gives you four independent switches: a desktop notification you can click to reveal the file, a completion sound, reveal the result as soon as it is ready, and a badge and bounce on the app icon (a taskbar flash on Windows). Sounds ship with 16 cues, including four recorded samples — an arpeggio pair set as the defaults, one for packing and one for restoring, plus two balafon recordings — a preview button beside each, and room for your own audio file. Your own audio is capped at ten seconds, every cue fades out gently, and only one ever plays at a time.
• Exact clone, when you want every last file. The pack screen carries a System files choice: skip the usual desktop clutter, which stays the default, or keep an exact clone that carries .DS_Store, Thumbs.db, desktop.ini and the rest through byte for byte. The choice is fully keyboard operable.
• A guided tour that shows Crate working. The welcome tour plays through a real pack, a client receiving it, and a restore, then reproduces the two ways to reach Crate without opening the window: the Finder right-click action and the menu-bar Quick Bay. It honours your reduced-motion setting, and a pack already running keeps running while you take the tour.
• Two packs can share a destination folder safely. Start a pack into a folder another pack is already writing to and Crate waits its turn and says so, naming the job it is waiting for. A folder left locked by a machine that shut down mid-pack is reclaimed automatically.
• A pack that is interrupted gives the disk space back: the next pack into that folder reclaims what it left behind.
• Exact-clone packages carry a compatibility stamp. A package made with “keep an exact clone” declares that requirement, so an older Crate asks for a free update instead of quietly delivering the package without the system files it was made to carry.
• A “Refresh Finder Sizes” button, for when macOS shows a stale folder size. After a very large restore onto a busy external drive, Finder can keep reporting a partial size for the new folder even though every byte arrived and was verified — its folder-size cache can miss the update on external volumes. One click on the restore result relaunches Finder so it re-tallies; the in-app “Verified · N bytes” figure remains the authoritative count. Restore also now places the finished folder into position in a single atomic step and finalises folder timestamps before anything is visible, so Finder never observes a half-built tree.

Improved

• Every size-saving pass keeps whichever result is smaller. The two passes that rewrite audio to make it smaller now encode it both ways and keep the better of the two, so neither can ever hand you a file larger than a plain encode. Measured across real sessions, one of them is worth 2.13 GB — and the 9.8% of files where it would not have helped now keep the plain encode instead.
• Sessions with picture reference pack far faster. Delivery video is already compressed, so Crate now stores H.264, HEVC and VP9 as they are rather than spending a minute of your time on them: on a 600 MB picture-reference session that compression pass alone took 58.5 seconds to save 2 MB, and on three of the formats measured the compressed result came out larger than the original. Intermediate formats such as DNxHD, ProRes and uncompressed video still compress, because they genuinely benefit.
• Duplicate detection survives an unusual file. A file with more than eight channels — a 7.1.4 Atmos bed, say — now simply steps aside on its own while the rest of the session is de-duplicated as usual, worth about 7 MB of repeated audio on one measured session.
• Packing and restoring are faster on Apple Silicon and other ARM machines, where checking files now uses the processor’s own hashing instructions. The files Crate produces are unchanged.
• A size projection that keeps getting closer. Before packing, Crate measures how your files actually compress, at the same settings the pack itself will use, and counts the package's own overhead — recovery records and encryption included, at every recovery level. The projection now tracks the delivered package closely across every preset and tries to never promise a smaller package than it ships; video-editor turnovers that once read far high now land within a few per cent. A projection can only ever approximate the real thing — the exact size is known once the pack runs — so Crate deliberately errs on the honest side, and measuring properly means a very large session takes a moment to analyse before the figure appears.
• The free-space check asks for what a pack really needs — measured against real packs at every setting, now including the room archive expansion takes — and requires substantially less headroom, while still refusing a pack that genuinely cannot finish.
• Crate checks the drive before it packs. A pre-flight space check reads the destination and says plainly when the drive is tight or too full, then offers a roomier drive with its free space shown, a folder of your choosing, or the option to pack anyway.
• Packing needs less headroom. Working files are released the moment the package is written, so encrypted, split and recovery-protected packs now finish in noticeably less free space.
• The space you get back is spelled out. The results screen tells you how much room the original session still occupies and how to reclaim it, and states plainly that Crate never deletes, moves or alters your original.
• Cancelling takes effect promptly when Crate is encrypting, decrypting, or rebuilding archives at the end of a restore.
• Every file is accounted for. Packages now carry a list of the system files Crate intentionally skipped, so the counts in the report reconcile exactly, and video files are counted as video rather than audio, so the audio count in the report is the real one.
• Unusual names travel intact. Sessions whose files and folders carry wildcards, accents, non-Latin scripts, or different Unicode spellings of the same name pack and restore byte for byte.
• Easier to see and to drive from the keyboard. Colours across the app and this website were re-derived to meet WCAG 2.2 AA contrast in both themes, dialogs trap focus and hand it back where you left it, keyboard navigation reaches every control, and each page carries a skip link and a single main landmark. The navigation here now sizes itself to the language on the page rather than wrapping.
• Check for Updates sits in the app menu on macOS, where a Mac user looks for it first. The Quick Bay still carries it too.
• Recipients are told what to expect. The delivery page states up front that opening a .crate is free, points to the app, and offers to send the link on to a desktop when it is opened on a phone.

Security

• Strengthened backward-compatible restore: packages made by any older version of Crate restore every file they contain — no exceptions. Restore judges what counts as system housekeeping by the rules of the version that made the package, so files an older Crate deliberately archived are delivered byte for byte. This is guarded permanently by a bank of real packages from seven shipped versions that every build must restore bit-exactly before it can ship.
• Hardened the project-file readers: the AAF/OMF readers cap how much a malformed or malicious file can make Crate read while inspecting it, and any parser fault simply stores the file as-is.
• Strengthened encrypted packaging: Crate assembles the package out of sight and puts only the finished, encrypted file at the path you chose.
• Strengthened verified delivery: nothing unverified is delivered at its real path — a file that fails its check is set aside under a clearly marked name, a file that cannot be rebuilt at all leaves no partial output behind, and either way the report says so.
• Improved the standalone recovery route: rebuilding a package without Crate now covers every format Crate can write — ordinary open-source tools, no Crate binary anywhere — handling 32-bit float and high-channel-count audio alongside everything else, and it will only ever write inside the destination folder you point it at.
• Hardened against out-of-range values: the app you install and the service that issues licences are both built with arithmetic overflow checking enabled, so a value that runs out of range stops the operation loudly rather than carrying on with a wrong number. On the desktop that means the app stops rather than continuing — loud beats silently wrong, and your original files are never written to either way. The licence service rejects out-of-range request timestamps cleanly.
• Strengthened literal path handling: archive paths are passed literally when reading a package, so a folder whose name contains wildcard characters is restored exactly as named.
• Strengthened container parsing: video-editor containers are parsed within strict, declared bounds, so every turnover is read inside a fixed memory budget and anything malformed is refused cleanly.
• Strengthened essence reconstruction: video-editor essence entries rebuild through exactly one declared route — an entry describing more than one way to reconstruct itself is refused, and the rest of the session restores normally.
• Strengthened visitor privacy: visitors in the EU and UK are asked before any analytics or advertising script loads, a Global Privacy Control signal denies by default, and this site serves its fonts and its country lookup from our own servers, so those never reach a third party.

Fixed

• Sharper judgement about what counts as system clutter: a file whose name merely begins with .Trash-, .nfs or .fuse_hidden is your content and packs like anything else; only the exact machine-generated shapes are skipped.
• Expanded archives re-container reliably, and a stopped re-container step reports exactly how many archives were sealed and how many remain as loose verified files.
• A re-pack always leaves you with a package — whether it succeeds, is cancelled, fails, or the machine loses power partway through.
• Files that could not be re-checked are listed by name, separate from damaged files, in the app and on the command line, in all 18 languages.
• A file that cannot be read at the moment it is checked is reported as unconfirmed, never as damaged — and never counted as verified.
• A split package is never delivered incomplete: if the parts on disk do not match what the package declares, Crate stops and says so.
• Uppercase video files (CUT.M4V) ship in the fast lane on every platform, exactly like their lowercase twins.
• The completion cues correctly default to the arpeggio pair for profiles created by early 1.7.0 preview builds; a cue you chose yourself is always kept.
• The restore result’s actions sit on one row, and its signature line reads “fingerprint unavailable” rather than a raw placeholder when a fingerprint cannot be read.
• Various bug fixes and refinements across packing, restore and delivery: a single folder or file packs under its own name, counts read naturally at one, packing and restore each report their own outcome, a drive short on room says exactly how much more it needs, files inside folders with dots in their names are stored exactly where they belong, and a restore falls back to the system temporary location when the configured one is unavailable, with working folders from an interrupted run tidied at the next launch.

Fixed

• Results screens now scroll reliably on macOS in small windows — content past the window edge could previously be unreachable.
• Action buttons on finished screens wrap cleanly in narrow windows.
• Small windows keep every control reachable, and compact window sizes survive relaunch.
• Re-packing over an existing crate keeps your original safe — a cancelled or failed pack puts the previous crate and its recovery files back.
• Recovery-file cleanup only touches the set Crate created; your own similarly-named .par2 files are left alone.
• Split packages no longer produce an empty extra part, and sets written that way by earlier versions now restore.
• Damaged downloads are identified precisely — empty file, error page, or wrong file type — instead of a generic message.
• Quarantine names stay unique, and a quarantine that cannot happen is reported honestly.
• Restore refuses package entries that collide with Crate's own report and instruction filenames, and never applies folder metadata through a link.

• smaller Up to 20% smaller packages — Crate now spots repeated audio at a much finer grain, so alternate mixes, comped takes, and cleaned-up duplicates of the same performance are stored once instead of many times, and Smallest goes finer still for the last few percent — every byte still verified on both ends, and packages still open in any current Crate
• improved A window you can size to fit — drag any corner and the layout fills the space at the same text size, from a compact rail to full-screen, and it reopens the way you left it
• improved A faster, more accurate size preview — analyzing a session for its projected size is now several times quicker, and the estimate reliably tracks the real result across every compression setting, so you’re never surprised by a larger package
• new Searchable history with export — find any past pack by name or location instantly, and export your full packing history to a CSV whenever you need a record
• new One-click activation — unlock packing straight from the activation link in your purchase email
• new A summary when a batch finishes — packing or unpacking several folders at once now ends on one screen that lists every package with its size, savings, and verification, so you can confirm and reveal each one instead of guessing whether they all completed
• new Restore a split package from any part — drop any single volume of a multi-part package and Crate finds the rest in the folder and rejoins the set automatically
• new One-passphrase batch unlock — enter the passphrase once and Crate opens every encrypted package that shares it, coming back only for any that need a different one, without holding up the rest of the queue
• improved A cleaner, more compact interface — Settings fits on one screen without scrolling, the pack options sit on a single tidy row, and the top-bar buttons open and close their panels with a click
• improved Leaner packages, smaller received crates — each package carries less bookkeeping so previews stay snappy on huge sessions, and files sent to you are de-duplicated the same way, so they take less room on your drive
• fixed Cancelling now stops promptly and cleans up any partial files it started (including large multi-part restores); re-packing a session that already has recovery records no longer reports an error; plus smaller reliability fixes across the queue and compression presets

• new Zipped sessions shrink too — when a folder or session you drop into Crate contains a .zip or .rar, Crate opens that archive, compresses the audio inside it losslessly, and rebuilds it bit-perfect when you restore — what you get is a single .crate, not a zip, the same lossless guarantee now reaching inside your archived sessions
• improved Truer size estimates — Crate now probe-encodes a sample of your files before packing, so the projected package size closely matches the real result
• improved Flexible license seats — release a seat from any computer in Settings and reclaim it elsewhere by entering your key, so moving Crate between machines is effortless
• improved Strengthened recovery records — a damaged package rebuilds reliably from its PAR2 repair data, end to end
• improved Faster, cleaner launch — the window opens fully rendered, with no blank flash on start
• improved Tidier disk handling — temporary working files are always cleaned up, including after a cancelled or interrupted pack

• smaller Smaller by default — the audio de-duplication engine is now on for every pack, and the new Smallest preset adds cross-stem and inter-channel coding for the last few percent: measured ~16% smaller packages on real sessions, every byte still verified on both ends
• new Every package is now signed — packs carry a signature from your install’s own key (kept in the OS keychain); the receiver verifies it and shows the sender’s fingerprint, so known senders are recognized on sight and tampering in transit is rejected outright
• improved One damaged file can no longer spoil a restore — everything that verifies is delivered; anything that doesn’t is quarantined under a clearly-marked name and listed in the report
• improved Clearer results you can trust — the app, tray, and notifications report exactly what was verified, with separate integrity and authenticity lines and real counts — on success and failure; senders get a bit-exact confirmation at pack time, before anything ships
• new Recipient-friendly packages — a plain-language how-to-restore note now travels inside every package as well as beside it
• improved Future-proof packages — new pack features are declared in the package itself, so an older Crate asks you to update instead of struggling with a file it can’t fully read
• improved Steady progress on deep compression — the Smallest preset’s stem-analysis pass reports its progress live, so the bar keeps moving smoothly on large sessions
• improved One sending identity everywhere — the command-line tool signs with the same identity as the app, so recipients see a single, consistent fingerprint from your studio
• security Hardened verification gates — verification is fail-closed end to end, and a permanent adversarial test suite (corruption, tampering, forgery) now guards every release
• security Seat management requires your license key — only the license holder can view or free machines at crate.fluxcode.studio/seats
• fixed Quick Bay now packs with exactly the compression preset chosen in the main window

• faster Much faster packing — the engine was rebuilt to run fully in parallel. The deepest-compression pass that could take 20+ minutes on a large session now finishes in well under a minute, and peak memory dropped roughly 10× — so big multitrack sessions pack quickly without choking your machine. Bit-for-bit identical output
• smaller Even smaller packages — session backups and project files are now compressed together with cross-file de-duplication, squeezing more out of backup-heavy sessions with zero quality loss
• new Redesigned bulk queue — drop a whole batch and track it in a clean two-pane console: what’s packing now (with live progress) on the left, the up next line on the right. Reorder, edit settings, retry, or cancel any job; a pack already running is never interrupted
• new Studio licenses — one key for your whole room. Cover up to 12 machines under a single license, managed in one place — built for studios, schools, and teams. Personal stays 3 machines, and bigger facilities get their own deal
• new Manage your machines — see where a license is active and free a seat anytime at crate.fluxcode.studio/seats; a new machine activates the moment you do
• improved Self-healing transfers — a damaged download auto-repairs from its built-in recovery data during restore, and you can re-verify any restored session on demand to prove every byte still matches
• improved A fresh look — new app icon, .crate file icon, and logo across the app and site
• fixed Split sizes now match the service you pick (WeTransfer, iCloud, email…) so a “2 GB” split actually lands under the limit instead of being rejected
• improved Smarter split parts — parts are named …part001of003.crate, carry the Crate icon, and restore now tells you if a part is missing instead of failing cryptically
• improved View log opens the in-app integrity report (no more digging for a file), and the recovery how-to is clearer
• fixed Your free first pack is now offered right in the main window — open a session and pack it free, no license needed (it was only surfacing from the menu-bar drop and Finder menu before)
• improved Founder pricing — Personal $25 and Studio $99 are early-adopter rates while Crate is young

• new Re-verify any time — re-checksum a restored session against the original on demand, with live progress, so you can prove on disk that every byte still matches
• new Self-healing transfers — a damaged or partly-corrupted download now auto-repairs from its built-in recovery data (PAR2) during restore, so a flaky transfer still lands perfectly
• fidelity “Verified” now means a true bit-for-bit twin — full macOS resource forks & extended attributes are captured and restored, confirmed identical down to the sample
• ux Smarter queue — drop more folders while one is packing and they line up without disturbing the running job, edit a queued job's settings before it runs, and the view rolls job→job automatically. Cancelling now waits for a clean stop
• ux Restored folders show their real size in Finder right away (no stale cached figure), and Crate picks the best number of encode workers for your machine automatically
• fix Fixed restored-folder size reporting, re-verify progress layout, and several queue and restore-screen polish items

• new Earn & gift free packs — unpack a Crate a collaborator sent you and instantly earn another free pack; licensed users can gift a pack to a friend with a share link
• ux Fairer regional pricing — purchasing-power rates by country, now tax-inclusive (VAT) across the EU & UK
• ux “Back to Crate” reopens the app straight from the web, and license issues are handled gracefully — unpacking always keeps working

• new Smaller than RAR — a new audio-aware engine (cross-file dedup + cross-stem residual coding) squeezes .crate files dramatically smaller on real sessions — and it's still completely lossless and bit-for-bit verified. Nothing packs audio tighter
• speed Best-by-default compression — the “Smaller” preset (audio dedup) is now the default and beats RAR on loop-heavy sessions; the slider is simplified to 3 clear levels
• ux Trustworthy progress — pack & restore now move smoothly and honestly with no jumps, plus an in-app “what's new” note on update

• new Pack from Finder — right-click any folder and choose “Pack with Crate” to pack it on the spot, or “Unpack with Crate” on a .crate to restore it. Installed automatically; select several items and Crate handles them all
• new Menu-bar Quick Bay — a drop target that's always there. Drop folders to pack instantly, with a reorderable queue that runs jobs one at a time and live progress on the main screen
• new Multi-folder packing — pack a batch of folders as one bundle or a separate .crate each; drop a mix of folders and archives and Crate sorts packing from unpacking
• new Job queue — see what's running and what's next, reprioritize the queue, and cancel the whole run with one click
• ux Packing the same source again writes a new numbered .crate instead of overwriting the previous one
• fix Fixed a rare crash when reordering items by drag on macOS

• speed Large sessions pack dramatically faster — the final packaging step now seals in a single pass instead of re-writing the archive once per batch of files. Restore is unchanged and still byte-for-byte verified
• fix Package preview now shows the real saved-space figure (it was under-reporting)
• ux Share message simplified — recipients just download Crate (receiving is always free)

• speed Much faster packing — every stage now uses all your CPU cores. The final package seal, which was single-threaded, is now multi-threaded, and audio encoding/verification is no longer capped at 8 cores
• speed Packaging compression tuned for speed with negligible size change; restore stays byte-for-byte identical
• ux Downloads now include the version in the filename (e.g. Crate-macOS-V1.0.9.dmg)

• fix Large sessions with thousands of files now pack reliably — resolved an “Argument list too long” error that could stop packaging on very large projects

• fix Lossless container-split engine — uncompressed PCM (WAV, AIFF, CAF, RF64/BW64, Wave64) now compresses by separating the file container from its audio samples, fixing rare round-trip verification failures on Pro Tools and other DAW sessions with non-standard container bytes
• reliability Malformed or truncated audio files degrade to safe verbatim storage instead of interrupting a pack
• ux “Try again” after an error now keeps your selected session — no need to re-add files
• quality Thousands of randomized container layouts (including non-ASCII / emoji filenames) verified byte-for-byte identical after pack and restore

• new Beta crash & error reporting — genuine app errors are reported automatically (consent-based, GDPR-friendly) with a clear in-app notice
• ux Environment problems (e.g. low disk space) now show a calm, actionable message instead of a generic failure
• branding Branded license-key and recovery emails with logo and HTML layout
• fix Region-aware pricing aligned with checkout discount codes

• new Share modal — share Crate via X, Facebook, email, or copy a referral link directly from the app
• new Encrypted file preview — .crate files with a passphrase now show a lock icon and hint instead of a blank pane
• ux Distinct progress phase labels — Scanning, Checksumming, Encoding audio, Verifying, Sealing package, Splitting, Writing parity
• fix .DS_Store files no longer cause false verification mismatches during pack or restore
• fix macOS dock icon now displays as a proper squircle (regenerated at 1024×1024)

• ux Consistent nav bar across all site pages
• fix Receiver download link now correctly downloads the full app
• seo OG image converted to PNG for social previews, email protection, structured data, clean URLs
• ux Credits and copyright entity name updates across site and app

• new Referral sharing — FRIEND20 discount code in share messages and site
• new Contact form, license recovery, and newsletter signup on purchase
• new Documentation page with full user guide
• ux New icon: neon crate cube with 80% fill for better macOS dock presence
• ux Pack options layout overhaul
• ux Compression label now reads "less to upload" / "less data"

• ux Simplified pack options — cleaner interface for everyday use
• fix All broken GitHub URLs corrected
• ux Post-purchase thank-you page for Polar redirect
• ux Clean URLs enabled across the site (no .html suffixes)

• infra Release hosting moved to Cloudflare R2 CDN for faster downloads
• legal Proprietary license finalized

• new Initial release of Crate
• new Lossless compression of consolidated DAW sessions (FLAC + WavPack encoding)
• new Single .crate package with manifest, checksums, and optional par2 parity
• new End-to-end SHA-256 verification — byte-for-byte identical restore
• new Age encryption with passphrase protection
• new Automatic file splitting for large sessions
• new Package peek — preview file tree and metadata before restoring
• new Cross-platform: macOS (universal), Windows (x64), Linux (x86_64)
• new Free companion app (Crate Receiver) for unpacking without a license
• new Built-in auto-updater