Changelog

Blockr now protects the PC with its window closed: a service that comes with it blocks new apps whether or not Blockr is open, and the window never runs as administrator. And everything the Mac build learned between 1.4 and 1.12, brought across: blocklists, network profiles, the map, rules that expire, rules you can switch off, import and export, and Blockr noticing when Windows Firewall has stopped enforcing at all.

New

• Blockr protects the PC with its window closed. Blockr comes with a service (BlockrService, started by Windows) that watches connections, blocks new apps, keeps your rules and writes every Windows Firewall rule. A brand-new app is blocked even while Blockr's window is closed, and its alert waits, with the app blocked, until you open Blockr. Blocklists, network profiles and rules written as names work whenever the PC is on. Before, in 1.0.0, nothing new was blocked while Blockr wasn't running.
• Blockr's window never runs as administrator. An administrator's window changes rules and answers alerts as it is; a standard user's window shows that account's own connections, and the rules read only, and an alert about one of their own apps waits for an administrator. When the service isn't running, Blockr says why, and an administrator can start it (Windows asks first). 1.0.0's Restart as administrator and monitor-only mode are gone.
• An alert waiting in another account reaches an administrator. When somebody else on this PC runs a new app, Blockr says so in the administrator's window (and in the notification area, even with the window closed): how many are waiting, which program, and whose account. Allow or Block answers it from there, and the answer is kept as a rule, since nobody is at that account to be asked again.
• Rules are the PC's, because there is one Windows Firewall: every account's Blockr window works with the one service, so two accounts never fight over the firewall. Rules an earlier Blockr kept for an account are handed to the service the first time an administrator opens Blockr from that account.
• Connection history is per account, and Clear history clears exactly what your account could see.
• If nobody answers an alert on screen (Settings ▸ Alerts) decides only for an alert an administrator could see. An alert nobody saw waits, and its app stays blocked.
• Installing needs an administrator, since the service comes with it, and Blockr lives in Program Files. A copy an earlier Blockr installed for your account alone is replaced, and its uninstaller is never run, so your blocks stay in place.
• Uninstalling stops the service, takes every Blockr: rule out of Windows Firewall, then removes the service. Your rules and history stay in %ProgramData%\Blockr, so reinstalling puts them back.
• Each app's own icon in the alert, the lists and the rules, where two-letter tiles stood. An app with no icon of its own keeps its initials.
• Pause the list. The Traffic list can be held still to be read while Blockr goes on watching underneath; the count says how many came in since.
• Learning mode is easy to find. The first-run explainer offers it (Learn my apps first): while it is on, Blockr allows every new app you run and remembers it, until you stop it from its banner or the Pause menu. Other accounts' new apps, and Windows' services, are still asked about. Learning, like a pause, ends when you quit Blockr.
• Blocklists, a new screen. Subscribe to published lists of ad, tracker and malware domains (StevenBlack, oisd, HaGeZi and 1Hosts, one tier each) and they are blocked for every app, without a rule for each name. Check a domain says which list blocks a name, and one click makes an exception. Blockr downloads each list straight from its publisher, at most once a day, and never re-hosts one. On Windows a list matches the names Windows looked up, so the first connection to a listed name can complete before Blockr sees it; Blockr then blocks that app from that address for an hour, since an address can serve other sites too.
• Network profiles, on a new Networks screen. A profile is a separate set of rules (app rules, host rules, the New apps choice and what an unanswered alert does) that applies only on one network; everywhere else the default rules apply. Blockr tells networks apart the way Windows does, and by their router, puts the right rules into Windows Firewall within seconds of joining one, and nothing about the network leaves the PC. The Rules and Apps screens say whose rules are on screen.
• The Map, a new screen. The countries this PC's connections go to, shaded by how many, with a red dot where Blockr turned connections away, and a table beside it that a screen reader can read and sort. The country data ships with Blockr and is read offline, so no address is ever sent anywhere to place it.
• Hide an app, a host or a domain from the connection log, from a row's menu. Nothing is blocked differently, a blocked connection still shows unless you say otherwise, an undo strip and a list of what is hidden bring it back, and an export says what it left out.
• Every command from the keyboard. The connection alert has Ctrl+B (Block), A (Allow), Ctrl+S (remember), Ctrl+O (the whole app or this host), Ctrl+D (how long) and Ctrl+T (more time), and ignores keys for its first moment, so a keystroke meant for another window can't answer it. Every table row has a menu (Shift+F10 or the Menu key). The alert comes to the front and gives the keyboard back afterwards.
• Closing the window keeps Blockr watching from the notification area by the clock, the way Blockr for Mac stays in the menu bar, and alerts still appear. Its icon shows the state at a glance, and its menu opens Blockr, pauses or resumes protection, answers a waiting alert and quits. Quit Blockr is also in Settings ▸ General and on Ctrl+Q. When Blockr doesn't start at sign-in, a banner says so and offers to.
• An alert can wait as long as you need. Settings ▸ Alerts ▸ Wait for an answer for ▸ Until I answer turns the time limit off, and a timed alert has More time (Ctrl+T) and a warning twenty seconds before it runs out.
• Zoom. Ctrl+Plus, Ctrl+Minus, Ctrl+0 and Ctrl with the mouse wheel make everything bigger or smaller, and Blockr keeps the zoom. At 200% zoom, on a small window or at high Windows scaling, each screen scrolls whole and its tables fold their columns instead of squeezing names to nothing, and the smallest window fits a 1080p screen at 200% scaling.
• A way to remove a business license, and a name for this computer. The license window had a key field and nothing else: no way to hand a seat back, and every machine on the account was called the same thing. Which mode you are in now shows in the footer, not only on the Settings card.
• New apps is now an explicit choice: Ask me, Allow silently or Block silently (Settings ▸ Alerts). Allow silently lets a new app connect without an alert and writes nothing. Block silently blocks it without an alert; on Windows a block has to be a real firewall rule, so it is added to the Rules screen, where you can see it and change it. "If nobody answers an alert" and the wait only apply while Blockr asks, and are hidden otherwise.
• Blockr no longer asks about Windows itself. Windows Update, time sync, the service hosts and the long tail of Windows' own programs connect without an alert, so the alerts you do see are about apps you installed. On by default; Settings ▸ Alerts ▸ Trust Windows' own components turns it off. Your own rules still win, and general-purpose tools that Windows ships (PowerShell, cmd, the script hosts, curl, certutil, rundll32 and the like) are still asked about, because they will send anything anywhere for whoever runs them. Blockr trusts a program only when Windows' own installer owns the file and it sits in the Windows folder. These connections are still logged, marked Windows, and the CSV export says so in its Reason column.
• Settings ▸ General ▸ Match rules against the names Windows looked up, the switch for the name matching above. On by default; when it is off, the Rules screen says that rules written as names cannot match.
• The connection log says when a rule could not be enforced. A connection a rule said to block, which got through because Windows Firewall could not be changed (for a program on a network share, say), is recorded as allowed and marked Not enforced.
• Rules that expire by themselves. The commonest honest answer to an alert is "while I'm doing this", so the alert now offers Always, For 15 minutes, For 1 hour or For 8 hours, and the Rules screen shows the time left on each rule, with a Make permanent button. Expiry is checked on every connection. A temporary block that Blockr wrote into Windows Firewall is taken out when it runs out; if Blockr's service isn't running at that moment, it comes out the next time the service starts, and the Rules screen says so.
• Switch a rule off without deleting it. Every host rule has a checkbox, so "is this rule what's breaking that app?" can be answered without retyping the rule afterwards. A block switched off leaves Windows Firewall until it is switched back on.
• Blockr tells you which rules aren't doing anything. Above the host rules, a list names the ones that have run out, the ones another rule already covers, pairs that contradict each other, and (on Windows) an allow for one host of an app that Windows Firewall blocks outright, which can never take effect. Each names the other rule involved and can take you to it. Nothing is deleted for you.
• Import and export rules as files (Rules ▸ Import rules… and Export rules…). Blockr has no account and no sync, so a file is the way to move to a new PC and the backup. Three formats: Blockr's own, which keeps everything (app rules and host rules, with ports, notes and expiry); a hosts file; and a plain domain list, the two formats every published blocklist is written in, so a list somebody else maintains can become rules you own and can edit. An import adds, never replaces, and says what it added, what was already there and what it could not read. A rules file exported by Blockr for macOS imports too; its rules for Mac programs are skipped, since they cannot name a Windows program.
• Blockr notices when Windows Firewall stops blocking. Every rule Blockr makes is a Windows Firewall rule, so if the firewall is switched off for the network you're on, or its service isn't running, nothing is blocked, and Blockr used to go on looking protected. It now says Not blocking, explains which of the two it is, and offers a button to Windows Security, where you turn it back on; Blockr never changes that setting itself. It also notices Blockr rules deleted or switched off in Windows Firewall by something else, counts them, and offers Restore rules. Checked at launch, whenever you come back to the window, and every minute.
• Undo a delete. Deleting a host rule, removing an app's rule, or Show everything (which clears what is hidden from the connection log) leaves an Undo strip at the top of the window, and Ctrl+Z does the same outside a text box. A rule comes back exactly as it was, in its place in the list and in Windows Firewall. The strip waits until you dismiss it; a later delete takes its place.
• Pause the Map. Its automatic refresh has a Pause the map button, and the Map reads nothing while it isn't the screen on view. Paused, it says how many connections came in since.
• Without Microsoft's WebView2 Runtime, Blockr says so instead of opening a window that cannot work. Blockr's window is drawn with it; Windows 11 has it and Windows Update brings it to almost every Windows 10 PC. Where it is missing, Setup says so, with Microsoft's page, and installs nothing; if it goes missing later, opening Blockr says the same, and what Blockr's service still does without the window. Setup also says plainly that Blockr needs Windows 10 version 1809 or later.

Security

• A program's own file name can no longer run script inside Blockr. The Allow and Block buttons on the Apps and Rules screens were built by pasting the program's path into a small piece of script, and a path containing certain characters (a file named with ', for example) could break out of it and run code in the window that writes your firewall rules. Any program on the PC can choose its own name, so this was a way in for anything already running. Paths and hosts are now never part of any script; they are carried as plain data.

Fixed

• The keyboard keeps its place. Toggling a rule, choosing Allow or Block on a row, deleting a rule, sorting, or saving a rule from its editor threw the focus to the top of the window; it now stays on the same control, or moves to the next row after a delete. Arrow keys move through every choice, and a table is one Tab stop instead of one per row.
• The Traffic count is no longer read out on every batch of connections. A screen reader heard it up to 2.5 times a second; it now speaks when you change the search or the filter.
• A host rule that can never match is refused, in words beside its field: a pasted web address becomes its name, a port written onto the name moves to the port, and an impossible name, range or port is caught before it is saved. A save that fails says so in the editor.
• The Map's hover card holds still, can be reached, and Escape puts it away.
• "Not blocking" reads the same everywhere: the pill is red like its banner, and Settings says the firewall is off instead of "Reachable". Blocklist errors are sentences in words ("The publisher's server had a problem." instead of "HTTP 503"), a rule says Block or Allow, "Mirrored" is "In Windows Firewall", and the setting that hides link-local traffic says that it does.
• Several warnings at once no longer squeeze the connection log. Up to six banners could stack over it and leave a single row; with three or more, the screen now scrolls whole, as it does in a short window.
• The first-run explainer says three things where it promised two, and on a narrow window opens at its title instead of below it. US spelling throughout; the version shows once.
• A program can no longer disguise its own name. A direction control in a file name ("invoice_[U+202E]fdp.exe" read as a PDF) is shown as that visible marker everywhere a name or path appears, and never obeyed.
• Small layout faults. The list of what is hidden overlapped itself, a temporary rule's Make permanent was cut off and drawn over Edit, and a checkbox in a dialog sat flush against its words.
• Rules written as names now match. A rule like block telemetry.vendor.com or *.doubleclick.net was compared with the connection's address, which is a number for nearly every real connection, so it never matched anything, and the "Blockr only" badge promised enforcement that did not exist. Blockr now reads the names Windows itself looked up (the DNS cache) and judges each rule against every name an address is known by, the most specific rule winning. Because Windows Firewall only understands addresses, a name rule that matches is enforced by blocking that app from that address, and the block goes when the rule goes. The connection log shows which name matched. Blockr for macOS fixed the same fault in 1.10.0.
• Rules for an address range now count in Blockr's own log. A rule for 10.0.0.0/8 was written into Windows Firewall correctly, but Blockr's own verdict compared it as text, so the log recorded those connections as allowed and could ask about them.
• Blockr no longer asks about its own connections. Its update check and license check were treated like any unknown app: blocked first, then an alert about Blockr itself.
• A damaged rules or history file is kept, not overwritten. Blockr used to read a damaged rules.json as "no rules" and the next change saved over it, so every rule was gone for good. The damaged file is now set aside as rules.json.corrupt (the same for the history), and Clear history removes those copies too. Blockr says so when it happens, and names where the copy is: %ProgramData%\Blockr, which only Blockr's service and an administrator can open.
• The CSV export can no longer smuggle a spreadsheet formula. A program whose name or path began with =, +, - or @ became a live formula when the file was opened in Excel. Such cells now begin with an apostrophe.
• Blockr opens without waiting for the connection history. At the largest history setting that file is tens of megabytes. The window now appears at once and the history slides in underneath a moment later.
• The history is saved less often when it is large. It used to be rewritten every 30 seconds whatever its size; the interval now grows with the log, up to 10 minutes, so a longer history costs disk space rather than disk writes. Quitting still saves everything.
• The per-app totals no longer grow forever. Installers and versioned helpers each left a permanent entry; Blockr now keeps the 2,000 most recently seen apps, and an app with a rule is always listed.
• The delete buttons on the Rules screen, and the edit button on host rules, did nothing. They were broken by the same construction as the security fix above, the other way round: the value's own quotation marks ended the button's instructions early.
• Allowing an app no longer deletes its other blocks from Windows Firewall. Allowing an app, answering its alert with Allow, or removing its rule took out every Blockr rule for that app, including a block you had written for one of its destinations, while the Rules screen went on showing that block.
• "any host" appeared in English on the Rules screen and in app details in every language.
• The connection log shows the date on rows from before today. A time with no date made a connection from last week read as one from this morning, and a log that had stopped updating look live.
• Names sort the way your language expects. Sorting by app or host put "App10" before "App2" and every accented name after "Z".
• Every search box can be cleared with a click, and Escape empties it. The Apps and Rules boxes had no clear button.
• The Simplified Chinese for "History" matches Blockr for macOS (历史记录).
• Removing a business license now hands the seat back. Remove only forgot the key on this PC, so the seat stayed in use on your account and moving a license to another computer could run out of seats. Blockr now tells the license server to release this computer first (if the server can't be reached, the key is still removed here). The name you gave this computer is kept, so entering a key again later names the same seat the same way.
• Quitting during a timed pause now really quits. The timer that ends the pause kept Blockr's process running, invisibly, until the pause would have run out, up to an hour after the window closed.

Changed

• Settings has switches, each named by its own row, where eight checkboxes all read "Enabled" to a screen reader, and the chosen option in every segmented control (an app's Allow or Block, the Traffic filter, the appearance) is filled, so it can be read in dark mode and in High Contrast.
• Settings lists apply only what you choose. Reading through Keep, Language or New apps with the arrow keys no longer applies each option on the way past; Enter or leaving the list does. Keeping fewer connections asks first, saying how many go.
• Removing Blockr's rules from Windows Firewall asks plainly, with Cancel ready, instead of asking for an English phrase to be typed: your rule list is kept, and Re-apply puts them back.
• Blocklists start with a choice. Refresh appears once something is subscribed, oisd is marked Recommended, and the notes on how lists work on Windows fold into one.
• The connection alert says what has already happened. Windows can't hold a connection open, so an unknown app's first try is blocked before Blockr asks; the alert now says so ("Its first try was blocked. Allow lets the next try through.") and its countdown says in words what happens when it runs out. While Blockr can't block, the alert says the connection went through, Remember my choice starts off, and the alert never takes the keyboard from the window you're in. It shows the name the PC looked the address up by, and offers a rule for that name.
• The CSV export has two more columns, Reason and Matched name, after the original seven, so a script that reads columns by position keeps working.
• What you need to read stays until you dismiss it. An import's result stays on the Rules screen, with the lines Blockr couldn't read listed, and an error or a refusal stays at the foot of the window with a close button (or Escape). Only a message that repeats what you just did goes by itself.
• Without its service, Blockr offers only what can work. When the service isn't installed or isn't running, each screen says so where its contents would be, with the one thing that fixes it (Start the service, or reinstalling Blockr), and Pause protection and the buttons that change rules are hidden until it is back. A standard user's Traffic screen no longer offers Start monitoring, which only an administrator can do.