Release notes

Changelog

Every public release of Liftr, newest first.

1.5.3 · September 30, 2026 · A Business License activates on any Mac

Activating a Business License no longer fails with “Connection error”. Liftr checks a license key with the twoplus11 license server over HTTPS, and it could only verify that server’s certificate on a Mac that had the python.org edition of Python installed, which most Macs do not. Everywhere else the check failed before it started, so activation said “Connection error” however many times you tried. Liftr now verifies the server the way Safari does, with the certificates macOS itself trusts, including one your school or company has installed.
A new key can no longer cost you the license that works. The key you typed used to be saved before the license server had checked it, so a typo, a full seat count or a moment offline could leave you without the license you already had. A new key is now saved only once the server accepts it.
The license key field shows the whole key. It showed only the last part of a key’s format, so a key could be typed without the LIFTR- it starts with and then be refused. It now shows the full format, LIFTR-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX.
The Business License window is the one the other twoplus11 apps use.

1.5.2 · September 15, 2026 · Stopping an export no longer replaces the file it was overwriting

Cancelling an export leaves the file you already had intact. Each image was composed straight onto the destination, and the only check for a cancellation came after that write had already happened. Pressing Stop at the wrong moment therefore replaced a file you already had, then reported the run as cancelled, and the cleanup path could not undo it because it deliberately declines to delete anything that existed before the run started. That is the right instinct for a file the run never touched and precisely wrong for one it had just overwritten, and it could affect several files per Stop. Each image is now composed beside the destination and moved into place only after the cancellation check, so stopping can no longer truncate what was there.

1.5.1 · September 14, 2026 · Runs on macOS 13 Ventura again

Ventura is supported again. Liftr now runs on macOS 13 Ventura and later, where it previously required macOS 14 Sonoma. Nothing in the app ever needed Sonoma: the floor came from the Python runtime bundled in at build time, which has been rebuilt against one targeting macOS 10.13 on Intel and 11.0 on Apple Silicon. Intel and Apple Silicon Macs are both supported, as before.
On macOS 13, Liftr removes backgrounds with its bundled CoreML engine instead of the Vision one, which needs macOS 14. Both produce the same kind of cutout; Vision is faster, and is still used on Apple Silicon running Sonoma or later.

1.5.0 · September 8, 2026 · Liftr opens where you left it, and the toolbar says whose photo it is

The update notice can only ever open a twoplus11.com page. When a new version exists, Liftr offers a button that opens the download page, and which page that is was whatever the update server said it was. Nothing checked it, so a spoofed or compromised server could have pointed that button at any site it liked, wearing the credibility of a signed app. The address is now checked against the real host before anything opens, and a lookalike like twoplus11.com.example.net does not pass.
New: Liftr reopens at the size and in the place you left it. Every launch put the window back at its default size in the middle of the screen, however you had arranged it the session before, and for an app you open once per photo, that is every time. Liftr now remembers the frame as you leave it and restores it next launch. If the display it was on has gone, or the window would come back off the edge of the screen or underneath the menu bar, it is brought fully back onto a screen that still exists rather than opening somewhere you cannot see it.
Fixed: the name of the photo you were editing was cut down to “heads…” as soon as you added a second image. The Save all masks button had been laid out as if it were in the sidebar, so in the toolbar it stretched to 588 pixels, half the window. It swallowed the space that keeps the other controls pinned to the right, it loomed larger than Export, and everything else in the row shrank to make room for it, starting with the one thing the row exists to tell you. It is a normal-sized button now, level with the rest of the row, and the filename has its space back. Hovering a name too long to fit still shows it in full.
Fixed: a dropped folder that added nothing said “Those aren’t images”, whichever reason it was. Dropping a folder is the main way to run a batch, and the message it produced when nothing appeared was picked by looking only at loose files. A folder is not a file, so there was nothing to look at and it always fell through to the same line. It was wrong for a folder of RAWs Liftr cannot open, wrong for a folder Liftr was already holding, and right only by accident for a folder with no images in it. Liftr now looks inside the folder before it answers, and says which of those it was.
Fixed: pressing Escape on the license window could destroy your license key. That window sends “no key” when it is dismissed, which does exactly one thing: it deletes the key stored on this Mac. Dismissing was already safe while a business license was active and known-good, but a paying customer whose key had failed to validate for a passing reason (the licensing server down, offline, a seat count that had not caught up) landed on the same window, and Escape silently threw away their only copy with nothing to confirm and nothing to undo. Dismissing now only closes the window; returning a Mac to personal use is the Remove button’s job, and that one asks first.
Fixed: Liftr no longer writes to its own application bundle to keep the Dock icon matching your appearance setting. Doing that put a resource fork inside the signed app, which breaks the Apple signature on your Mac after first launch, and a broken signature can stop the updater accepting its own updates. The Dock icon still follows light and dark.

Site update, August 30, 2026 · Buy several apps in one order

One payment, as many apps as you need. The commercial license window on this page could sell exactly one thing: Liftr. A team that also wanted two other twoplus11 apps paid three separate times, on three separate pages, and filed three separate receipts. That window now carries an Add another app control: search the catalog, set how many computers each app goes on, and pay once. Every app still gets its own license key, and they all arrive in the same email.
Nothing changes if Liftr is all you want. The window opens exactly as it did, at the same price, with the same count of computers, and an order for a single app takes the route through checkout it always has. The extra controls appear only once the app list has loaded, so a slow or unreachable connection leaves the page as it was.

1.4.0 · August 20, 2026 · The mask itself, six controls that were never wired, and a stop

New: you can save the mask. Liftr has always worked out exactly which pixels are the subject, and then kept that to itself, handing back only the finished picture. The mask is now a file: a PNG where white is the subject, black is the background and grey is the soft edge. That is the thing you need to take the same cut-out into Photoshop, After Effects or Figma, or to rebuild the same composite later. Anything you erased or brushed back is already part of it. One button does the whole batch, reporting as each one lands.
New: “Save all masks” can be stopped. A shoot’s worth of cut-outs is exactly the batch that button exists for, and it was the one long job in Liftr with no way out: two hundred images could only be ended by quitting the app. The button becomes Stop while it runs, it stops after the mask it is on so nothing is half-written, every mask already saved stays saved, and it says how many it reached rather than reporting a stop as a finished run.
New: every image now has its own button. Hover a card, select it, or tab to it, and one button does whatever that image needs right now: export just this one, stop just this one while it is running, try it again if it failed, or open the result when it is finished. Until now all four were all-or-nothing: Export and Stop applied to the whole list, and a failed image had no button at all.
New: a failed image can be tried again without losing your work. If finding the subject fails, the only way to have another go was to remove the image and add it back, which threw away that image’s entire edit history and every eraser stroke on it. “Try again” keeps all of it.
New: Clear all, with an Undo. Emptying the list meant removing images one at a time: forty images, forty confirmations. Clear all asks first, and the message it leaves behind puts everything back.
New: “Use as default for new images.” Every image you added started from Liftr’s built-in settings, however many times you had adjusted the last one, so a batch shot on the same background meant setting the same background, format and trim again for each one. Set one image up the way you want it and it becomes the starting point for everything you add from then on. Images already loaded are left alone, and it asks before it changes anything.
New: a background image can be un-picked. Choosing a picture as the background was a one-way door: the only way out was to choose a different background entirely, which lost the picture. Clicking the image swatch again removes it. A saved preset can also be deleted without a mouse now: its × was revealed on hover in a way that made it impossible to Tab to.
New: 16-bit color for PNG and TIFF. Liftr could already write 16 bits per channel and never offered the choice. It matters when the result is going on to be graded or printed: gradients and soft shadows keep their smoothness instead of banding.
Fixed: an export could destroy a different photo you had also added. With “replace existing files” on, a photo saved in a different format lands on that name, so exporting cat.jpg as a PNG wrote over cat.png, and if that was a separate original you had also added, it was gone with no warning and no undo. The same gap covered masks: “Save all masks” would overwrite a … mask.png you had added yourself. Every writer now knows which files are in your list and steps around all of them.
Fixed: a failed export could delete a file it had not written. When replacing existing files, a failure part-way through cleaned up by deleting the file it was writing to, which was your existing one. It now only removes what it actually created.
Fixed: a dropped folder of shot1 … shot10 was queued with shot10 second. That walk is the queue: the order Liftr cuts out backgrounds in, the order the progress counter reads, and the order Save all masks writes in. Liftr has no sort control, so there was nowhere to correct it. Subfolders came back in whatever order the disk happened to store them, so the same folder could queue differently on two Macs. A dropped folder now arrives in reading order, all the way down.
Fixed: the card’s own controls could not be reached from the keyboard. The remove button, and the new action button beside it, appeared only on hover, and a hidden control cannot be focused, so Tab went straight past them. Focusing or selecting a card now shows both.
Fixed: a screen reader was never told an image had failed. A card’s name was written once, when the image was added, and never again, so it went on reading a failed image as an ordinary editable one while the card visibly said “Failed” or “No subject found”. Names now carry the image’s state, and an image that fails says so out loud at the moment it fails. Changing language no longer undoes that.
Fixed: a batch where every image failed said nothing at all: no message, no notification; the Export button just went back to how it started, which reads as success. It says so now, on screen and in a notification, and a batch where some images failed no longer shows its count in the success color. A single image that fails says why.
Fixed: the progress counter was counting the wrong things. It counted every image finished since the app opened, so exporting five, adding three and exporting those opened at “Lifting… 5 of 8 done” before any work had started, and a failed image dropped out of both halves, so three images with one failure finished at “2 of 2 done”. It counts this run now, and a failure stays counted. “Save all masks” also gets its label back after a run instead of reading “Saving masks… 5/5” for the rest of the session.
Fixed: a failure reported over any dialog reported to nobody: the toast sat below every sheet, the license window and the confirm dialog, so the message was painted behind them and the Undo underneath could not be clicked. It sits above everything now, failures have their own announcement channel, and an error can no longer be wiped by the success that follows it.
Fixed: building a before/after GIF could not be stopped. It ran with no indicator and no way out: the button gave no sign anything was happening. The GIF button now says what it is doing and stops it if you press it again. (The stop was already built into the GIF writer; nothing had ever asked for it.)
Fixed: installing the Finder Quick Action reported success even when it had failed. The installer carried on past a failed copy and finished with a tick, so a Quick Action that was never written told you to go and right-click an image.
Fixed: the “export finished” notification never actually appeared. Liftr asked macOS for it through a mechanism Apple retired several releases ago, and the failure was silent. Exports notify properly now.
Fixed: both sliders announced their position in the wrong language. The before/after reveal and the saturation/brightness square tell a screen reader where they are through a separate value description that was only ever rewritten when the control moved, so they opened in English whatever language you had chosen, and kept announcing the language you had just left until you happened to drag them. Nothing on screen was wrong, which is why it went unnoticed.
Fixed: the last line of the help sheet and the twoplus11 button in the footer were English in every language. Both are translated now, and the footer button is the one with no visible label, so that name is all a screen-reader user gets.
Fixed: a release can no longer be built from a failing test suite. The signing and notarizing script went straight to building; the tests run first now, and a failure stops it before anything is signed.
Fixed: the color macOS tints the window with was still the old purple Liftr used before it was given its own, and the business-license purchase button’s white label sat on a two-color gradient below the contrast the guidelines ask for. Both are Liftr’s own color now, and the site’s mobile download button went from 3.55:1 to 4.68:1.
The company name on an activated business license was always blank. Liftr read it from a field the licensing server stopped sending. The name is there, and it now appears. Nothing about how licenses work changed; only what the window could see.

Site update, August 19, 2026 · A checksum for the download

Website only; no change to the app.

The download page now publishes the SHA-256 of the Liftr.dmg it serves, so you can confirm the file you got is the file we put there. macOS already runs the check that matters (Liftr is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, and a copy altered after we signed it will not open), but there was no way to check a download by hand, which is what anyone installing it on more than their own Mac tends to want. The checksum is on the download section under SHA-256 checksum, next to the one command that compares it with your copy. It is published as a plain file too, at Liftr.dmg.sha256, in the format shasum -c reads.

Site update, August 17, 2026 · The other apps, after the sign-up

Website only; no change to the app.

The list of the other twoplus11 Mac apps has moved to the bottom of the page, below the email sign-up rather than above it. It used to arrive while the page was still making its case for Liftr, so the last thing you read before being asked for your email was a wall of other apps. It sits at the end now: the page finishes on Liftr, and the list is there if you want to see what else there is.

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 Liftr 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 Liftr “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 Liftr installed.

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

A privacy answer on this page was wrong, and is fixed. It described Liftr as working “offline”, which stopped being true once Liftr 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 Liftr makes, in full: a check for a new version about once a week, and (only if you enter a business license key) a check that the key is valid. 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. Liftr 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.
The screenshot viewer no longer makes every visit quietly re-download this page as if it were an image, a wasted request on each load.
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: Liftr 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 · App name and icon in the hero

The top of the product page now shows the Liftr icon and name above the headline, so it is clear which app you are looking at without scrolling to the nav. No change to the app.

1.3.8 · August 9, 2026 · Automatic updates

New: Liftr 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.
New: refreshed appearance. Liftr now uses the shared twoplus11 palette and a regenerated app icon, so it matches the rest of the family.
Fixed: contrast and keyboard-navigation problems (WCAG 2.1 AA). Faint text is now readable, and every control can be reached and used from the keyboard.
Fixed: the Check for Updates button spins while it checks, instead of flashing an empty window.

1.3.7 · July 17, 2026 · 13-language localization

13-language localization: Liftr now speaks 13 languages, with an in-app flag picker; it auto-detects your Mac's language, and you can override it anytime.
Fixed: “Strip metadata” now actually removes GPS/EXIF data. Previously the toggle had no effect.
Fixed: “Clean color fringe” now actually applies during export. Previously the toggle had no effect.
Fixed: the eyedropper now samples the correct pixel when a trim or non-original aspect preset is active.

1.3.6 · July 16, 2026 · One logo everywhere

Changed: the in-app logo (sidebar header, empty state, drag-and-drop overlay, and license panel) now uses the exact same glyph as the app icon (the framed subject with the lifted head and shoulders) so the logo is identical everywhere.

1.3.5 · July 16, 2026 · Appearance override fix

Fixed: pinning the appearance to Light or Dark (instead of following the system) now restyles the whole window. Previously the translucent header and footer kept the system's appearance, leaving hard-to-read text when the override and the system disagreed.

1.3.4 · July 15, 2026 · “Tip”

Renamed the “Donate” link to “Tip.”

1.3.3 · 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 purple, instead of a deeper tint of the same color.

1.3.2 · July 15, 2026 · Icon fixes

Fixed: the app icon could show the wrong light/dark variant in Finder, Spotlight, Launchpad, and the Dock while Liftr wasn't running. It now updates everywhere immediately, not just the Dock tile of an already-open app.
Fixed: the icon shown on this site didn't quite match the real app icon.

1.3.1 · July 14, 2026 · Dock icon padding fix

Fixed: the Dock icon rendered edge-to-edge with no padding, making it look larger than every other app in the Dock. It now follows Apple's standard icon grid, sized and spaced to match.

1.3.0 · July 13, 2026 · Reposition the subject & background

Move and resize the subject: a new Subject panel adds Scale/X/Y sliders so you can nudge or resize the cut-out within the canvas.
Pan and zoom a custom background image: when your background is your own photo, new Zoom/X/Y sliders (under Background → Fit) let you reframe it without leaving Liftr.
The app now follows your system's light/dark setting for its Dock icon.

1.2.0 · July 12, 2026 · Color picker, straight lines & presets

Standard color picker: the + in the Background swatches now opens a proper color picker (a saturation/brightness square, a hue slider, and a hex box) so you can dial in any exact color, not only sample one from the photo. It works alongside the eyedropper: sample a color from your image, then fine-tune it in the picker.
Erase in a straight line: hold Shift while erasing (or restoring) to constrain the stroke to a straight line, great for cleaning a straight edge in one drag. Click a point, then Shift-click another, to connect them with a straight line.
Save your own quick presets: hit Save current under Quick presets to save the whole background-and-export setup as a named preset, right beside the six built-ins. Apply it in one click on any image; remove it with the × on its tile.

1.1.0 · July 11, 2026 · Backgrounds & sharing

Background fade: a new Keep original slider brings the original background back, from fully removed (0%) to untouched (100%); land anywhere in between for a soft, ghosted backdrop.
Restore brush: the touch-up tool now has Erase and Restore modes; paint the subject back where the cut-out went too far. Press R to flip between them.
Eyedropper: pick a background color straight from your image.
New: a Business license button in the header (one click to upgrade to, or manage, a business license).
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 Automatically check for updates in the update panel.

1.0.3 · July 10, 2026 · Touch-up eraser

Clean up stray edges by hand, with zoom.

Eraser. When the cut-out picks up a stray speck or a rough edge, turn on the new eraser (the Erase button above the image, or press E) and paint it away. You work right on the lifted subject; undo a stroke with ⌘Z or hit Clear to start over. Your erasing carries through to every background you try, and into Copy and Export
Zoom in for fine detail. While erasing, zoom and pan with familiar shortcuts: ⌘+ / ⌘− to zoom, ⌘0 to fit, ⌘1 for 100%, or the zoom controls in the corner. Hold Space and drag (or two-finger scroll / pinch) to pan. Size the brush with the slider or the [ and ] keys, right down to a fine tip for tight edges
Copy grabs exactly what you see. The Copy button (⌘C) now copies the image just as it appears on screen: your chosen background, edge refinements, and any erasing all included

1.0.2 · July 10, 2026 · Numbered batch cards

A small quality-of-life touch for large batches.

Numbered batch cards: every photo in the batch list now shows its position (1, 2, 3…), so it's easy to see the order at a glance and point to a specific image when you're working through a big batch. The numbers renumber themselves automatically as you add or remove photos

1.0.1 · July 9, 2026 · Intel Macs supported

Background removal now works on Intel Macs, for real.

Intel Macs supported: 1.0.0 shipped as a universal app, but the removal relied on Apple's Vision model (VNGenerateForegroundInstanceMaskRequest), which only runs on Apple Silicon's Neural Engine and so failed on Intel. Liftr now falls back to an on-device CoreML model (U²-Net) on Intel Macs, so removal works there too, still 100% on your Mac, nothing uploaded. Apple Silicon Macs are unchanged and keep the faster Vision path

1.0.0 · July 8, 2026 · Initial public release

The first release. Lift the subject, drop the background, entirely on your Mac.

On-device removal: drag in a photo, or a whole batch, and Apple's Vision model (VNGenerateForegroundInstanceMaskRequest) removes the background in about 0.2 seconds per image, at full resolution. Nothing is ever uploaded
Any background: drop the subject onto transparency, a solid color, a blurred version of the original photo, a gradient, or your own image. The matte is cached, so changing the background never re-runs Vision
Edge refinement: tighten, feather and clean up the cut-out edge so hair and fine detail look natural
Soft drop shadow: an adjustable shadow (blur, opacity, offset) so a cut-out sits believably on its new background
Trim, aspect & size: trim-to-subject auto-crop, plus aspect-ratio and output-size control for product shots, avatars and social posts
Batch with presets: process many photos at once and apply a preset to all of them (Transparent PNG, Product White, Studio Gray, Soft Shadow, Portrait Blur, Social Gradient)
Before/after compare: a slider to see exactly what changed, the original on one side and the cut-out on a checkerboard on the other
Export PNG, JPG, HEIC & TIFF: transparent PNG, HEIC and TIFF for cut-outs, plus a flattened JPG when you need one
Copy & Share: copy the cut-out straight to the clipboard, or send it through the macOS Share sheet
Non-destructive by design: originals are never modified; every export is a new file, and same-name files are never overwritten unless you say so
Private by design: everything runs on your Mac with Apple's Vision and CoreImage. No cloud, no account, no usage analytics; works offline
Signed and notarized by Apple; macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple Silicon & Intel
Free for personal use forever, full resolution, unlimited batch, no watermarks; commercial use requires a one-time $5-per-computer business license