Changelog

1.6.0 · October 14, 2026 · Eight tools that never worked on older Macs, and no licence at all

The headline is a fix, not a feature. Eight of the seventeen tools could not read a single file on macOS 12, 13 or 14, and had not been able to since 1.0. The Recent list also works after a relaunch for the first time. The licence is gone from the app entirely, and every tool got a pass for keyboard and screen reader use.

Fixed

• Eight tools could not read a single file on macOS 12, 13 or 14. Merge, Organize, Rotate, Crop, Page Numbers, Redact, Fill & Sign and Batch all read a PDF’s pages through a component whose standard build calls three JavaScript methods that Safari only got in 17.4 and 18.2. Stapl supports macOS 12 Monterey, which stops at Safari 17.6, so on the floor the app advertises those eight reported that every PDF “couldn’t be read” — whatever the PDF was — while the nine tools that work in Rust carried on fine and the app looked healthy. It had been that way since 1.0. They now use the build that carries its own polyfills, and a test opens a PDF with those three methods removed so this cannot come back.
• Recent files open again after a relaunch. Stapl is only ever given access to the files you choose, and macOS takes that access back when the app quits — so a file clicked in the Recent list came back “couldn’t be read” every time, in the only kind of launch where Recent is any use. Stapl now keeps its own note of what you opened and asks for that file back when you click it. It will only ever ask for a file you picked yourself: a path it never saw you choose cannot get into that list, and the match is exact, so nothing can stand in for a different file.
• And when a file genuinely cannot be opened, every tool says so. One that has been moved, renamed or deleted since you last opened it still cannot be read. Most tools used to reset themselves without a word and the rest showed a raw internal error; now they explain what happened and point at ⌘O.

New

• Stapl is free for everyone, and the licence is gone from the app. There is no key to enter, no seat to manage, and no computer to register. Commercial use is free on as many Macs as you like. The licence window, the Business License command and the footer button that opened them have all been removed rather than hidden.
• A supporter badge. If you have tipped and hold a supporter key, Settings shows a lit badge with the year you started. It is recognition only: it unlocks nothing, because there is nothing locked. Without a key, Settings shows a quiet link instead.

Changed

• Keyboard and screen reader support across every tool. Finishing a job now moves focus to the result, so the next thing you press acts on what you just made instead of being dropped at the top of the page. ⌘S saves or applies in every tool that has a primary action, ⌘O opens a file from anywhere, and ⌘↵ starts a batch. Placed stamps in Fill & Sign can be resized from the keyboard, the date format buttons behave like a real set of radio buttons, undo says that it undid something, and a drag from the Finder is announced as it arrives. Tested against WCAG 2.1 AA.
• 127 strings that had only ever appeared in English are now translated into all twelve other languages Stapl ships, and a count of one no longer reads “1 pages”.

Site update, October 11, 2026 · Stapl is free for commercial use

• There is no longer a Business License to buy. Using Stapl at work, on a work Mac, or for anything that earns money used to need a paid license. It does not any more: commercial use is free, on as many computers as you like, with no seat to count and no account to create. It is the same complete application either way, with no locked features, trial timers or watermarks.
• Section 3 of the terms grants that outright, under “Commercial Use (Free)”, and these pages have stopped quoting a price for it. Read the terms.
• No change to the app.

1.5.0 · October 9, 2026 · Fill & Sign gets handles, and Extract Text reads real PDFs

Most of this release is Fill & Sign: placed stamps can be resized, dated the way you write dates, and added without leaving full screen. The one fix is a big one, and it affected most PDFs people actually have.

New

• Fill & Sign: resize placed stamps. Drag the grip handle at the bottom-right corner of any placed stamp to make it bigger or smaller. The aspect ratio stays locked. Shift and an arrow key does the same once a stamp is focused, and Delete or Backspace removes it from the keyboard.
• Fill & Sign: a date format picker. The date stamp defaults to MM/DD/YYYY, zero-padded. A row of format buttons switches it to DD/MM/YYYY, YYYY-MM-DD, or a long-form date like October 9, 2026.
• Fill & Sign: controls in full-screen view. A floating dock at the bottom of the zoom panel adds a signature, initials, date or text stamp without closing full screen first. The same dock lists the stamps you have already placed, so you can pick one back up.
• Crop: a live preview. Dropping a PDF into Crop shows page one with dark bands over the edges being trimmed and a dashed border around the content that will remain. It updates as you switch presets, so you can see what you are about to cut.

Fixed

• Extract Text now works on most real-world PDFs. Word, Acrobat and other apps write PDFs using CIDFont encoding, which the previous engine read as raw glyph bytes and wrote out as hex, so the text you got back was unreadable. Extraction now uses the same PDFium engine that already draws every page, which decodes those files correctly.

Site update, September 27, 2026 · A new Business License price

• A Business License for Stapl is now $10 per computer, one time. It was $5. Personal use is still free.
• A key you already hold is not affected. It keeps working, and there is nothing you need to do.

1.4.1 · September 15, 2026 · Text recognition works again on every Mac Stapl supports

One fix, and it is the whole release: OCR was failing for everybody, and the reason it went unnoticed is that the app itself was fine.

Fixed

• Text recognition works again on every Mac Stapl supports. The bundled Tesseract had been copied out of Homebrew, which builds for whatever version of macOS the machine happens to be running, so it carried a minimum of macOS 26. Stapl itself launched perfectly well below that, because Tesseract runs as a separate program rather than being loaded into the app, so nothing looked wrong until you pressed the OCR button, and then you got a raw loader error instead of a searchable PDF. That was every customer, since Stapl sells a macOS 12 Monterey floor. The recognition engine is now built from source against that floor, and the build refuses to finish unless a real page of text makes the round trip cleanly.
• A smaller download. Building only the five libraries Stapl actually uses took the bundled libraries from sixteen down to six.

1.4.0 · September 8, 2026 · One notice at a time, and it waits its turn

A small release about the messages Stapl shows you after a job, and about the corners it draws.

Changed

• One notice at a time, and it waits its turn. Finishing a job could stack three notices on top of each other, so a warning about redacted text was pushed off screen by the success message that followed it half a second later. Stapl now shows one at a time and queues the rest, and a queued notice starts its clock when it reaches the front rather than when it was raised, so a message that waited behind a long OCR still gets its full time on screen.
• Notices that matter stay longer. A plain confirmation leaves after three and a half seconds; an error, a warning, or anything offering you a button such as Open, Reveal or Undo stays for six. Hovering it or tabbing into it still holds it open indefinitely, which is what makes those buttons reachable without racing a timer.
• The same corners as every other twoplus11 app. Ten hand-written corner radii across the toolbar, the drop zone, the command palette, the rotate and redact panels and the footer were each a pixel or two off the shared scale. They now come from the same tokens the rest of the app already used, so a card in Stapl is rounded exactly like a card in any sibling app.

Fixed

• The Stapl page says a Windows build is coming, like every other app page. Stapl was the only app on twoplus11.com whose page left the line out, so it alone looked like a Mac-only dead end to a visitor on Windows.
• Stapl knows which version it is. The version number lives in five files and one of them had been left behind at 1.3.0. That one is the copy the app reads about itself, so this release would have called itself 1.3.0 in the About window, told the update service it was running 1.3.0, and then offered you an update to the version you already had. All five now have to agree before a build can be made.
• The license and update servers can no longer be redirected. Stapl reads an environment variable so a local test can point it at a development server, and it honored that variable wherever it pointed, including in the release build. Any program running under your account could set it and have the next activation send your license key and this Mac's fingerprint somewhere else. Only a server on this computer is accepted now, which is all the setting was ever for.
• The download link in an update notice has to be ours. The address the Open Download Page button opens was checked by looking for “twoplus11.com” anywhere in it, which a lookalike address such as twoplus11.com.example.invalid also satisfies. Stapl now checks the actual host of the address and falls back to the real download page otherwise.

Accessibility

• The buttons inside a notice are checked for contrast. Open, Reveal and Undo are the only route to a finished file from several tools, and their color against the notice behind them was the one pairing the contrast suite did not measure. It does now.

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: Stapl. 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 Stapl 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.

1.3.0 · September 2, 2026 · Sign with the keyboard, and nothing walks out mid-run

• Fixed: Redact could report “No sensitive data found” about a document that plainly contained some. The sweep read the page’s text layer, which covers the content stream and nothing else, so text typed into a form field was invisible to it: an SSN in a filled form was never offered as a match, and the engine then went on to rasterize that field into the flattened output. The sweep now reads annotation and form-field text as well, so what it searches is what a reader of the finished PDF can see.
• Fixed: removing a business license left the seat used up. “Remove License” deleted the key from this Mac and told the licensing server nothing, so the activation stood forever. A two-seat company that reinstalled twice was out of seats with nothing on screen explaining why. Removing a license now releases this computer’s activation first, and the key is forgotten locally either way, so the button still works offline.
• Fixed: the company name never appeared on an activated license. Stapl read the buyer’s organization from a field the licensing API stopped sending, so it read as blank on every activated license.
• Fixed: reordering pages spoke English to a screen reader in every language. Merge, Organize and Images → PDF all reorder by dragging, the keyboard path is deliberately supported, and the drag library injects its own English strings straight into the live region. A German or Japanese VoiceOver user got a translated handle label followed by “To pick up a draggable item, press the space bar”. Those announcements are Stapl’s own now, and translated with everything else.
• Fixed: the batch queue sorted in your Mac’s language, not Stapl’s, and because the queue is also the processing order, that was the order a long batch actually ran in. Search also folds Polish and Turkish marks now, so typing polacz finds Połącz.
• Fixed: a release can now be stopped by a failing test. The release script went build, sign, notarize, staple, DMG and never ran either test suite, so “the suites are green” described the last time somebody typed them. Both now run first, and a red suite aborts the release.
• New: Fill & Sign can be used without a mouse. Placing a signature was the one thing in Stapl you could only do by pointing at it, and on a PDF with no fillable form fields, placing a signature is the only way to enable Apply & Save, so anyone working from the keyboard could draw a signature and then find the save button permanently greyed out with nothing saying why. Tab to the page you want, press Return to drop the signature in the middle of it, and walk it into position with the arrow keys. Each nudge is announced, so it works with a screen reader too. Clicking still does exactly what it always did.
• New: ⌘, opens Settings, the way it does in every other Mac app. The command palette shows the shortcut next to Settings so it is possible to find out about.
• Fixed: leaving a running batch no longer abandons it. Pressing Escape or clicking Back while a batch was running took you straight out, and the run kept going, writing files into your output folder with the Stop button gone and nothing on screen to say anything was still happening. Stapl now asks first, tells you how far the run got, and if you do leave it stops properly: the file being worked on finishes, everything already written is kept, and nothing further starts. OCR asks the same question.
• Fixed: a long batch now reports its progress to a screen reader as it goes, instead of running silently between “Processing…” and the summary at the end. “Check for Updates” now reads out what it found, rather than going quiet and leaving you on a button labelled “Close” whether or not there was an update.
• Fixed: the selected option was invisible in High Contrast. The quality tiers in Compress, Crop, PDF → Images and Images → PDF, the page-number format and position choices, and the Batch operation picker all marked your choice with colour alone, which high-contrast mode replaces, leaving every card identical. The chosen one is now drawn in the system’s own selection colours.

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 Stapl.dmg it serves, so you can confirm the file you got is the file we put there. macOS already runs the check that matters (Stapl 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 Stapl.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 Stapl, 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 Stapl, 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 Stapl 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 Stapl “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 Stapl installed.

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

• A privacy answer on this page was wrong, and is fixed. It said Stapl “makes no network connection” and worked “fully offline”, which stopped being true once Stapl 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 Stapl makes, in full: a check for a new version about once a week, and nothing else. 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. Stapl 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.
• 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: Stapl 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 · Real screenshots of the app

• The product page illustrated the app with a hand-drawn mock-up of a window rather than showing Stapl itself. It now shows three captures of the running app: the tool grid you land on, the Merge queue with a thumbnail, page count and size for each document, and a short animation of four documents being reordered and merged into a single 11-page file. The documents on screen are samples, not real records. No change to the app.

1.2.9 · August 9, 2026 · Automatic updates

• New: Stapl 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.
• Stapl now uses the same updater as the rest of the twoplus11 apps, so updates behave identically everywhere.

1.2.8 · July 18, 2026 · Merged-PDF text fix

• Fixed: text in a merged PDF could become unextractable. Copying, searching, or "Extract text" would find nothing on a file that looked perfectly normal. Merged files now keep a valid page structure.

1.2.7 · July 17, 2026

• New: 13-language localization with an in-app language picker.
• Fixed: "Find & mark" redaction now shows a truncation warning instead of silently capping at 2,000 matches on very large documents.
• Fixed: export now waits for any in-progress redaction box to finish before saving, so a box drawn mid-export can't be missing from the saved file.

1.2.6 · July 16, 2026 · White dark-icon glyph

• The dark-appearance app icon now draws the staple in white, matching the rest of the twoplus11 apps, instead of keeping the full coral color.

1.2.5 · July 15, 2026 · “Tip”

• Renamed the “Donate” link to “Tip.”

1.2.4 · 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 indigo, instead of a deeper tint of the same color.

1.2.3 · July 15, 2026 · Icon fix

• Fixed: the app icon could show the wrong light/dark variant in Finder, Spotlight, Launchpad, and the Dock while Stapl wasn't running. It now updates everywhere immediately, not just the Dock tile of an already-open app.

1.2.2 · July 14, 2026

• New: the Dock icon now follows your Mac's light/dark appearance automatically.

1.2.1 · July 13, 2026

• twoplus11 wordmark credit in the footer and About panel.
• Occasional, low-pressure prompt to support twoplus11 after extended use, never more than once, easy to dismiss for good.

1.2.0 · July 12, 2026

• New: Fill & Sign, a 17th tool. Type into a PDF's form fields and drop your signature onto the page, typed in a handwriting-style font or drawn with the trackpad, entirely on your device.
• New: Drop a PDF straight onto Home. Drop a single PDF and pick which tool should open it; drop several and they go straight to Merge.
• New: Open a page up close to redact. Click any page (or its expand button) to open it in a full-window view where you can zoom right in and pan around, so tiny text, numbers, and signatures are easy to black out precisely. Zoom with the buttons, the slider, +/− keys, or ⌘-scroll / trackpad pinch toward the cursor; pan by dragging in Pan mode, holding Space, or using the scrollbars. Boxes you draw here appear on the page grid too, and flatten away for good on Redact.
• New: Zoom in while you redact. A zoom slider above the pages enlarges them so you can draw precise black boxes over small text, signatures, or numbers. Pages now render at higher resolution, so they stay sharp when blown up; drag any page up to fill the whole working area. Your zoom level is remembered between sessions.
• 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 the toggle in the update panel.
• Improved: the header's Report-an-issue icon is now a clearly-labeled Help button, alongside a new Review button to leave feedback in one click.

1.1.5 · July 9, 2026

• New: Keep original file dates. Edited files keep the source PDF's original “Date Created” and “Date Modified” instead of resetting to now. On by default, with a toggle in the new Settings dialog (header gear or ⌘K); applies to every single-file tool: compress, crop, encrypt, unlock, metadata, rotate, watermark, page numbers, redact, and split
• Personal use now says so plainly: the licensing screen spells out that Stapl is free for personal use and includes free updates forever, no catch, no expiry

1.1.4 · July 2026

• Fixed: you can once again drag the window from anywhere along the top bar to move it. Previously only a thin strip at the very top would move the window.

1.1.3 · July 2026

• Under the hood: Compress, OCR, Redact, and PDF → Images now run on a new, self-contained rendering engine. Page rendering and image compression are handled entirely in-app. Same tools, same 100%-on-device privacy; nothing changes in how you use them.

1.1.2 · June 2026

• Check for Updates is now a button in the toolbar (next to About). No need to remember the ⌘K shortcut. It tells you whether you're on the latest Stapl and links you to the download page when a new version is out.

1.1.1 · June 2026

• New: Check for Updates. From the ⌘K palette, check whether you're on the latest Stapl; when a new version is out it links you straight to the download page.

1.1.0 · June 2026

• New tool: Extract Text. Pull a PDF's selectable text into a plain .txt file, entirely on your device. If the PDF is a scan with no text layer, Stapl says so and offers to open it in OCR first. (Brings the toolkit to 16 tools.)
• Tools now remember your last settings between sessions: compression quality, export resolution, crop margins, watermark text & opacity, and page-number style & position all come back the way you left them.
• Password fields (Protect & Unlock) now warn you when Caps Lock is on, so a mistyped-case password doesn't silently fail.
• New: a Recent row on the home screen puts the tools you've used lately one click away, and the ⌘K palette lists them first.
• New: every result you save now offers a one-click Open (in Preview, or whatever opens PDFs on your Mac) right alongside Reveal in Finder. No more digging for the file you just made.
• New: a ⌘K command palette. Press ⌘K from anywhere (even mid-tool) to jump straight to any tool, switch the theme, open About or your license, report an issue, or return home, all by keyboard.
• New: search the toolbox right from the home screen. Start typing to filter all 16 tools by name or by what they do. "password" finds Unlock and Protect, "shrink" finds Compress, "split" finds Organize. Press the / key to jump straight to search.

1.0.1 · June 2026

• Merge no longer dead-ends when one file in the set is corrupt or password-protected: the readable files still merge, and the bad one is shown as skipped.
• Password-protected PDFs now offer a one-click "Open in Unlock" across every tool (Merge, Compress, Crop, Protect, Watermark, Page Numbers, PDF→Images) instead of a dead-end error.
• Fixed: the Batch tool could get stuck on "running" if a file failed mid-batch.
• Fixed: in Batch, two input files with the same name (from different folders) no longer silently overwrite each other. Outputs get a numbered suffix.
• Fixed: a damaged 0-page PDF no longer leaves Reorder/Rotate stuck on "Reading pages…".
• Fixed: starting a second OCR while one is running no longer makes the first job impossible to cancel.
• Fixed: dialogs no longer occasionally pull keyboard focus back to the button behind them while you're interacting with them.

1.0 · June 2026 · Initial public release

• 15-tool PDF toolkit that runs entirely on your Mac: nothing is ever uploaded
• Merge, split, reorder, and rotate pages
• Compress PDFs to shrink file size
• OCR to make scanned PDFs searchable
• Permanently redact text and images
• Password-protect with AES encryption
• Add watermarks
• Signed and notarized by Apple; macOS 12+, Apple Silicon & Intel
• Free for personal use; one-time $5 business license per computer