VaultSort 5.1.0

What's New

• The keywords you give a category are now actually matched. They were only ever used to nudge the meaning-based matching, so a file plainly named "prescriptions" could still land in Uncategorized while a category listing "prescriptions" as a keyword sat right there. Keywords are now matched literally against the file name, the folders above it, and the contents: a clear hit on the name assigns the file immediately, and inside the contents VaultSort waits for real evidence — a phrase, two different keywords, or the same one more than once — rather than acting on a single passing mention. This also rescues files nothing can read: a spreadsheet called "lab report.xlsx" routes on the name you gave it. When two categories both hit, neither wins by keyword and the meaning-based comparison decides between those two.
• Exclude a category with negative keywords. A category for health insurance with keywords like "policy" and "claim" would legitimately claim a car insurance quote, and there was no way to say "health, not car". Categories now take a list of words that rule them out. One hit bars that category for that file outright — it cannot be overridden by a close content match, because an exclusion that can be overruled is not an exclusion. The preview names the exclusion that fired.
• Suggest Categories finds the real groups inside a folder that is all about one thing. Point it at a travel folder and everything is travel, so it used to return one pile named after a city, or nothing at all. It now looks past what the whole folder has in common and groups by what makes files different from each other. A trip folder comes back as flights, hotels, itineraries and travel documents; a household folder as mortgage statements, warranties, utility bills and school papers. Two files are enough to make a group — the old three-file minimum was discarding exactly the groups people name first — and the Fewer / Balanced / More setting now reliably gives you more as you ask for more.
• Suggested category names describe the group rather than one file in it. A cluster of scanned medical imaging was named "Chests" after a single chest X-ray, and an insurance group became "Anthems" after the one insurer mentioned. Words unique to a single file now give way to words the folder actually repeats, and plurals stopped inventing words like "Housings" and "Bloodworks".
• Spreadsheets and slide decks are read for their contents. Previously they could only be sorted by filename, so a spreadsheet named "Q3 export.xlsx" full of lab results had no route to the right category. VaultSort now reads sheet names and cell text from Excel files, and slide text from PowerPoint files.
• Smart Categorize explains its decisions in plain language. Each file used to show raw numbers like "content similarity 0.4032", which read as percentages and meant nothing. The reason now reads as a sentence, with the exact scores and the scale behind an information icon. Every row also has a button to show that file in Finder.
• See which keys can open an encrypted file. Select a single encrypted file in Secure and a key icon appears beside it. It lists every key authorised for that file by name, marks the format the file uses, and says plainly when only one key can open it — the situation a backup key exists to prevent, which nothing in the app previously showed.
• Authorise another key for a file you have already encrypted, from that same panel. It takes one touch on a key that already opens the file and one on the key you are adding, and the panel says so before you start.
• Choose which keys a new file is encrypted for, and see which one will be used. Encrypting used to authorise a single key chosen for you, without saying which. The Encrypt button now names the key, and the menu beside it lets you tick the keys you want — including deselecting the default — with the number of touches shown before you start.
• A way out when you cannot use the key VaultSort picked. Both encrypting and decrypting now offer "Use a different key" during the prompt, so a key that is lost, broken, or simply not to hand no longer leaves cancelling as the only exit. Decrypting also reaches your recovery code this way, which was previously unreachable while any key was registered.
• Bring older encrypted files up to the current format. Key Sync now finds files encrypted by older versions and offers to upgrade them. The current format wraps each key in its own slot using your security key's hardware, which is what makes per-file key management possible at all. (Upgrading re-authorises the file for the keys you choose; keys that cannot be used with the current format stop opening that file, and VaultSort names them before you commit to anything.)
• Key Sync works on current-format files, so a newly registered key can be added to files encrypted before you registered it.
• Encrypting and decrypting show real progress. The bar used to sit at 0% for the entire operation and jump to 100% at the end — on a 3.5 GB folder that was around six minutes with no sign of life, indistinguishable from the app having frozen. It now moves continuously and names what it is doing.
• VaultSort offers to do something useful the first time you open it. A dismissible panel offers to organize your Downloads folder in one click. It reads the folder first and stays away unless there is something worth doing, tells you exactly what it found, and puts Undo beside the result as a full button.
• A clearer route to entering your licence key. There is now a "Have a key? Activate it" link at the top of the licence window, and the menu entry reads "Upgrade or Activate" rather than "Upgrade to Premium" — which looked like an invitation to buy again for people who had already paid.
• Operation History reads consistently. Entries were written in three different formats, one depending on the language settings of the machine that wrote it, and the list was not really sorted by time. Times are now stored one way and displayed in your own format, newest first.

Bug Fixes

• Error reports no longer carry your account name or file names off the device. Diagnostic reports sent when something failed could include the full path of the file involved, which contains your macOS account name and the document's name. Paths are now shortened before leaving your Mac — enough to say a PDF in Downloads failed, not which one or whose. (This was contrary to the published privacy policy; nothing further is required from you.)
• The in-app privacy policy has been corrected. It claimed VaultSort never collects file names or paths, that locally stored data is never transmitted, and did not mention that opting out of analytics leaves the anonymous heartbeat running. The copy inside the app now matches what the website already said. (Nothing about what is collected changed — only the description of it, which was wrong.)
• Fixed decrypting a large folder failing with "Not enough free space" when the disk had plenty free, and a directory decrypt needing roughly three times as much room as it actually used. (If you hit this, the same file will now decrypt — nothing was damaged, and the encrypted original was never modified.)
• Fixed a decrypt that ran out of room part way through leaving a half-written folder behind. The destination is checked before any work begins, and anything already written is removed if delivery cannot finish.
• Fixed decryption refusing to start when a folder of the same name already existed, only after several minutes of work rather than immediately.
• Fixed decrypting several items at once using the first item's key for all of them, so a second folder protected by a different key failed while decrypting it on its own worked.
• Fixed a decrypt asking for an archived key while an active key that opens the same file sat unused — which could not be satisfied at all when the archived key was a passkey rather than a hardware key.
• Fixed error messages that reported only "YubiKey decryption failed", with the actual reason discarded.
• Fixed Key Sync listing files that were already up to date and offering a sync that could not run, and failing partway with an error naming a key that works perfectly well.
• Fixed Undo and Operation History being empty (Windows). VaultSort and the engine that performs an organize disagreed about where the history lives, so the app read an empty folder while the engine wrote elsewhere. History from before this fix is found and remains undoable.
• Fixed Undo staying greyed out for a folder reached through a symbolic link — a relocated Downloads folder being the common case — and a relocated folder appearing as a file in the Directory Browser, where it could not be picked as an organize target.
• Fixed the security key setup instructions describing a Mac (Windows). Registering Windows Hello told you to wait for Chrome, choose iCloud Keychain when asked where to save your passkey, then authenticate with Touch ID. None of those exist on a PC, and Windows offers no choice of where to save a passkey — you simply create it.
• Fixed Guardian and Smart Categorize presenting a similarity score as a percentage. "Content resembles Health Insurance (72% match)" implied a 72% probability of being right; it is a similarity measure between 0 and 1, and is now labelled as one.
• Fixed the Smart Categorize "Suggest categories" button being clickable before the on-device model finished installing, which failed with no explanation. It now stays disabled, with a tooltip saying why.
• Fixed cancelling the "Move to Applications" password prompt at first launch quitting the app with no window and no explanation. Declining now continues to normal startup.
• Fixed Disk Shred describing the wrong number of passes: on macOS the security levels write one, three and seven passes, and the dialog used the Windows engine's counts. The single-pass Fast option is available again.
• Fixed secure delete reporting a refusal as an error when it declined to touch a protected system location — that is the safety check working, not a fault.
• Fixed licence activation and reactivation never being recorded, and the launch record reporting every user as free regardless of whether they had a licence.