Privatta 1.1: Automatic Updates, and Signed Windows Builds

Until now, finding out that a new Privatta had shipped meant going back to the download page and comparing version numbers. 1.1 fixes that: the app checks for itself, tells you what changed, and — where it can — installs the new build without you having to find the installer.

The app checks once, at launch

Twenty seconds after Privatta starts, it asks royalsoftworks.com whether anything newer than your version has shipped. If nothing has, you never hear about it. If something has, you get a dialog with the version number and the release notes, and two buttons: Later, and Download & install.

That is the whole of the automatic behaviour. There is no second check an hour later, no background poll, and no notification that appears while you are in the middle of something. Privatta is an app people leave running for days at a time while a machine acts as a host; interrupting that because a release landed mid-afternoon would be worse than telling you at the next launch.

If you would rather ask than wait, Settings → Updates → Check now forces a check at any moment and always reports what it found, including "you're up to date".

Nothing downloads on its own. The check is a request for a small text file; the actual download only starts when you press the button.

The dialog is honest about what your build can do

Not every copy of Privatta can replace itself, and pretending otherwise just produces a confusing failure halfway through.

The portable Windows build runs from wherever you put it and cannot rewrite its own executable. macOS builds are not code-signed yet, and macOS flatly refuses to swap an application it cannot verify — worse, it only says so after the download has finished. The Linux .deb belongs to your package manager, not to us.

So Privatta works out which case it is in before offering anything. On a build that can update in place, the button says Download & install, and the update lands when you restart. On a build that cannot, the same dialog says Open download page instead and sends you somewhere useful. Either way you are told there is a new version; you are simply not promised an installation that was never going to happen.

The macOS side of this resolves itself the moment signed builds start shipping — the app checks its own signature at the time it checks for updates, so nothing needs to change in the app for in-place updates to begin working there.

Some releases have to be taken

Occasionally a release changes something older versions genuinely cannot work with — a change to the LAN protocol, or to the P2P handshake, where an old client talking to a new host fails in a way that looks like a bug rather than a version mismatch.

Privatta can now mark such a release required. When it is, the update dialog loses its ordinary exits: no Later, no Skip, no closing it by pressing Escape or clicking away. The wording changes to say why, and the release notes are still there to read.

We can also mark a release required only for versions below a specific line — "compatibility broke at 1.2.0" — so that people already on a recent build are left alone while older installs are moved forward.

You can still say no

A wall with nothing behind it is a wall people work around, usually by staying on an old version forever or walking away entirely. So there is a Continue without updating option, behind a second screen that states the trade plainly: the release was marked required because older versions cannot handle something it changes, it may carry important fixes to how Privatta works or to its security, and if you carry on without it you do so at your own risk — features may behave incorrectly or stop working, and problems on that version cannot be supported.

Confirm, and that version stops blocking you for good; we are not going to ask you the same question at every launch until you stop reading it. The next required release will still stop you, because that decision was about one version, not about required updates in general. And there is a Quit button throughout, so someone on a portable build can close Privatta and run the installer they just downloaded.

Signed Windows installers

Privatta's Windows installers are now code-signed. In practice that means the SmartScreen "Windows protected your PC — unknown publisher" warning goes away, and you can check who actually built the file before running it, via the Digital Signatures tab in the file's properties.

This matters more than the missing warning suggests. A file-sharing tool asking for network access is exactly the kind of download people should be suspicious of, and "trust me, click Run anyway" is not a reasonable thing to ask. It also matters for updates: a signature is what lets an installed copy verify that the build replacing it came from us.

macOS builds are still unsigned. Until they are, macOS users get the update notification and a link to the download page rather than an in-place install — see above.

Also in this release

• Update state lives in one place. The decision about whether a release is required, whether it can be installed in place and whether you have already declined it is made once, in the app's privileged half, rather than in the window that draws the dialog.
• Release notes are shown as plain text, not rendered as markup. Text arriving from a server should not be able to put HTML into an application window, no matter who is hosting it.
• A skipped version stays skipped on the automatic check, but always reappears if you ask explicitly. Skipping is a way to stop being reminded, not a way to lose track of what is out there.

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That's 1.1. The updated build is on the Download page, and if you're already on 1.1 or later you won't need it — the app will tell you next time you launch it. Questions or feedback are always welcome at office@royalsoftworks.com.