Documentation

Release Notes

Read the complete Ping Warden release history, including fixes, features, compatibility changes, and update details.

Ping Warden 4.4.0

This update walks you through setting up Ping Protection one step at a time, turns protection on as soon as you add your license, and offers Repair when the helper stops working.

Guided setup

• The Welcome window looks the same as before. When you click Set Up Ping Protection or Turn On Ping Protection, Ping Warden walks through what Ping Protection does, your license if you still need one, and helper approval in the same window.
• Ping Warden only asks you to approve the helper after a license is active. The latency dashboard doesn't use the helper, so if you skip the license step you go straight to the free dashboard, and a valid key takes you right into helper approval.
• If you skipped the license during setup and add it later in Settings → License (or from Enter License on the Dashboard), Ping Warden opens the setup window at Approve the helper when the helper isn't approved yet. Nothing changes in macOS until you click Approve Helper. If the setup window is already open, it moves to that step instead of opening a second window.
• The approval step shows what macOS will put on screen and names the exact place in System Settings for your version of macOS: Login Items or Login Items & Extensions, and Allow in the Background or App Background Activity.
• While you approve, the window follows along and moves on when the helper is approved. It tells you when it opens System Settings for you, and if approval doesn't arrive within a minute it offers Try Again while it keeps watching, so a late approval still finishes setup.
• Finish Setup… in the menu, Settings, and the Dashboard picks up at the first step you haven't done yet instead of starting over.

License and protection

• Adding your license now turns on Ping Protection. This works from Settings → License and from the license step in the setup window. If the helper is ready, protection turns on right away and no window opens. If the helper isn't approved yet, protection turns on as soon as you finish approving it. A running pause or Game Mode session is left as it is.
• If you don't have a license and only use the free dashboard, Ping Warden never asks you about the helper.

Repair

• Repair… first checks whether the helper answers. If it does, you see Helper Is Responding as before, and the helper's registration is left alone.
• If the helper has to be approved again, Repair opens the approval step and waits for you to click Approve Helper, so macOS doesn't show its notification before you know why. Your protection setting, pause, and session history stay as they are.
• If you add your license while the helper is approved but not responding, Ping Warden runs Repair for you. Nothing changes in macOS until you click Approve Helper, and protection turns on once Repair succeeds.
• When the helper stops responding while Ping Protection needs it, Ping Warden now offers Repair once instead of waiting for you to notice. This covers launch, waking from sleep, turning protection on, and Game Mode. It also covers a helper that was turned off in System Settings while protection is set to be on. Ping Warden waits a few seconds first, so a short hiccup after launch or wake passes quietly. It asks only once each time something goes wrong, and it waits until you're out of a game. Nothing is repaired until you click Repair.
• If you turn on protection from the menu and the helper doesn't answer, the alert now has a Repair button.

Control Center

• The Ping Protection control in Control Center now catches up when Ping Warden relaunches after a crash, when the helper recovers, after Repair, and after your Mac wakes, so it no longer shows an old state.

Crash reporting

• Crash reporting now also reports problems with setup and the helper. When setup, Repair, or turning protection on or off fails, or when the helper stops answering, Ping Warden sends an error report that holds only the problem's name, the helper's registration state, a system error code, and the app and macOS versions. It sends at most one report per problem every 30 minutes.
• Ping Warden also sends session counts for each release: when the app starts, when it quits, and whether it crashed. This is how crash-free rates are counted. Reports carry a short trail of app states, such as "setup started" or "protection enabled."
• Crash reports now cover uncaught exceptions too. Exception messages, thread names, and the processor's saved register values are removed before a report leaves your Mac.
• Reports never include ping targets, IP addresses, host names, network names, license keys, or your Mac's name. The privacy section of the documentation lists everything a report contains.
• If you turned crash reporting off, it stays off. It's on by default only when you haven't saved a choice. Turning it off under Settings → Advanced → Privacy stops reporting right away, and the only thing sent afterward is one record that the current app session ended.

Ping Warden 4.4.0-beta.1

This is the first beta of Ping Warden 4.4. It includes everything from the 4.3.4 betas and 4.3.3.

New in this beta

• Adding your license now turns on Ping Protection. This works from Settings → License and from the license step in the setup window. If the helper is ready, protection turns on right away and no window opens. If the helper isn't approved yet, protection turns on as soon as you finish approving it. A running pause or Game Mode session is left as it is.
• If you add your license while the helper is approved but not responding, Ping Warden runs Repair for you. Repair first checks whether the helper answers, and it only opens the approval step if the helper has to be approved again. Nothing changes in macOS until you click Approve Helper, and protection turns on once Repair succeeds.
• When the helper stops responding while Ping Protection needs it, Ping Warden now offers Repair once instead of waiting for you to notice. This covers launch, waking from sleep, turning protection on, and Game Mode. It also covers a helper that was turned off in System Settings while protection is set to be on. Ping Warden waits a few seconds first, so a short hiccup after launch or wake passes quietly. It asks only once each time something goes wrong, and it waits until you're out of a game. Nothing is repaired until you click Repair.
• If you turn on protection from the menu and the helper doesn't answer, the alert now has a Repair button.
• If you don't have a license and only use the free dashboard, Ping Warden never asks you about the helper.
• The Ping Protection control in Control Center now catches up when Ping Warden relaunches after a crash, when the helper recovers, after Repair, and after your Mac wakes, so it no longer shows an old state.

Guided setup

• The Welcome window looks the same as before. When you click Set Up Ping Protection or Turn On Ping Protection, Ping Warden walks through what Ping Protection does, your license if you still need one, and helper approval in the same window.
• Ping Warden only asks you to approve the helper after a license is active. The latency dashboard doesn't use the helper, so if you skip the license step you go straight to the free dashboard, and a valid key takes you right into helper approval.
• If you skipped the license during setup and add it later in Settings → License (or from Enter License on the Dashboard), Ping Warden opens the setup window at Approve the helper when the helper isn't approved yet. Nothing changes in macOS until you click Approve Helper. If the setup window is already open, it moves to that step instead of opening a second window.
• The approval step shows what macOS will put on screen and names the exact place in System Settings for your version of macOS: Login Items or Login Items & Extensions, and Allow in the Background or App Background Activity.
• While you approve, the window follows along and moves on when the helper is approved. It tells you when it opens System Settings for you, and if approval doesn't arrive within a minute it offers Try Again while it keeps watching, so a late approval still finishes setup.
• Finish Setup… in the menu, Settings, and the Dashboard picks up at the first step you haven't done yet instead of starting over.

Repair

• Repair… first checks whether the helper answers. If it does, you see Helper Is Responding as before, and the helper's registration is left alone.
• If the helper has to be approved again, Repair opens the approval step and waits for you to click Approve Helper, so macOS doesn't show its notification before you know why. Your protection setting, pause, and session history stay as they are.

From 4.3.3: Game Mode and Repair

• Turning off Game Mode Auto-Detect while a game is in front now ends the Game Mode session. Previously, protection could stay on until Ping Warden quit.
• Repair… on the Dashboard now uses the same path as the menu and Settings. It no longer ends a running Game Mode session or cancels a pause when it reconnects the helper.
• Stopping a Latency Session and starting a new one right away no longer cancels the new session.
• The Toggle Ping Protection shortcut now acts on whether protection is actually on. During a Game Mode session it turns protection off instead of on.

From 4.3.3: Reliability

• If macOS cancels a quit after Ping Warden has stopped protection, for example when a logout is cancelled, Ping Warden restores protection within about 10 seconds. Previously, protection couldn't be turned on again until you relaunched Ping Warden.
• A damaged session history file no longer blocks new session recaps. Ping Warden sets the file aside and starts a new history.
• Resetting the intervention counter, and reading it, now finish even if the helper can't be reached.
• A slow DNS lookup for a hostname target is reused by the next probe instead of starting again on every probe.
• Settings… and Open Dashboard… now bring back a minimized window, so they no longer seem to do nothing when the Dock icon is hidden.
• Confirming Prepare to Remove a second time while removal is running no longer starts a second removal.

Ping Warden 4.3.4-beta.2

This beta picks up setup where you left off once you add a license. It also includes everything from 4.3.4-beta.1 and 4.3.3.

New in this beta

• If you skipped the license during setup and add it later in Settings → License (or from Enter License on the Dashboard), Ping Warden opens the setup window at Approve the helper when the helper isn't approved yet. Nothing changes in macOS until you click Approve Helper. If the setup window is already open, it moves to that step instead of opening a second window. If the helper is already approved, nothing opens.

From 4.3.4-beta.1: Guided setup

• The Welcome window looks the same as before. When you click Set Up Ping Protection or Turn On Ping Protection, Ping Warden walks through what Ping Protection does, your license if you still need one, and helper approval in the same window.
• Ping Warden only asks you to approve the helper after a license is active. The latency dashboard doesn't use the helper, so if you skip the license step you go straight to the free dashboard, and a valid key takes you right into helper approval.
• The approval step shows what macOS will put on screen and names the exact place in System Settings for your version of macOS: Login Items or Login Items & Extensions, and Allow in the Background or App Background Activity.
• While you approve, the window follows along and moves on when the helper is approved. It tells you when it opens System Settings for you, and if approval doesn't arrive within a minute it offers Try Again while it keeps watching, so a late approval still finishes setup.
• Finish Setup… in the menu, Settings, and the Dashboard picks up at the first step you haven't done yet instead of starting over.

From 4.3.4-beta.1: Repair

• Repair… first checks whether the helper answers. If it does, you see Helper Is Responding as before, and the helper's registration is left alone.
• If the helper has to be approved again, Repair opens the approval step and waits for you to click Approve Helper, so macOS doesn't show its notification before you know why. Your protection setting, pause, and session history stay as they are.

From 4.3.3: Game Mode and Repair

• Turning off Game Mode Auto-Detect while a game is in front now ends the Game Mode session. Previously, protection could stay on until Ping Warden quit.
• Repair… on the Dashboard now uses the same path as the menu and Settings. It no longer ends a running Game Mode session or cancels a pause when it reconnects the helper.
• Stopping a Latency Session and starting a new one right away no longer cancels the new session.
• The Toggle Ping Protection shortcut now acts on whether protection is actually on. During a Game Mode session it turns protection off instead of on.

From 4.3.3: Reliability

• If macOS cancels a quit after Ping Warden has stopped protection, for example when a logout is cancelled, Ping Warden restores protection within about 10 seconds. Previously, protection couldn't be turned on again until you relaunched Ping Warden.
• A damaged session history file no longer blocks new session recaps. Ping Warden sets the file aside and starts a new history.
• Resetting the intervention counter, and reading it, now finish even if the helper can't be reached.
• A slow DNS lookup for a hostname target is reused by the next probe instead of starting again on every probe.
• Settings… and Open Dashboard… now bring back a minimized window, so they no longer seem to do nothing when the Dock icon is hidden.
• Confirming Prepare to Remove a second time while removal is running no longer starts a second removal.

Ping Warden 4.3.4-beta.1

This beta walks you through setting up Ping Protection one step at a time, and Repair now checks the helper before it asks macOS for anything.

Guided setup

• The Welcome window looks the same as before. When you click Set Up Ping Protection or Turn On Ping Protection, Ping Warden walks through what Ping Protection does, your license if you still need one, and helper approval in the same window.
• Ping Warden only asks you to approve the helper after a license is active. The latency dashboard doesn't use the helper, so if you skip the license step you go straight to the free dashboard, and a valid key takes you right into helper approval.
• The approval step shows what macOS will put on screen and names the exact place in System Settings for your version of macOS: Login Items or Login Items & Extensions, and Allow in the Background or App Background Activity.
• While you approve, the window follows along and moves on when the helper is approved. It tells you when it opens System Settings for you, and if approval doesn't arrive within a minute it offers Try Again while it keeps watching, so a late approval still finishes setup.
• Finish Setup… in the menu, Settings, and the Dashboard picks up at the first step you haven't done yet instead of starting over.

Repair

• Repair… first checks whether the helper answers. If it does, you see Helper Is Responding as before, and the helper's registration is left alone.
• If the helper has to be approved again, Repair opens the approval step and waits for you to click Approve Helper, so macOS doesn't show its notification before you know why. Your protection setting, pause, and session history stay as they are.

Ping Warden 4.3.3

This update fixes cases where Game Mode, Repair, or a cancelled quit could leave Ping Protection in the wrong state, and makes several helper requests finish reliably.

Game Mode and Repair

• Turning off Game Mode Auto-Detect while a game is in front now ends the Game Mode session. Previously, protection could stay on until Ping Warden quit.
• Repair… on the Dashboard now uses the same path as the menu and Settings. It no longer ends a running Game Mode session or cancels a pause when it reconnects the helper.
• Stopping a Latency Session and starting a new one right away no longer cancels the new session.
• The Toggle Ping Protection shortcut now acts on whether protection is actually on. During a Game Mode session it turns protection off instead of on.

Reliability

• If macOS cancels a quit after Ping Warden has stopped protection, for example when a logout is cancelled, Ping Warden restores protection within about 10 seconds. Previously, protection couldn't be turned on again until you relaunched Ping Warden.
• A damaged session history file no longer blocks new session recaps. Ping Warden sets the file aside and starts a new history.
• Resetting the intervention counter, and reading it, now finish even if the helper can't be reached.
• A slow DNS lookup for a hostname target is reused by the next probe instead of starting again on every probe.
• Settings… and Open Dashboard… now bring back a minimized window, so they no longer seem to do nothing when the Dock icon is hidden.
• Confirming Prepare to Remove a second time while removal is running no longer starts a second removal.

Ping Warden 4.3.2

This update makes helper Repair easier to reach and keeps it from overriding changes you make while it runs. It also checks current protection state when Control Center requests a fresh value.

Helper recovery

• After Ping Warden detects that an approved helper isn't answering, Settings → General and the menu bar now offer Repair. The button keeps an accessible label while Repair runs.
• Repair follows your current protection choice, pause, license eligibility, and Latency Session state, so reconnecting doesn't restore an older On or Off choice over a newer one.
• Helper diagnostics describe connection failures without treating an XPC error as proof that the helper rejected the connection.

Control Center

• A fresh Control Center value reports protection as on only if it observes the matching Ping Warden app running, active shared protection state, and an AWDL interface that's down. Reading that state doesn't launch the app or change protection.
• Known limitation: macOS can keep the last rendered Control Center value after Ping Warden crashes, and a refresh after a crash still isn't guaranteed. Issue #101 remains open.

Ping Warden 4.3.1

This update makes helper setup and Repair finish on the first attempt, and gives Macs without a license a clearer way to activate Ping Protection.

Setup and Repair

• Setup now waits for you to approve the helper instead of reporting that it could not be registered. On some Macs, setup previously needed several attempts.
• Repair now recovers a helper that macOS lists as allowed but never starts, on the first attempt. This fixes the known limitation in 4.3.0.
• For a new setup request, Ping Warden leaves approval to the macOS notification and opens Login Items only if approval is still pending after 10 seconds. Approve once: turning the switch off and on again in Login Items withdraws the approval.
• Setup steps are now recorded in the Mac's log, so support requests can be resolved faster.

Dashboard and settings

• Without a license or an active transition, the dashboard offers purchase and license activation in place of Latency Session controls that cannot start. Existing customers can enter or reverify a key, and past recaps stay available.
• Control Center Only and the earlier Hide Menu Bar Icon choice move from Automation to General. Saved choices are unchanged.

Ping Warden 4.3.0

This update improves helper setup and recovery, adds an icon-free Control Center mode, and restores the dashboard's Liquid Glass cards.

Control Center

• On macOS 26 and later, choose Settings → Automation → Control Center Only to hide Ping Warden's menu bar and Dock icons. Open Ping Warden from Applications or Spotlight to reach settings.
• Existing Hide Menu Bar Icon users keep their previous behavior, including the Dock icon, until they choose the new mode. Saved icon preferences survive a temporary fallback when Control Center is unavailable.
• The Control Center extension now runs in the required sandbox and retains authenticated access to the existing helper. Existing installations do not need a replacement helper permission for this change.
• Turning on protection from Control Center can start the app quietly, without opening Settings.

Setup and reliability

• Setup and Repair confirm that the helper answers before reporting success. Explicit Repair can rebuild a registered helper that never responds.
• Known limitation: Repair can fail on its first attempt. A later attempt succeeded in testing. If Repair reports an error, protection remains off until the app confirms that it is Protected.
• Starting setup from Downloads, Desktop, Documents, or a translocated downloaded copy now explains how to move the app to Applications. Settings and license state remain saved.
• Protection status, connection recovery, sleep and wake handling, and quitting are more reliable. Turning protection off restores AWDL.
• Helper enforcement checks the real interface state, bounds retries, and restores AWDL after its last client exits.

Dashboard and settings

• Liquid Glass cards return on macOS 26 and later, with a material fallback on older systems.
• Dashboard redraws pause while its window is hidden. History continues recording and catches up when the window returns.
• Chart updates use bounded samples, and session history no longer accumulates duplicate observers as settings reopen.
• Setup, repair, license entry, and protection messages are clearer. Crash reports remain on by default when no preference is saved, and existing opt-outs stay off.

New since 4.0

• Game Mode can detect a recognized frontmost game without Screen Recording permission. Optional Screen Recording access also enables fullscreen-window detection. Automatic activation skips Ethernet and rechecks when the network changes.
• Latency Sessions record a protected game or call and produce a local recap. Starting a session requires a license or an active transition. The dashboard, diagnostics, and past recaps remain free.

Updating

Use Check for Updates, or download the current DMG and replace the app in Applications. Version 2.0.5 and earlier require a manual download.

Ping Protection, including starting a Latency Session, requires a one-time $15 license or an active transition. Updates preserve eligible existing users' original 90-day transition deadline. The dashboard, diagnostics, and past session recaps remain free. The source remains MIT-licensed.

Ping Warden 4.2.1

This update brings Targets into line with the other settings pages and fixes several settings, keyboard, and accessibility details.

Improvements

• Targets now uses native grouped settings, with consistent section headings, row spacing, and controls. The Targets tab and custom-server controls remain available.
• Dashboard cards use native content backgrounds that match the app's settings.
• Intervention counters and shared session recaps describe attempts to pause AWDL more clearly.

Fixes

• The crash-reporting “Relaunch Required” state remains visible when you leave Advanced settings and return. Accessibility tools can also read that state.
• Custom servers reject complete URLs and show an error in the form. Enter a hostname or IP address, with its port in the separate Port field.
• Pressing Return in a license-key field starts verification, with the same empty-field and busy checks as the Verify button.
• Transition reminders describe only the reminders that remain. The final reminder no longer promises another one.
• The transition notice has one primary action, while retaining both purchase and existing-key options. Its text now follows one centered layout.
• The Help menu observes changes to the What's New offer, so the item appears and clears with its current state.
• The chart's accessibility summary identifies latency spikes without describing them as protection events.

New since 4.0

• Game Mode can detect a recognized frontmost game without Screen Recording permission. Optional Screen Recording access also enables fullscreen-window detection. Automatic activation skips Ethernet and rechecks when the network changes.
• Latency Sessions record a protected game or call and produce a local recap. Starting a session requires a license or an active transition. The dashboard, diagnostics, and past recaps remain free.

Updating

Use Check for Updates, or download the current DMG and replace the app in Applications. Version 2.0.5 and earlier require a manual download.

Ping Protection, including starting a Latency Session, requires a one-time $15 license or an active transition. Updates preserve eligible existing users' original 90-day transition deadline. The dashboard, diagnostics, and past session recaps remain free. The source remains MIT-licensed.

Ping Warden 4.2.0

This update improves protection-state accuracy and recovery. Anonymous crash reporting is now on by default when you have no saved preference. Your existing choice is preserved.

Privacy

• Turn off crash reporting under Settings → Advanced → Privacy to stop new reports. Turning it back on takes effect after relaunch.
• Existing saved opt-outs stay off. New installations and upgrades with no saved choice use the enabled default.
• Reporting remains crash-only. It does not add usage analytics, automatic session statistics, ping targets, network breadcrumbs, or performance tracing. IP-address storage remains disabled in the reporting service.

Fixes

• The helper now confirms interface changes before reporting success. A failed change can no longer be accepted merely because it was queued.
• Protection recovers after a helper interruption even when no request was in flight. The app waits for a confirmed response before showing protection as active. Stopping or pausing protection cancels stale recovery attempts.
• State notifications from Control Center remain provisional until the helper confirms them. Connection recovery cannot act on an unconfirmed notification.
• Sentry release publishing now uses the same version and build identifier as crash reports.

Improvements

• License refusal messages show the one-time $15 price and offer a purchase link. The menu bar explains why protection did not start.
• Privacy details are visible in the welcome window, Settings, documentation, and storefront.
• Product explanations distinguish AWDL-related interruptions from other lag and describe the intervention counter as attempts, not measured spikes prevented.

New since 4.0

• Game Mode can detect a recognized frontmost game without Screen Recording permission. Optional Screen Recording access also enables fullscreen-window detection. Automatic activation skips Ethernet and rechecks when the network changes.
• Latency Sessions record a protected game or call and produce a local recap. Starting a session requires a license or an active transition. The dashboard, diagnostics, and past recaps remain free.

Updating

Use Check for Updates, or download the current DMG and replace the app in Applications. Version 2.0.5 and earlier require a manual download.

Ping Protection, including starting a Latency Session, requires a one-time $15 license or an active transition. Updates preserve eligible existing users' original 90-day transition deadline. The dashboard, diagnostics, and past session recaps remain free. The source remains MIT-licensed.

Ping Warden 4.1.9

This update removes the old donation buttons and adds a way to revisit release notes after future updates.

Improvements

• Removed the donation buttons from Settings and About. The License pane still explains how donors from before version 4 can claim their license.
• Added a “What's New” item to the menu bar and Help menu when the app detects a version change. Opening it takes you to that version's release notes and dismisses the item. The first launch with this feature records a baseline, so the prompt begins with subsequent updates.

New since 4.0

• Game Mode can detect a recognized frontmost game without Screen Recording permission. Optional Screen Recording access also enables fullscreen-window detection. Automatic activation skips Ethernet and rechecks when the network changes.
• Latency Sessions record a protected game or call and produce a local recap. Starting a session requires a license or an active transition. The dashboard, diagnostics, and past recaps remain free.
• Version 4.1.8 improved saved target restoration, session sample attribution, helper-state confirmation, and diagnostics.

Updating from an older version

Version 2.0.5 and earlier need a manual download. Quit the app, download the latest DMG, replace the copy in Applications, and launch it there. Later versions can use Check for Updates.

Ping Protection in the prebuilt app requires a one-time $15 license or an active transition. Eligible existing users receive 90 days from their first launch of version 4 with protection enabled and the helper approved. Later updates preserve that deadline. The source remains MIT-licensed.

Release maintenance

• The release workflow now rebuilds and verifies the website before publishing.
• Gumroad publication allows up to five minutes for upload processing before replacing buyer content.

Ping Warden 4.1.8

Latency Session recaps stay on the target you chose, a saved GeForce NOW target no longer drops to another server when you reopen the dashboard, and Ping Protection state set from Control Center is confirmed with the helper.

Fixes

• Opening the dashboard during a Latency Session mixed samples from the dashboard's target into the session recap, which skewed its median, P95, jitter, and probe-failure numbers. Each sample now records the target it measured, and the recap counts only samples for the target the session started with.
• With a GeForce NOW zone selected, each time the Dashboard or Targets pane opened the app fell back to another server and measured it until the zone list had been fetched again, which could take several seconds. Discovered zones are now remembered between openings and across launches, so the saved zone matches right away.
• When the Control Center toggle or a Shortcut changed Ping Protection, the app adopted the new state from shared settings without asking the helper. It now confirms with the helper, so the menu cannot say Protected while the wireless interface is actually up.
• The diagnostics snapshot's architecture line now reports arm64 or x86_64 instead of "available".

Improvements

• Fewer background writes: the license check no longer rewrites its cached state every minute, and the hardware identifier it seals with is looked up once per launch rather than on every menu refresh.
• The technical guide, Quick Start, and site guides were corrected. Transition reminders arrive when 30 and 7 days remain, not weekly; starting a Latency Session needs a license or an active transition because it turns Ping Protection on; and the Settings list now includes Targets.

New since 4.0

If you are coming from 4.0, Game Mode auto-detect changed in 4.1.0 and works without any permission now.

• Protection turns on when a game is the frontmost app, with no Screen Recording permission needed. A windowed GeForce NOW session triggers it the same as a fullscreen one.
• Screen Recording stays optional. Granting it adds detection of fullscreen games sitting behind other windows.
• Protection stays off while your Mac is on Ethernet, where AWDL cannot interfere, and engages again when you move back to Wi-Fi.

Turn it on in Settings → Automation. How Game Mode detection works.

Upgrading from a free version

Ping Protection now requires a one-time $15 license. The dashboard, latency history, diagnostics, and updates stay free, and the source remains MIT.

If you already had protection turned on with the helper approved, updating gives you a 90-day transition that starts at your first launch of version 4. That offer has no expiry date, so it is the same 90 days whenever you update. Later updates preserve your original deadline. Check the time remaining in Settings → License.

Donations through Buy Me a Coffee before version 4 are honored as full licenses. See pricing and transition details.

Ping Warden 4.1.7

Game Mode auto-detect no longer drops protection when macOS puts a dialog over your game.

Fixes

• A permission prompt, password sheet, or notification alert that appeared over a game briefly took focus, and auto-detect read that as the game closing. Protection turned off after a few seconds and came back when the dialog closed, which was exactly the kind of interruption it exists to prevent. Those system dialogs are now ignored, so the game stays the app being tracked until you actually switch away from it.

New since 4.0

If you are coming from 4.0, Game Mode auto-detect changed in 4.1.0 and works without any permission now.

• Protection turns on when a game is the frontmost app, with no Screen Recording permission needed. A windowed GeForce NOW session triggers it the same as a fullscreen one.
• Screen Recording stays optional. Granting it adds detection of fullscreen games sitting behind other windows.
• Protection stays off while your Mac is on Ethernet, where AWDL cannot interfere, and engages again when you move back to Wi-Fi.

Turn it on in Settings → Automation. How Game Mode detection works.

Upgrading from a free version

Ping Protection now requires a one-time $15 license. The dashboard, latency history, diagnostics, and updates stay free, and the source remains MIT.

If you already had protection turned on with the helper approved, updating gives you a 90-day transition that starts at your first launch of version 4. That offer has no expiry date, so it is the same 90 days whenever you update. Later updates preserve your original deadline. Check the time remaining in Settings → License.

Donations through Buy Me a Coffee before version 4 are honored as full licenses. See pricing and transition details.

Ping Warden 4.1.6

Automatic update checks now run for everyone, including installs that only use the free dashboard.

Improvements

• Automatic update checks previously started only after the privileged helper was approved. If you used the free dashboard and never approved the helper, the app never checked for updates on its own, so it could sit on an old version indefinitely and miss fixes. Checks now start once the introduction closes, whether or not the helper was approved.
• Checking manually from the menu bar worked before and still does.

New since 4.0

If you are coming from 4.0, Game Mode auto-detect changed in 4.1.0 and works without any permission now.

• Protection turns on when a game is the frontmost app, with no Screen Recording permission needed. A windowed GeForce NOW session triggers it the same as a fullscreen one.
• Screen Recording stays optional. Granting it adds detection of fullscreen games sitting behind other windows.
• Protection stays off while your Mac is on Ethernet, where AWDL cannot interfere, and engages again when you move back to Wi-Fi.

Turn it on in Settings → Automation. How Game Mode detection works.

Upgrading from a free version

Ping Protection now requires a one-time $15 license. The dashboard, latency history, diagnostics, and updates stay free, and the source remains MIT.

If you already had protection turned on with the helper approved, updating gives you a 90-day transition that starts at your first launch of version 4. That offer has no expiry date, so it is the same 90 days whenever you update. Later updates preserve your original deadline. Check the time remaining in Settings → License.

Donations through Buy Me a Coffee before version 4 are honored as full licenses. See pricing and transition details.

Ping Warden 4.1.5

Transition reminders now arrive when they have something to tell you, instead of every week.

Improvements

• The transition reminder no longer repeats weekly. Eligible users see it once at the start, then again when 30 days and 7 days remain. Each reminder shows the days left, and the last one is a real warning before protection ends.
• A reminder missed while the app was closed no longer stacks with the next one.
• Buying and activating a license still stops the reminders immediately, and nothing about the transition deadline or what is included has changed.

Upgrading from a free version

Ping Protection now requires a one-time $15 license. The dashboard, latency history, diagnostics, and updates stay free, and the source remains MIT.

If you already had protection turned on with the helper approved, updating gives you a 90-day transition that starts at your first launch of version 4. That offer has no expiry date, so it is the same 90 days whenever you update. Later updates preserve your original deadline. Check the time remaining in Settings → License.

Donations through Buy Me a Coffee before version 4 are honored as full licenses. See pricing and transition details.

Ping Warden 4.1.4

A maintenance release that stops a brief, unnecessary protection engagement on wired connections and makes troubleshooting reports more useful.

Improvements

• Protection no longer engages for a few seconds on a wired connection when a game is already in the foreground as Ping Warden starts. The first check now waits for the real network path instead of acting on an unknown one.
• Diagnostic logs now name the detected network type, so a support report can show whether Ping Warden saw Wi-Fi or Ethernet.
• Diagnostic logs now record when protection is declined because a license is missing or the transition period has ended, instead of stopping without a stated reason.

Upgrading from a free version

Ping Protection requires a one-time $15 license. The dashboard, diagnostics, and updates stay free, and the source remains MIT. Existing eligible users retain their original 90-day transition. Donations through Buy Me a Coffee before version 4 are honored as licenses. See pricing and transition details.

Ping Warden 4.1.3

A maintenance release that removes unused donation-prompt code and updates build dependencies.

Improvements

• Removed the obsolete launch-donation policy. License-transition reminders continue to use their separate policy.
• Updated dependency requirements and build checks, including matching versions for the CodeQL security-analysis steps.

Upgrading from a free version

Ping Protection requires a one-time $15 license. The dashboard, diagnostics, and updates stay free, and the source remains MIT. Existing eligible users retain their original 90-day transition. Donations through Buy Me a Coffee before version 4 are honored as licenses. See pricing and transition details.

Ping Warden 4.1.2

Ping Warden now has a dedicated website at pingwarden.app, with complete setup, technical, privacy, and troubleshooting documentation.

Improvements

• The Help menu, menu bar, and About window link to the new website and documentation.
• Eligible users in the existing 90-day transition receive a weekly reminder to buy and activate a license, with their remaining days shown. The schedule persists across restarts and preserves the original deadline.
• Reminders wait during detected games and latency sessions. They stop after activation or expiry, and missed weeks never create stacked prompts.
• Buy a License remains available during the transition. About now distinguishes a paid license from temporary transition access.

Upgrading from a free version

Ping Protection requires a one-time $15 license. The dashboard, diagnostics, and updates stay free, and the source remains MIT. Existing eligible users retain their original 90-day transition. Donations through Buy Me a Coffee before version 4 are honored as licenses. See pricing and transition details.

Ping Warden 4.1.1

Settings now describe Game Mode auto-detect the way 4.1.0 made it work, and a review of every screen tidied the places where the free-app era still showed.

Fixes

• Automation no longer shows "Needs Permission" on Game Mode Auto-Detect, and the toggle turns on without Screen Recording. The row explains that detection works from the frontmost app, and an optional "Enable Fullscreen Detection…" button opens the permission only if you want fullscreen games behind other windows caught too. The launch-time permission alert is gone.
• License now says "before version 4" for the donation offer instead of "before this release", and shows the price beside Buy a License.

Improvements

• Targets is a new Settings section that holds the ping server picker and your custom targets. The dashboard shows which target it is pinging with a Change… button, and stays a read-out.
• The dashboard opens tall enough to show every card, including the ping history chart, instead of hiding four of six below the fold.
• Session results colour Median, P95, and Probe Failures the way Network Quality already does, so a bad session looks bad at a glance.
• The menu bar menu opens on the app's state first, and offers Buy a License… while unlicensed instead of Donate. The dashboard's donation line is gone; the General and License panes still explain how a pre-version-4 donation becomes a licence.
• About shows the real app icon and puts the licence link first.
• The welcome screen says what the app is for: stopping the stutter when you cloud game on a Mac.
• The Settings sidebar separates Dashboard from the settings sections, and the live-metrics toggle has one name in both places it appears.

Upgrading from a free version

Ping Protection requires a one-time $15 license. The dashboard, diagnostics, and updates stay free, and the source remains MIT. Existing users whose protection was enabled with an approved helper when they first launched version 4 keep their original 90-day transition. Check Settings → License for the time remaining. If you donated before version 4, email oliver@ames.consulting with your receipt for a license.

Ping Warden 4.1.0

Game Mode auto-detect now recognizes a game the moment it comes to the front, and protection stays out of the way on a wired connection.

Improvements

• Protection turns on when a game is the frontmost app, with no Screen Recording permission needed. A windowed GeForce NOW session now triggers it the same as a fullscreen one.
• Screen Recording permission is optional. Granting it adds detection of fullscreen games sitting behind other windows, and the permission prompt now says so.
• Ping Warden skips protection while your Mac is on Ethernet, since AWDL shares the Wi-Fi radio and cannot interfere with a wired connection. It engages again when you move back to Wi-Fi.

Upgrading from a free version

Ping Protection requires a one-time $15 license. The dashboard, diagnostics, and updates stay free, and the source remains MIT. Existing users whose protection was enabled with an approved helper when they first launched version 4 keep their original 90-day transition. Check Settings → License for the time remaining. If you donated before version 4, email oliver@ames.consulting with your receipt for a license.

Ping Warden 4.0.4

The welcome screen now appears automatically only once, so you can dismiss setup and use the free dashboard without repeated prompts.

Fixes

• Choosing Not Now, closing the welcome, or opening License settings no longer makes the introduction reappear at the next launch when helper setup is incomplete.
• You can still start setup from the menu bar or Settings → General → Finish Setup whenever you want Ping Protection.
• Removing app data restores the introduction for a fresh installation. Dismissing it does not change protection settings or license access.

Upgrading from a free version

Ping Protection requires a one-time $15 license. The dashboard, diagnostics, and updates stay free, and the source remains MIT. Existing users whose protection was enabled with an approved helper when they first launched version 4 keep their original 90-day transition. Check Settings → License for the time remaining. If you donated before version 4, email oliver@ames.consulting with your receipt for a license.

Ping Warden 4.0.3

The welcome screen now uses the app icon, native macOS controls, and a shorter introduction to protection, live latency, and wireless sharing.

Improvements

• The first welcome screen fits without scrolling, with the price and license link visible before setup.
• Light and dark appearances use system colors. Setup actions remain accessible when the layout needs to scroll for larger text.
• Setup instructions explain how to continue from Settings → General → Finish Setup if the welcome window is closed.
• Gumroad publication waits for uploaded file metadata before checking the download and updating buyer content.

Upgrading from a free version

Ping Protection requires a one-time $15 license. The dashboard, diagnostics, and updates stay free, and the source remains MIT. Existing users whose protection was enabled with an approved helper when they first launched version 4 keep their original 90-day transition. Check Settings → License for the time remaining. Previous donors can email oliver@ames.consulting with their receipt for a license.

Ping Warden 4.0.2

This update fixes protection controls, license verification, and the transition from free builds.

Upgrading from version 3 or earlier

Ping Protection in the signed app requires a one-time $15 license, which covers the Macs you own and future updates. If protection was enabled with an approved helper when you first launched version 4, you have a 90-day transition from that launch. Check Settings → License for the time remaining. The dashboard, diagnostics, and updates stay free, and the source remains MIT.

If you donated before version 4, email oliver@ames.consulting with your receipt and I'll honor that support as a license. You can review or skip the paid upgrade in Sparkle before installation.

Fixes

• Existing 4.0.0 transition deadlines survive the update, including when protection was temporarily off. Updating does not start a new 90-day window.
• Settings distinguishes Free Transition from Licensed, and shows the transition even when a refunded key remains stored.
• Temporary verification failures preserve the 14-day offline allowance. Routine verification no longer increases Gumroad's license-use count.
• Pause expiry, Game Mode, and reconnects respect the current license. Expired protection turns off while the app runs.
• Reconnecting to the helper cannot override a newer Off command.
• Control Center opens Ping Warden in the background when needed, so protection continues after the widget finishes.
• The welcome window opens larger so its introduction and setup explanation fit without scrolling.
• Setup explains the license requirement and reports whether protection actually turned on. Successful activation clears obsolete license errors.
• Uninstall prevents a pending verification response from restoring removed license data.
• Users opted into beta updates also receive stable releases. Both feeds require older free builds to show the paid-upgrade notice before installation.
• Gumroad offers the current app download with the license key, and the landing page explains activation order and which controls require protection access.

Ping Warden 4.0.1

A licensing hardening release. Nothing changes for a paid license or for building from source.

Fixes

• The in-app Buy a License… button and every document now point at the current storefront, https://amesconsulting.gumroad.com/l/pingwarden. The old olivera40 address returns 404.
• Persisted protection no longer turns AWDL off at launch unless the license gate still holds. An install whose 90-day transition ended, or whose key was refunded, now starts with protection off and a note in the menu pointing to Settings → License, instead of quietly restoring protection from the saved preference.
• The cached license state in the shared App Group defaults is now sealed with an HMAC bound to the Mac's hardware UUID. A hand-written defaults write, or a preferences file copied from a licensed Mac, reads as unlicensed until the app verifies online again. The Control Center widget checks the same seal.
• A clock rolled backwards past the last verification no longer stretches the 14-day offline window; the cache is ignored until the next online verification.
• The 90-day transition is granted only when the helper was already approved on the Mac, which a fresh install cannot fake, and the one-shot marker now lives in the keychain so clearing the App Group defaults cannot re-arm it.
• The stored key is re-verified once at launch, as the documentation already said, not only on the 6-hour timer.

Upgrade notes

• Licensed 4.0.0 installs re-verify with Gumroad on first launch of 4.0.1 to seal their cached state. An offline first launch shows protection off until the Mac is online once; the key stays stored.
• 3.x installs that upgrade directly still get the 90-day transition.

Ping Warden 4.0.0

Ping Warden is moving to a license for the AWDL-blocking feature. The source stays MIT and everything except enabling Ping Protection is free.

Starting with this release, enabling Ping Protection in the prebuilt, signed, and notarized app requires a one-time $15 license at Gumroad. One key works on the Macs you own and covers all future updates. The app verifies once with Gumroad, then re-checks roughly every 6 hours while it runs and once at launch. Verification is offline-friendly for up to 14 days. Building from source under MIT remains free and unchanged.

Pricing

• Ping Protection now requires a license in the prebuilt app. All other features remain free.
• The source code remains MIT. You can build from source, inspect it, and modify it whether you buy a license or not.
• The license is a one-time $15 purchase at Gumroad. No subscription, no ads, no analytics. Taxes are handled by Gumroad as merchant of record — the 10% + 50¢ direct fee (30% via Discover) covers processing.

Transition for existing users

• If Ping Protection was enabled on this Mac before the licensed build first ran, it keeps working for a 90-day transition that starts on that first launch. No action is needed today.
• Check the time remaining in Settings → License. When the transition ends, enter a license key there to keep protection available.
• On first launch of the licensed build, existing users see a one-time notice that explains the change and points to Settings → License. The notice appears only once per install.

Donors

• If you supported Ping Warden through Buy Me a Coffee before this release, email oliver@ames.consulting with your receipt and it will be honored as a full license after receipt verification. The License pane and the gate error both surface this offer, and the developer handles the conversion after reviewing the receipt.
• The in-app donation prompt that appeared after latency sessions has been removed. The menu, Settings → Support, About, and Dashboard still offer a Donate link, and the full documentation now describes the licensed model instead.

License management

• New Settings → License pane shows status (Licensed, transition with days remaining, or Unlicensed), key entry with verification, and a direct link to the Gumroad product page. The transition pane explains why the change is happening and carries the donor-honoring note with a mailto button.
• License keys are verified at api.gumroad.com/v2/licenses/verify with your product ID and key, then cached so the app works offline. A cached valid result stands in for 14 days when the API cannot be reached. Refunded, chargebacked, or disabled keys are treated as revoked and turn protection off with a notice at the next verification. An install still inside its 90-day transition keeps protection under that window, since the transition is granted for prior use rather than for a purchase.
• The Control Center widget reads the same cached entitlement from the shared app group and refuses to enable protection without a valid license. Disabling is always allowed.
• Uninstall clears all licensing state from the App Group defaults and the keychain.

Ping Warden 3.1.0

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Ping Warden 3.1 keeps your choices where you put them. A pause now survives a quit, a failed server refresh tells you instead of going quiet, and the app stops working when nobody is looking at it.

Protection

• Pausing protection survives quitting and relaunching. Ping Warden used to store nothing on disk when you paused, so quitting during the ten minute window silently re-blocked AWDL while you were still trying to AirDrop or share a screen. The pause window now persists, and every path that genuinely ends it still clears it.
• Protection controls stay responsive when several state changes race each other. Toggling from the menu, the dashboard, or the Control Center widget at the same time could strand the controls mid-transition and disable them until relaunch.
• Stopping protection no longer leaves monitoring stuck on. A slow reply from the privileged helper used to be discarded after the timeout, so the app reported protection as active across relaunch while AWDL was already restored.

Cloud gaming

• A failed GeForce NOW zone refresh now says so and offers Retry. The server picker previously dropped its "Refreshing" caption and left a stale list with no explanation. Existing zones are kept through the failure, so a network blip cannot reset your selection or chart history.

Battery and idle power

• Live menu metrics run only while the menu is open. Turning on "Show Live Metrics in Menu" used to start a permanent two second probe and a five second intervention poll, which sent tens of thousands of pointless network connections a day toward numbers nobody was reading. Opening the menu still shows a fresh reading immediately.
• Game Mode detection backs off while you are idle. Auto-detect scanned the full window list every ten seconds forever; after about ninety quiet seconds it now moves to thirty. App and display events still trigger an immediate check, so a game launching from deep idle is caught right away.

Security

• Sparkle updates to 2.9.6, which carries a symlink hardening fix in the installer's archive handling and a privilege escalation fix for root-invoked Sparkle processes.
• The privileged helper now accepts XPC only from root and the logged-in console user. The previous check rejected system accounts but would have let any second desktop account drive the root daemon with a copy of the signed app.
• Sentry updates to 9.26.0. Crash reporting remains off by default.

Release engineering

• Release validation now checks the helper's embedded version metadata, not just the app and widget. The helper's version lives in a plist compiled into its binary, so a half-applied version bump could previously ship with validation still reporting success.

Ping Warden 3.0.0

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Ping Warden 3 turns Ping Protection into measurable Latency Sessions. Start a session for a game or call, watch one shared latency stream, and finish with a local recap that explains what happened without exposing network targets or claiming more than the measurements show.

Latency Sessions and recaps

• Start and end Latency Sessions from the dashboard. Game Mode can manage sessions automatically.
• The menu bar now has one clear Ping Protection control. Latency Sessions stay in the dashboard so the two actions cannot be mistaken for duplicates.
• Review duration, median and P95 latency, jitter, Probe Failures, sample count, and wireless interventions.
• Share a privacy-scrubbed text recap. Hostnames, IP addresses, game names, and raw samples are never written to session history.
• Keep a bounded local history and clear it from the dashboard at any time.

Performance

• The dashboard, menu, and sessions now share one probe stream instead of running duplicate monitors.
• Hostname lookups use a bounded five-minute address cache, one connection deadline, and cancellation that reaches DNS and socket work.
• Rolling history avoids repeated array shifts. Statistics and snapshots are prepared off the main thread and published once per sample.
• Game Mode detection moved its window scan off the main thread. App and display events trigger immediate checks, with a slower safety interval when no game is active.

Security and privacy

• Sparkle 2.9.4 replaces 2.8.1. Ping Warden now requires signed appcast metadata and verifies updates before extraction.
• The Control Center widget applies protection directly through the helper's signed-client XPC boundary. Shared preferences and distributed notifications no longer authorize root operations.
• Shared app and widget settings now use a Team-ID-prefixed macOS App Group, restoring reliable persistence on macOS 15 and later without an embedded provisioning profile.
• Unsigned helper builds fail closed, and the helper launches on demand instead of staying alive after boot.
• Diagnostics redact custom targets, use owner-only file permissions, and show their contents before sharing.
• Crash reporting is off by default. Turning it off is immediate; opting in takes effect after relaunch.

Setup and donations

• The welcome screen explains the AirDrop, AirPlay, and Handoff tradeoff before approval.
• Choosing Later no longer strands setup. Settings now has a visible Finish Setup action.
• Unsupported CPU and latency claims have been removed from the app.
• Every completed Latency Session recap includes a quiet donation link that never interrupts the recap or gates features. Permanent donation links are also available in the menu, Settings, About window, README, and GitHub repository.

Release engineering

• Releases build a fresh archive and validate the staged app, helper, widget, DMG, signatures, Team ID, entitlements, Hardened Runtime, Gatekeeper result, notarization ticket, and version metadata before publishing.
• Marketing versions and numeric bundle builds are validated separately.
• CI builds the complete app on macOS 26, runs the Foundation core on macOS and Linux, lints release scripts, and adds CodeQL and Dependabot coverage.
• The update minimum is derived from the built app, fixing the appcast metadata that incorrectly excluded macOS 13 through 25 from recent updates.

Ping Warden 2.5.0

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Ping Warden 2.5.0 is a reliability-focused release: a full audit of the helper daemon, XPC layer, widget sync, monitoring pipeline, and release tooling, with dozens of fixes.

Changelog

Protection Reliability

• Protection now survives quit + relaunch: Quitting the app no longer silently turns the Ping Protection preference off. If protection was on when you quit, it turns back on at the next launch.
• Helper can never strand your Wi-Fi radio off: Every helper exit path (grace-period shutdown, system termination) now guarantees the wireless interface is restored via a direct fallback, even if the helper's internal monitoring thread had died.
• Honest failure reporting from the helper: If the helper's kernel-event thread stops, protection commands now fail visibly instead of pretending to succeed while nothing was being enforced.
• XPC reconnect fixed: The reconnect retry counter is now only reset after the helper actually responds, closing an infinite silent reconnect loop when the helper was unregistered mid-session. Abandoned connections are also properly invalidated (fixing a slow resource leak), and a reconnect can no longer overwrite a stop you issued while it was in flight.
• Helper setup can no longer wedge: An interrupted registration flow used to permanently block future "Enable Ping Protection" attempts until app restart; registration polling now always resolves.
• Race-free helper shutdown: The helper's exit decision is now atomic with connection tracking, so an app reconnect can never be dropped mid-shutdown (which previously caused a brief AWDL flap — the exact latency spike the app prevents).
• Hardened privileged daemon: Release builds of the root helper now refuse to run if their code signature fails validation instead of downgrading to weaker checks.

Game Mode & Quick Pause

• Game detection now recognizes most games: Apps declaring a game subcategory (action, RPG, strategy, …) in their Info.plist were never detected as games; now they are.
• Pause and Game Mode no longer fight each other: Pausing during a game session is honored when the game ends; a pause that expires mid-game restores your protection preference instead of leaving protection off permanently.
• Pause timer reliability: The 10-minute auto-resume now fires even while a menu or dialog is open, and the menu's Pause/Resume items enable/disable correctly.

Control Center Widget

• Widget state stays in sync: The app now tells Control Center to refresh the toggle whenever protection changes from the menu bar, Settings, or Game Mode — the widget no longer displays stale state indefinitely.
• Toggling off no longer snaps back to on: The widget now displays and toggles the same state, fixing both the visual snap-back after disabling and a Shortcuts toggle that could never turn auto-enabled protection off.
• Launch failures surface: If the main app can't be launched to apply a widget toggle, the toggle now reverts and reports an error instead of showing protection as on while nothing happened.
• Lockout prevention hardened: Hiding the dock icon while in Control Center mode (menu bar hidden) is now blocked at all times, not just at the moment Control Center mode is enabled.

Ping Monitoring & Dashboard

• Accurate latency numbers: Measured ping now excludes DNS resolution time and failed connection attempts — dual-stack hostnames no longer report ~1000 ms "successful" pings that poisoned averages, jitter, spike events, and Auto-Select rankings.
• Unresponsive DNS can't freeze monitoring: Hostname resolution now runs with a bounded deadline, so a hung resolver no longer stalls the entire ping pipeline and dashboard.
• Saved server selection survives relaunch: A selected GeForce NOW zone or local-gateway target is now restored once its source loads, instead of silently falling back to Cloudflare DNS forever.
• Transient GFN outages keep your zones: A failed GeForce NOW server-list refresh no longer wipes previously discovered zones (which reset your selection and erased chart history).
• Dashboard chart performance: Chart data is now memoized and downsampled (spikes always preserved), cutting per-second CPU dramatically on long timeframes — exactly during the gaming sessions the app protects.
• Smaller fixes: duplicate server entries are deduplicated everywhere; protection events that occur while the dashboard is closed no longer appear as one mistimed event; auto-select probes no longer starve the app's async runtime; settings window size/position is remembered again; diagnostics export falls back to a temp folder if Desktop access is denied; the quarantine-fix command now uses the app's real location; automatic update checks start correctly after first-run setup.

Release Tooling & CI

• Cross-platform test suite: The core logic package now compiles and tests on Linux; CI gained an ubuntu-latest swift test job (plus 8 new tests) and shellcheck coverage for all scripts.
• Release script fixes: Sentry upload failures can no longer abort a release before the appcast is published; first-ever beta appcasts publish correctly; beta releases are marked as GitHub pre-releases; GitHub release pages now show only that version's notes; notarization failures print their diagnostics instead of dying silently; version arguments are validated against Info.plist.

Ping Warden 2.4.3

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Patch release for the 2.4 line.

Reliability

• Settings crash fix: Fixed a rare startup crash on macOS 26 and later. The hidden helper window that backs the standard Settings menu command was pinned to a one-pixel-wide size, which on newer macOS could send the layout engine into an endless update loop and abort the app. The window is now left to size itself, removing the loop.

Ping Warden 2.4.2

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Patch release for the 2.4 line.

Reliability

• Donation prompt crash fix: The support prompt now uses an explicit SwiftUI content size and matching AppKit window content rect. This avoids an unbounded macOS 27 SwiftUI/AppKit button measurement loop that could abort with an AttributeGraph stack overflow.
• Dashboard picker layout fix: The Ping History timeframe segmented control no longer shows a squeezed visible picker label when the dashboard card is narrow.
• Settings title readability: Settings section titles now use the native macOS titlebar material and soft scroll-edge treatment so scrolled content fades underneath without muddying the header text.

Ping Warden 2.4.1

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Patch release for the 2.4 line.

Reliability

• Crash-reporting privacy/noise fix: Sentry now explicitly disables failed HTTP request capture, so transient GitHub/Sparkle download errors like a 502 from a release asset do not get reported as Ping Warden errors. Crash reporting remains crash-only.

Ping Warden 2.4.0

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Ping Warden 2.4.0 is a macOS 26-focused release that brings the app's settings, dashboard, and menu surfaces up to the current Tahoe design direction while tightening the release pipeline and Swift concurrency posture.

Changelog

Interface

• Native settings redesign: Settings now uses a single native split-view window with macOS sidebar chrome, consistent section spacing, and Tahoe-friendly rounded surfaces.
• Liquid Glass polish: Settings, dashboard cards, and first-run callouts now use macOS 26 glass materials and concentric corners where appropriate, with older fallback styling kept in place.
• Dashboard layout cleanup: The Ping Protection and Connection Settings panels have tighter alignment, clearer status states, and a more readable ping graph.
• Menu bar icons: Status menu actions now include SF Symbols so the dropdown matches the icon-led macOS 26 menu style.

Features

• Game Mode Auto-Detect is production-ready: The setting is no longer labeled beta and now has steadier fullscreen-game detection behavior.
• Control Center Widget is production-ready: The widget path is no longer labeled beta. Settings now distinguishes widget availability from signing state without implying the feature is experimental.
• Beta update channel: Advanced settings include an opt-in Sparkle beta channel for testing pre-release builds.

Reliability

• Swift 6 strict concurrency: The app target now builds with complete strict-concurrency checking, with sendable observer callbacks, explicit main-actor UI hops, and locked XPC callback state.
• CI fix: GitHub Actions now runs the maintained SwiftPM test suite instead of the removed smoke-test script.
• Packaging hardening: Release tooling validates notes, notarization prerequisites, appcast updates, and Sentry symbol upload paths before publishing.

Ping Warden 2.3.4

Post-release stability and polish pass from manual macOS app testing.

UX

• Ping Protection language: Settings, Dashboard, and the Control Center widget now consistently use "Ping Protection" and "protection events" in primary UI instead of implementation-level AWDL labels.
• Dashboard state copy: The interventions panel now reflects the actual protection state instead of saying protection is active when it is off or not set up.

Packaging

• Leaner app bundle: Release automation scripts are excluded from the shipped app resources.
• macOS metadata: The app now declares the Utilities category in its Info.plist.

Ping Warden 2.3.3

First-launch and Settings polish found during manual macOS app testing.

UX

• Cleaner first launch — Sparkle no longer opens its automatic-update prompt before Ping Warden's own welcome/setup flow. Manual "Check for Updates" still works from the menu.
• Settings scrolling — Settings tabs now keep their section header pinned outside the scroll view, and Dashboard no longer nests a second scroll view inside Settings. Dashboard content can scroll without sliding under the titlebar.

Internal

• Release automation — The release script now accepts App Store Connect API-key notarization credentials as well as the legacy keychain profile, and the gh-pages appcast commit disables GPG signing in non-interactive automation.

Ping Warden 2.3.2

Stability-focused beta with packaging fixes for the Control Center widget and tighter reconnect behavior around the privileged helper.

Reliability

• Control Center widget packaging — The widget target now builds with its own Info.plist and entitlements instead of inheriting the main app metadata. The built .appex now carries the required NSExtension payload and correct extension package type.
• Helper reconnect hardening — Replacing an XPC connection can no longer let the old connection's invalidation handler clear the fresh connection. This avoids false "lost helper" states during reconnect churn.
• Ping monitor session isolation — Stale ping probes are dropped after a target change or monitor restart, and overlapping probes are skipped instead of building a backlog when a network call is slow.
• Helper control pipe — The helper's write side of the control pipe is now non-blocking, so rapid toggle/reconnect churn cannot hang an XPC handler thread.

Internal

• Version metadata is consistent across the app, helper, widget, Xcode build settings, and helper runtime version string.
• XPC helper connection counting now guards against underflow on duplicate invalidation callbacks.

Ping Warden 2.3.1

Adds opt-in crash reporting and hardens the release pipeline so future updates ship with symbolicated crash reports and properly-formatted release notes. Recommended for all users.

Features

• Crash reporting — On by default to help find bugs you don't see. Anonymous data only: no IP address, no usage telemetry, no information about your ping targets, and no app-lifecycle session events. Toggle it off under Settings → Advanced → Privacy if you'd rather not send anything.

Internal

• Sparkle release notes — The update window now renders the actual release notes from RELEASE_NOTES.md (categorized "Features / Internal" with brand-styled HTML, light and dark mode) instead of "See release notes on GitHub". v2.3.0 also retroactively updated on the live appcast.
• release.sh pre-flight hardening — notarytool, sentry-cli, the 1Password CLI, and the vaulted Sentry token are all checked up-front. Missing tooling aborts before notarization rather than silently shipping a release with no dSYMs uploaded.
• dSYM upload to Sentry — Each release now uploads the xcarchive's dSYMs so crash reports come in symbolicated, and creates a Sentry release object tagged with the version. The pipeline is fail-soft after the GitHub release publishes: a Sentry-side network blip warns but does not abort the script before the gh-pages appcast push.
• Critical-update marker — Sparkle prompts every user on a prior version to install this update, since the crash-reporting infrastructure is what the next several releases will depend on.

Documentation

• README refresh — Imperative tagline, live release-version badge, and a new Privacy section documenting the opt-in Sentry posture and the data we never collect. Restructured so the "How It Works" section reads as product positioning rather than objection-handling.

Ping Warden 2.3.0

Two user-facing features plus the usual round of testing improvements.

Historical note, September 9, 2026: The donation prompt described below was removed for the licensed model. Its unused policy and tests have also been removed. Current license-transition reminders use a separate policy.

Features

• Custom ping servers (#29) — Add your own DNS or ping targets (NextDNS, Control D, anything else) under Dashboard → Custom Servers. Targets persist in the App Group, survive updates, and feed into the same auto-select-nearest flow as the built-in list.
• One-time donation prompt — A polite, dismissible Buy Me a Coffee ask that appears once on launch and again only on minor-version bumps. A "Don't ask again" button is a permanent kill switch, and the entire flow is governed by VersionPromptPolicy so it cannot accidentally re-fire after a patch release.

Internal

• New VersionPromptPolicy and CustomPingTargetStore in Core/, both pure-Foundation and covered by swift test. Total Core test count: 33 (up from 15 in v2.2.2).
• PingWardenPreferences.defaults is now exposed so non-singleton consumers (custom-target store, future targets) can share the App Group suite without duplicating the suite name.
• performUninstall resets the new donation-prompt and custom-targets state alongside the existing keys.

Ping Warden 2.2.2

Correctness, concurrency, and tooling improvements. No user-visible feature changes.

Reliability

• TCPProbe: removed a freeaddrinfo call on the getaddrinfo failure path. POSIX leaves the result pointer's contents unspecified on resolver failure, so calling freeaddrinfo on it was undefined behavior — tolerated on macOS today but a latent portability bug. Tightened the success-path defer to use a non-optional pointer.
• Process pipes: three subprocess invocations (getAWDLInterfaceStatus, runIfconfig, NetworkGatewayResolver) used a wait-then-read pipe pattern that can deadlock if a subprocess fills the kernel pipe buffer. Now read first (which unblocks on subprocess EOF) and route unused streams to /dev/null.
• Concurrency: xpcRetryCount += 1 opened a brief unlocked window between read and write through the property accessor. Replaced with an atomic incrementXPCRetryCount() helper that does read-modify-write under a single locked critical section.
• Game Mode cache: PID → isGame cache now evicts entries when the application terminates (via NSWorkspace.didTerminateApplicationNotification), so the cache stays bounded over long sessions and cannot be poisoned by PID reuse.

Correctness

• Median calculation: PingStatistics.calculate now uses the true median for even-count windows (mean of two middle elements) instead of the upper-middle pick. Improves quality classification for edge cases like a 2-sample window.

Code Quality

• Removed connectXPCWithRetry(): it was a no-op wrapper that reset a counter connectXPC() was about to reset anyway.
• Removed dead onStateChange callback: declared on PingWardenMonitor and called, but never assigned anywhere in the codebase — guaranteed nil.
• Extracted StateObserverRegistry into Core/: thread-safe observer registry with its own lock, reducing contention on PingWardenMonitor.stateLock.
• Extracted HelperBundleValidator into Core/: pure-Foundation validator for the helper-bundle layout, fully unit-testable.
• Decomposed DashboardView.swift (was 1304 lines):
  • NetworkGatewayResolver → its own file
  • GeForceNOWDiscovery → its own file
  • DashboardViewModel → its own file
  • Remaining DashboardView.swift is 673 lines of view code

Test infrastructure

• Package.swift test target: smoke tests are now driven by swift test via a proper SwiftPM XCTest target at Tests/PingWardenCoreTests/. The Xcode app build is unaffected — the SwiftPM target references the same Core/ sources via an explicit path:.
• Coverage: 15 tests across PingStatistics, XPCReconnectPolicy, TCPProbe (failure and success paths), StateObserverRegistry, and HelperBundleValidator.

Ping Warden 2.2.1

Security hardening, reliability, and performance improvements.

Security

• XPC helper now validates caller identity (UID-based defense-in-depth)
• AWDL state control uses atomic operations and returns accurate success/failure
• Sparkle update feed uses Info.plist as single source of truth

Reliability

• Fixed potential socket hang in network probes when fcntl fails
• Fixed potential pipe buffer deadlock in helper response test
• Complete App Group preferences reset on uninstall (prevents stale widget state)
• DiagnosticsExporter enforces background thread contract

Performance

• Game Mode detector caches app category lookups (eliminates repeated disk I/O)
• Dashboard gateway resolution moved off main thread

Quality

• Removed dead code (unused variables, redundant dispatch)
• Helper version synced with app version

Ping Warden 2.2.0

Bug Fixes

• Fixed permanent lockout when menu bar icon is hidden (Issue #28) — Three-layer protection:
  • Relaunching Ping Warden with no visible windows now opens Settings automatically, so you can always get back in
  • The app now refuses to hide the menu bar icon unless the Dock icon is enabled — preventing the lockout state entirely
  • Uninstalling the helper now resets all preferences, so reinstalling starts fresh without inheriting a locked-out state
• Fixed build regression from project rename — Stale AWDLControlHelper references in the Xcode project caused the helper binary to be missing from the app bundle after the AWDLControl → PingWarden rename; all references updated to PingWardenHelper
• Fixed game category detection — Games in certain App Store categories were not being detected by Game Mode auto-detect due to an exact-match check; now uses prefix matching to cover all game subcategories

Improvements

• Plain-English status labels — "AWDL Monitoring" is now "Ping Protection"; technical AWDL jargon replaced with clearer language throughout the UI

• Confirmation before hiding menu bar icon — Added a dialog explaining the Dock icon requirement before making the menu bar icon invisible, preventing accidental lockout

• Ping quality based on recent median — The quality indicator (Excellent/Good/Fair/Poor) now uses the median of the last 5 samples instead of the most recent one, reducing flickering from single-sample outliers

• Version shown in health alerts — The "helper needs reinstall" alert now shows the actual bundle version instead of a hardcoded string

• Rebuilt settings window chrome — Replaced dual settings window paths (manual NSWindow + SwiftUI Settings scene) with a single NavigationSplitView inside the Settings scene, restoring native macOS sidebar-under-titlebar appearance with proper vibrancy

Code Quality

• Thread safety — Fixed a race condition in xpcRetryCount and standardized all lock/unlock calls to use defer { stateLock.unlock() } to prevent unlock skips on early returns
• Eliminated dead code — Removed 7 unnecessary guard let blocks from Preferences and a dead checkControlCenterWidgetAvailable() method
• Security — Pinned ControlCenter widget signing requirement to the specific team ID instead of accepting any Developer ID certificate
• Crash safety — Replaced two unsafe force-unwraps in QuarantineHelper with proper guard-let error handling

Ping Warden 2.1.2

Documentation improvements

• Expanded "Why Not Just Run sudo ifconfig awdl0 down?" section with detailed explanation of why polling scripts don't work—AWDL performs a channel scan each time it comes up, so even sub-second polling still introduces latency spikes.
• Added new "Other Sources of WiFi Latency" section covering Location Services WiFi scanning and manual mitigations.
• Added "Will Apple Fix This in Hardware?" section summarizing current research (including RIPE 91 October 2025 findings) on whether newer Apple chips might address this at the hardware level.
• Updated troubleshooting guide with Location Services diagnostics and workarounds.

Code quality

• Fixed Swift 6 actor isolation warnings in MonitoringStateStore.
• Updated user-facing strings from "AWDLControl" to "Ping Warden" for consistency.

View this guide on GitHub