Every change to cattracks, newest first. Hand-installed? See how to update — your history always carries over.
0.2.14
Security hardening
Deleting your account or all your synced history now asks for your password. Changing your password already required proving you knew it; the two actions that can’t be undone did not. Now they do, so someone who gets hold of a signed-in browser can’t erase your history on their way past.
The timeline and the web viewer are stricter about what they’ll display. Page titles come from the sites you visit, so they’re treated as untrusted text everywhere they’re shown, and anything arriving from sync is now checked for the right shape before it’s stored rather than trusted to be well-formed.
Incognito windows leave less of a trace. One path could record the moment an incognito window closed — never its contents — during the first seconds after Chrome woke the extension. It now waits until it knows which windows are private before writing anything.
Syncing is quieter about when you’re at your desk. Everything already went up encrypted, but the number of times a device checked in each cycle varied with whether you’d been active. It’s now the same either way.
The web viewer tells you when it’s showing you less than everything, instead of quietly leaving gaps, and its “pulled at” line now carries a date and keeps itself current if you leave the tab open.
Signing out of the web viewer clears more. A couple of leftovers that named your devices are now removed along with everything else.
Our privacy policy has been corrected in three places where it described something other than what the code actually does — most importantly, synced history is kept on our servers for 90 days, not indefinitely, and blocklists apply per device rather than to your whole account. Please re-read it if you rely on either.
A range of smaller fixes: the account recovery code is no longer offered back by browser autofill or left on screen, error text from the server is no longer shown as if it came from the extension, and the update banner only ever points at cattracks.app.
0.2.13
Two ways to install
cattracks now knows how it was installed — by hand from this site, or from the Chrome Web Store — and behaves correctly either way. Chrome updates Web Store copies on its own, so those no longer show the “update available” banner that points at the hand-install download. Following that banner would have installed a second, separate copy with an empty history, which is not a helpful thing to be nudged into.
Sign-in and sync work on both — a Web Store copy is a different extension as far as Chrome is concerned, which meant our server was turning away its requests. It now recognises both.
Hand-installing from this site works exactly as it did before, and your history carries over as always.
0.2.12
Your data, on your terms
Export my history — a new button on the options page downloads everything cattracks has recorded as a JSON file, including the names you’ve given your devices and windows. The web viewer can export the same file. It has to happen on your device rather than ours: your synced history arrives already encrypted, so only your own devices hold the key to produce something readable.
Delete my account — you can now close your account yourself instead of asking us to. It signs out every device, erases every encrypted batch on the server, and frees your email address to sign up again. You’ll be asked to type your address first, since it can’t be undone.
0.2.11
Dates on the timeline
The timeline spells out the range it covers — for example “Recorded 25 Jul 3:59 PM → 27 Jul 5:16 AM · 37 hours” — so it’s obvious at a glance how far back your history goes.
Timeline labels include the date whenever the range spans more than a day, instead of showing only the time of day. Same-day ranges are unchanged.
The web viewer gained those timeline labels too, matching the extension.
A device recovers automatically if its local history is cleared while it stays signed in — the next sync re-pulls everything the server still holds, rather than assuming it’s already up to date.
“Hide unrecoverable windows” now hides unrecoverable tabs too, not just whole windows. A window that keeps one reopenable tab no longer shows the rest as greyed-out rows; its tab count reads “1 of 9 tabs” so the number never disagrees with what’s on screen.
The web viewer shows the timeline all the time, like the extension does, instead of hiding it behind a “Full timeline” button. Your view settings — hidden windows, collapsed windows, device filters — now apply while you scrub; previously they were quietly ignored once you entered timeline mode.
The cattracks wordmark is the pride gradient on the timeline and settings pages, matching the rest of the site.
0.2.10
A more legible web viewer
The web viewer shows when it last pulled from the server and has a Refresh button to pull again on demand.
Windows can be collapsed and expanded, individually or all at once, and windows with nothing left to restore can be hidden from the list.
Devices in the browse view can be filtered using a color-coded legend.
Scrubbing the timeline now shows the exact moment you're pointing at as you drag.
0.2.9
A clearer options page
The options page shows a live countdown to your next scheduled sync. It's the time until the extension's regular sync attempt, not a guarantee of when your latest changes will land.
The options page also shows how much storage the extension is using, out of the space available to it — this covers everything the extension stores, not just your browsing history.
"Capture current state" now uploads right away, instead of waiting for the next scheduled sync. Everything else still syncs on its regular five-minute schedule.
0.2.8
Syncing, on schedule
Syncing now runs on its schedule. If history hadn't shown up in the web viewer on an earlier build, it will begin uploading once you update. Nothing was lost — your history was always being recorded locally; it just hadn't uploaded yet.
0.2.7
One tab at a time
The Account panel's tabs each show only their own form. Sign in, Create account, and Recover stay separate, and the change-password form only appears once you ask to change your password.
Creating an account is two steps. Enter your email, username, and an optional invite code and request a verification code; the code field, password field, and submit button appear once the code is on its way — and the form stays put while you wait for one.
0.2.6
Room to grow
Your history isn't capped or cleaned up by Chrome. cattracks now asks for unlimited storage, so Chrome doesn't limit how much history it keeps or reclaim it when disk space runs low.
Day-to-day history is trimmed automatically. Once a day, cattracks removes browsing events older than 90 days from its local database, so it doesn't grow without limit. A single most-recent snapshot per device is kept so older moments can still be reconstructed.
0.2.5
Your address stays home
Signing in no longer sends your email address. Your browser turns it into a scrambled form of your address first, so signing in and recovering an account never put the address itself on the network. Signing up still needs it — that's where the code goes.
The salt stored alongside your locked key is now 32 random bytes, not a value computed from your address.
Accounts made before this release need to be created again. The change to how keys are derived can't be applied to an old account after the fact.
0.2.4
Signup, tightened
One account per email. Signing up with a "+alias" (like [email protected]) now resolves to the same account as your plain address — no more accidental duplicate signups.
We no longer store your email address. cattracks now keeps only a scrambled fingerprint of it, never the address itself.
A small daily limit on verification emails per address, to keep signup abuse-resistant.
0.2.3
A paw of a different color
The paw went rainbow. cattracks' toolbar icon and the site's favicons now wear pride colors — one hue per toe. Same cat, prouder tracks.
Web viewer
Sign in less, see more
Stay signed in on this device. Opt-in — off by default. Turn it on and the web viewer skips your password next time on that browser. We say what that trades off right there when you turn it on.
Window names. If you've named a window in the extension, that name now shows up when you browse it in the web viewer too.
Full-timeline mode. An optional way to scrub back through your whole history from the browser, not just the latest snapshot — same read-only, client-side-decrypted viewer.
The extension is still the strongest, most private way to use cattracks — see how the web viewer's trust model differs. Use it when you can; the web viewer is for when you can't.
0.2.2
Sturdier local storage
Power-safe recovery points. cattracks now flushes its periodic snapshots to disk, so a sudden power cut can't lose them. On by default; you can turn it off in the options if you'd rather have slightly faster writes.
Storage-eviction warning. The options page now tells you whether Chrome has guaranteed your history against being evicted under disk pressure — and gives you a one-click button to fix it if it hasn't.
Startup self-check. On each launch cattracks runs a quick database check that catches and repairs internal hiccups before they can affect recording.
0.2.1
Clearer sync
Real sync status. The options page shows what syncing is actually doing — "Synced 3 minutes ago", or a plain-language notice if it's offline, failing, or needs you to sign in again — instead of a static label.
More specific toolbar tooltip when syncing runs into trouble.
0.2.0
Across your devices
All-devices timeline. See every computer's windows in one place, grouped by device, instead of only the one you're sitting at — with a per-device show/hide toggle.
Restore from anywhere. Bring back any device's window from any other computer, not just the one that recorded it.
Name your devices and windows so they're easy to recognize.
Update notices. cattracks checks once a day for a newer release and shows a small, dismissible heads-up in the timeline. On by default; can be turned off.
A cat-paw icon — cattracks finally has a face.
0.1.0
Open beta
The time machine. cattracks records every open tab as it changes, so you can scrub back through time and restore any moment — a window, or your whole browser.
Private by design. It records tab URLs, titles, and structure — never page content, never screenshots, never incognito.
Optional account with end-to-end encrypted sync and backup — the server never sees your history in the clear. Or skip the account and keep everything on your machine.