RELEASE NOTES

What's New

Tracking the evolution of Aegis Photo Voyager. New features, enhancements, and performance optimizations delivered every two weeks.

May 2026 (First Half)

Interactive Time Scrubber

Upgraded the date chooser with a premium, high-precision TimeSpinnerWidget. Users can now drag-scrub or directly type into year, month, day, hour, and minute fields.

Intelligent Date Range Correction

Implemented automatic chronological swapping for "From" and "To" filters. If a user selects an end date earlier than the start date, the application intelligently swaps them to maintain a valid range.

Enhanced Time Precision

Date filters now consistently include and preserve hour/minute precision, with the "Enable Precise Time Entry" toggle removed in favor of a always-available high-fidelity interface.

iOS Integration

Added dedicated mount scripts and enhanced scan progress reporting for iOS devices, including file-by-file metadata tracking during import.

Advanced Rating System

Replaced the legacy binary star toggle with a multi-level rating system, allowing for more nuanced organization of photo libraries.

Website Protection

Added password protection, custom site descriptions, and purpose fields to the static website generator for improved privacy and context.


April 2026 (Second Half)

Technical Quality Analysis

Introduced a specialized AI-powered tool for technical quality assessment, providing overall scores and attribute breakdowns for every photo.

Website Builder Wizard

Added a streamlined wizard to the sidebar to help users quickly generate and customize shared photo galleries.

Activity History & Metrics

Implemented a database-backed activity log that tracks all background AI jobs, providing a persistent history of imports, assessments, and website generation.

Dual-Engine AI Configuration

Split AI settings into independent "Metadata" and "Quality" tabs, allowing users to configure different models (e.g., GPT-4o for metadata vs. Ollama for local quality checks).

Custom Quality Prompts

Added support for user-defined LLM prompts specifically for technical quality assessment, enabling tailored AI analysis criteria.

Optimized Image Engine

Refactored image/video handling to enforce consistent exclusion of deleted and duplicate photos across all analytics and UI views.


April 2026 (First Half)

Persistent Assessment Notes

AI-generated quality assessments now include mandatory reasoning notes, stored in the database for future reference and transparency.

Circular Star Badges

Redesigned the thumbnail overlays with modern, circular rating badges that adjust dynamically to the application theme.

LLM Context Management

Added configurable Ollama context window sizing to optimize local AI performance on varied hardware.

Smart Timeline Navigation

Improved the Timeline Tunnel's "seek" performance and synchronization with manual filter inputs.

Unified Build Tools

Consolidated the build orchestration scripts for Linux and macOS, ensuring environment consistency across DEB, SNAP, and DMG packages.


March 2026 (Second Half)

Dynamic Theme Engine

Rolled out a comprehensive dynamic theming system supporting seamless switching between Light and Dark modes across all GUI components, including the Timeline Rail and Detail View.

LLM Setup Wizard 2.0

Major overhaul of the onboarding experience with provider-specific checks, vision/embedding model selection, and real-time connectivity validation.

Photo Journey Theming

Extended theme support to the Photo Journey and Cluster views, using JavaScript injection and CSS variables to ensure visual consistency in web-based views.

OpenCV Lazy Loading

Optimized application startup time by implementing lazy loading for computer vision dependencies, preventing delays on systems without hardware acceleration.

Face Recognition Caching

Introduced icon and metadata caching for the People View, significantly improving responsiveness when browsing large libraries of identified faces.


March 2026 (First Half)

Multi-Platform Packaging

Finalized automated build and deployment pipelines for Windows (Installer), macOS (DMG), and Linux (DEB/SNAP), including dlib bundling and virtual environment isolation.

Detail View Robustness

Implemented a startup watchdog and improved error handling for the main detail view to prevent hangs during heavy metadata extraction.

Integrated Slideshow Window

Added a dedicated slideshow mode with smooth transitions and theme-aware controls for presenting photo journeys.

Resource Bundling

Migrated legal documents, licenses, and assets into the application bundle for improved portable execution and compliance.


February 2026 (Second Half)

Smart Start Onboarding

Launched the "Smart Start" dialog, a comprehensive onboarding experience that guides users through AI configuration, library indexing, and initial system checks.

Actions Dashboard

Introduced the Actions Dialog to centralize background task management and provide a unified interface for manual tool execution.

Location Caching

Implemented persistent geolocation caching to speed up place-based filtering and reduce external API calls.

Security & Licensing

Introduced a Cythonized security module and updated license verification logic to protect application integrity.

Desktop Integration

Enhanced desktop presence with high-resolution icons, desktop file association, and standardized application naming.


February 2026 (First Half)

Core GUI Architecture

Established the foundational multi-threaded GUI architecture using PySide6, featuring a responsive Sidebar, Timeline Rail, and asynchronous Image Grid.

Initial Windows Pipeline

Built the first Windows-specific deployment flow featuring a PowerShell installer for face recognition dependencies and virtual environment awareness.

Snapcraft Automation

Implemented automated Snap package generation for Linux, ensuring easy distribution across various distributions.

Image Handling Foundation

Developed the core image loading and thumbnail generation engine with support for HEIF/HEIC and basic metadata extraction.

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