Black Highlighter | Release Notes

2024.5 — December 9, 2024

Black Highlighter 24.5 makes a few minor improvements:

The photo library remembers what album you had previously selected across launches, so if you store photos to be selected in a given album, you don’t have to go searching.
Shortcuts that add redactions now allow you to specify the color of the redaction.
The page for marketing Ultra Highlighter is now easier to use.

2024.4 — October 31, 2024

Black Highlighter 24.4 fixes a bug when running on iOS 18 or newer where using the Magic Highlighter didn’t line up with where you placed your finger.

Black Highlighter 24.3 brings major updates when using the Apple Pencil with Black Highlighter. Double-tap on Apple Pencil to quickly switch tools, open the color picker, and more, or squeeze the Apple Pencil Pro to display a quick-select menu of tools.

This release also adds a new way to export your work: you can now choose to save over the existing image rather than making a new copy.

As always, this release also fixes a few small bugs:

Undo and redo should have a lot fewer times where using them does nothing.
Fixing a crash when you add a new photo to your photo library while Black Highlighter is open (such as accepting an image over AirDrop).
Fixed a crash when opening the color picker on macOS.
Fixed a design issue with the “auto-redacted words” UI on macOS.

2024.2 — June 26, 2024

Black Highlighter 24.2 brings a lot of small improvements to your redacting experience!

Fixed Black Highlighter not launching for users on iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia.
Added two new Shortcuts actions: “Open Image”, which opens any image in Black Highlighter, and “Redact All Text”, which redacts everything you find.
Existing Shortcuts actions can now optionally open Black Highlighter with the redactions they created already in place.
Fixed a bug with the “seek and destroy” (search) feature on iPadOS.
Fixed the Automator action not loading properly on macOS.
Fixed a bug where sometimes the “done” button did not close the new auto-redactions sheet.

2024.1 — June 2, 2024

Black Highlighter 24.1 is focused on improving the Ultra Highlighter auto-redaction features. This feature now has a new, more-modern looking interface. It’s also now available while editing an image, so that you can quickly add, remove, or temporarily disable words from being auto-redacted. Additionally, this feature now has smart categories that allow Black Highlighter to redact phone numbers, addresses, or names without having to specify exact values.

This version also improves the responsiveness and availability of the auto-redaction features in the Shortcuts app. Expect more improvements to Black Highlighter’s Shortcuts support in upcoming releases!

As always, this release fixes a few bugs as well:

Fixed an issue with the color of buttons in alerts when using light mode.
Fixed a rare crash that could occur after selecting a photo.

2024.0 — April 16, 2024

This release of Black Highlighter comes with a bunch of bug fixes!

Significantly sped up presentation of detected text, which fixes a crash that could happen in an image with lots of separate text boxes.
Fixed an issue on iOS/iPadOS where buttons were invisible when picking photos in light mode.
Added a button on iOS/iPadOS to get to help/settings when Black Highlighter isn’t granted photo library access, making it easier to keep your photos private.
Re-added the “Save” and “Save As…” menu items on macOS, which had gone missing.
Fixed a slight transparent “gap” on the edge of a redaction.

2023.3 — August 25, 2023

This release fixes an issue that caused Black Highlighter to crash on launch on iOS 15.

Special thanks to Black Highlighter user “mononz” for assisting with tracking down this issue!

2023.2 — May 18, 2023

Black Highlighter 23.2 fixes an issue where the initial “preview” of detected text would not appear.

2023.1 — May 8, 2023

Black Highlighter 23.1 comes with a new set of bug fixes:

When switching between photo albums, you are now shown your most-recent photos rather than a random spot in the middle.
If you viewed the settings page in light mode, it was previously bright white instead of the correct gray color. It now looks like it should.
Fixed an issue where the toolbar on the editing page could have a split appearance (half-black, half-gray).
The app may now requests App Store ratings for all types of saving; previously if you saved via the “Done” button, it would never do this.

On that last note, if you’re reading these release notes, please leave a rating for Black Highlighter! It’d be a great help.

2023.0 — March 14, 2023

Black Highlighter 23.0 introduces support for redacting text at any angle. Even if you didn’t get the perfect scan or photo, Black Highlighter can now find text in your image and hide it.

This release also fixes an issue sharing redacted images on iPad, and adds additional error logging to help me keep on top of common errors like this.

2022.8 — October 31, 2022

This version fixes a common bug where the exported image was completely transparent, solid black, or solid white. My sincere apologies for the number of people this affected and the time it took me to get a fix out. Thank you to everyone who reported the issue or helped test a fix.

Along the way, I also fixed a few other bugs:

Some images would be rotated and squashed compared to the original. These images are now exported correctly.
Exported file sizes are now much smaller.
Sharing an image via the “done” alert previously did not include your redactions. Now it does.
Fixed a crash when opening the document scanner or photo importer after saving an image to the photo library.

And even found time to include an actual feature: a new iOS 16-style toolbar on iPad!

2022.7 — August 8, 2022

Black Highlighter 22.7 improves the Magic Highlighter’s accuracy, especially when redacting small words such as “it” or “as”. Previously, the Magic Highlighter would redact the word and quite a bit of space on either side of it, meaning the beginning or end of surrounding words could accidentally also get redacted. The new version of the Magic Highlighter is much better at sticking to just the word you meant to redact—and nothing extra.

Additionally, this version fixes a few bugs:

Fixed a crash that could happen when saving a new image to your Photo Library.
Fixed an issue with automatic redactions where the button to add new words didn’t appear, making it impossible to add more than one word to the list.

2022.6 — August 4, 2022

This release fixes a bug with Shortcuts where the “Redact Image” action would not use the set of words you had entered.

2022.5 — July 22, 2022

This release improves many parts of Black Highlighter for users of accessibility technologies such as VoiceOver and Switch Control. This includes:

Fixing the name of the color and tool picker buttons when read by VoiceOver or Voice Control.
Fixing layout issues on the in-app purchase screen when using some Dynamic Type sizes.
Marking many button actions throughout the app, such as selecting a photo or redacting text.
Adding a VoiceOver rotor for navigating only redacted words.
Enabling single-action redaction when using the Switch Control gliding cursor.
Correctly handling erasing redactions when using VoiceOver, Voice Control, or Switch Control.

2022.4 — May 30, 2022

The last version of the Mac app that went out had an app icon with square corners instead of the standard squircular corners. My apologies. The icon has now been resquircularized. Thank you for your patience and understanding in these trying times.

2022.3 — May 19, 2022

Black Highlighter 22.3 comes with a small dose of AutoMAYtion goodies. Black Highlighter now has a new, smarter Shortcut action: “Redact Detected Items”. Redact Detected Items locates addresses, phone numbers, or people’s names and automatically redacts them. Use it in the Shortcuts app to quickly redact personal information from large batches of images! This release also fixes a few bugs with Shortcuts support on macOS; if you’re working on a Mac, automated redaction should now be faster and more reliable.

Shortcuts didn’t get all the love, though. This release also adds a “Share Image” option to the alert that appears if you try to close a redacted image before saving it, allowing you to quickly send it somewhere other than your photo library.

2022.2 — April 4, 2022

Black Highlighter 22.2 brings you a whole lot of bug fixes and polish. Hold on to your butts:

If you used the new Find mode from Black Highlighter 22.0, sometimes autocorrect would add an extra space to what you were searching for and then Find mode couldn’t find what you were searching for. Find mode is now smarter, and will ignore extra space around your search.

Using Find mode or the Ultra Highlighter automatic find would not trigger the alert that protects you from losing your work if you hit Done before you were, well, done. Now it should show up no matter how you’ve made your redactions.

If you were using a limited selection of your photos with Black Highlighter, and then you added more photos, Black Highlighter would ask you if you wanted to add EVEN MORE photos, which is a weird time to ask that. Black Highlighter now never asks you for additional photo permission, which is the more appropriate time.

Also, while you were adding more photos to your selection, there was a single solitary weird blue arrow. That arrow has been appropriately chastised and is now wearing the proper uniform.

On macOS, the animation for the Find mode’s search field was WAY too dramatic. Like NYOOOM! CHECK ME OUT, I’M FIND MODE! WHO’S READY TO SEARCH FOR STUFF?! Now it’s more like “hey. i’m find mode. feel free to do whatever at your own pace. i’ll be over here.”

2022.1 — March 1, 2022

Black Highlighter 22.1 includes a new feature: Find mode. With Find mode, you can type in a word you’d like to redact (such as a person’s name) and with a single tap, Black Highlighter automatically finds and hides every occurrence of that word. Find mode helps you cover up every place that word appears, and do so quickly and easily.

This release improves the experience of using the “Reduce Motion” accessibility setting. It also fixes a crash when saving after hitting the Done button.

2022.0 — January 9, 2022

On iOS and iPadOS, this release fixes a few cosmetic issues:

When selecting a single image (instead of giving Highlighter access to your photo library), some buttons were hard to read if using light mode. This UI is now permanently dark mode, the only correct option.
When scanning documents, some buttons were hard to read if using dark mode. This has been fixed, as I never want to give a reason for someone to prefer light mode.
On some iPads, the settings menu displayed only a “Settings” button, which took you to the real settings menu. The settings button on the main menu should now actually take you directly to the real settings menu. This bug occurred regardless of your choice of dark mode vs. wrong mode.

On macOS, this release adds a new feature: “New from Clipboard”, which allows you to hide text from whatever image is on your clipboard instead of opening a file.

2021.8 — December 13, 2021

Fixed the color picker button not working on iPad.

oops

2021.7 — October 8, 2021

Just a minor bug fix here. This version fixes an issue that prevented saving in the Mac app. You should now be free to save away!

2021.6 — September 4, 2021

It’s the iPad update! A lot of work has gone into making this version the best iPad app it can be:

Cleaned up the iPad editing design to better take advantage of the extra space on the iPad.
Fixed a bug causing selections in the albums sidebar to be blue instead of the appropriate dark gray. Thanks to iOS developer Peter Witham for the assist on this fix.
The albums sidebar now shows your current selection at all times instead of disappearing after you change it.
Made the scroll bar look right in the settings view in light mode.

2021.5 — June 18, 2021

This is the “make life a little nicer” update. We’ve gone and fixed a ton of the little papercuts in Black Highlighter to make using it a better experience.

Here’s the fixes we made:

Major performance improvements when initially scanning a new image. No more waiting to tap buttons or start highlighting!
Fixed several causes of crashes when using the “hide text” iOS action extension in other apps.
Fixed a crash that could happen when saving an image on iOS.
Updated the settings design on iOS.
Fixed a bug where you were unable to select new photos if you had not given Black Highlighter full access to your photo library.
Related, fixed a bug where using “only selected photos” could display two document scanner buttons.
Fixed some broken entries in the macOS help menu.
Added automatic restoration on macOS so you can quit the app and then launch right back to where you were.
Cleaned up the design of the open dialog on macOS.

2021.4 — April 17, 2021

This update introduces a new tool to the Black Highlighter toolset: the Magic Era… er, the eraser. The totally normal eraser. Made a mistake and redacted too much? Switch to the eraser and bring back the text you didn’t want to lose.

Additionally, try out these other fun fixes:

The Magic Highlighter and Manual Highlighter icons are now easier to tell apart.
Fixed a minor performance issue when selecting areas to redact.
Fixed an issue on iOS with saving to the photos library sometimes being incredibly slow or crashing.
Improved design in light mode on macOS.

2021.3 — March 22, 2021

More bug fixes to make your redacting experience even better.

Fixed “Open In…” not actually opening images.
Albums list is now called “Albums”, instead of “Photos” or “Back”.
Tweaked settings page design.
Cleaned up some system integration issues that probably weren’t actually causing bugs?

2021.2 — February 26, 2021

Bug fixes! One for you and one for me:

There was a bug where the preview that you saw prior to saving an image didn’t look exactly like what got exported. Previews would show a solid black box, while the export would have the fancy “marker” effects applied. Now the preview has the same effects, so you can see what you’re actually doing.

Black Highlighter was supposed to prompt for App Store ratings occasionally after you saved or shared an image. A bug prevented this from happening. If you like Black Highlighter, please take advantage of the fact that this bug is now fixed. :)

2021.1 — February 15, 2021

Just cleaning up a few of the “initial version” hiccups for the Mac version of Black Highlighter:

Fixed a bug where dragging an image to the app icon to open it didn’t work if the preferences window was open.
Implemented the “Open Recent” menu so you can quickly get back to a file you’ve edited in the past.

2021.0 — February 8, 2021

This is a fairly major update to Black Highlighter with several new features to check out:

Find the images you want to redact more easily by navigating your library via albums and smart collections.
Identify different speakers in an image by using different colors of redactions.
Create automated workflows using the power of Black Highlighter in the Shortcuts app.
Keep your images private, even from Black Highlighter, with support for the new limited photo library in iOS 14.

2020.1 — July 7, 2020

Potentially fixed a bug where photo exports were only a solid black rectangle. Please contact support if this continues to be an issue.

2020.0 — February 3, 2020

This release improves the performance and stability of Black Highlighter when editing large photos, such as those taken by newer iPhones. If you were previously encountering long hangs or app crashes when editing photos in the app, please try again with this update.

This release also fixes a few small UI glitches, such as the wrong font appearing on the settings page.

2019.4 — September 24, 2019

We’ve made a new tool available to you: the Ultra Highlighter. The Ultra Highlighter puts some powerful new technology:

Specify certain words to always be hidden: names, e-mail addresses, etc. The Ultra Highlighter will automatically black them out when you open a new image.
Scan documents from the real world for digital redaction. The Ultra Highlighter senses documents in photos, straightens them out, and gives them the same scanning technology fully-digital screenshots get.

The Ultra Highlighter is available as a one-time upgrade purchase, and is already unlocked for anyone who downloaded Black Highlighter prior to this update.

We’ve also added some improvements for all users of Black Highlighter:

Black Highlighter now supports multiple windows on iPadOS 13.1 or newer.
Alerts such as the one that appears if you close an image without exporting it are now properly dark if you’re using the system dark mode.
Users of VoiceOver on iOS 13 or higher can now use the text-hiding functionality of Black Highlighter via VoiceOver, rather than only being able to navigate the app, but requiring touch to actually hide text.
Numerous minor bug fixes and visual improvements.

2019.3 — September 2, 2019

Just cleaning up a few things before a major release coming Real Soon Now™:

Improved color contrast throughout the app to make the things you’re supposed to be able to read easier to read.
Fixed a visual issue with the “scanning” animation when opening an image.

2019.2 — July 9, 2019

You can now use Black Highlighter’s editing tools from inside other apps as an action. Try it out in the Photos app!

Other changes:

Fixed a crash that could happen if you got too creative with your photo library while Black Highlighter was open.
Added some keyboard shortcuts to the editing view; you can now undo and redo redactions with the standard shortcuts.

2019.1 — June 26, 2019

Black Highlighter now supports hiding text in ALL photos, not just screenshots.
New visualization makes it easier to find text for hiding.
Manual (non-automatic) redaction now has full control, not just straight lines. Scribble away!
Drag and drop support on iPad. Drag any photo into Highlighter to edit it.

1.1 — November 26, 2018

Fixed manual redactions not working… like, at all. Oops.
Fixed an issue where screenshots stored in iCloud Photo Library would not open when selected.
Added support for opening images from apps such as Files.
Improved performance of automatic redactions.

1.0.1 — May 28, 2018

Support for the Super Retina screen of iPhone X.
Fixed a crash when highlighting large images.

1.0 — May 31, 2017

Initial app release.