zero 1.6.22

Changed

• Sign-in now expects the "unverified app" screen and walks you past it. zero's Google sign-in is published and in production, but Google's review of restricted Gmail access is a paid, ongoing process we've chosen not to pursue at this scale — so the consent screen shows a "Google hasn't verified this app" warning. The onboarding now tells you this is expected and safe, and shows exactly what to tap (Advanced → Go to zero) to continue signing in to your own inbox.

Installing

Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe, Apple Silicon). zero is signed ad-hoc, not notarized by
Apple, so a downloaded copy is quarantined and Gatekeeper refuses to launch it —
expected for a source-available app. The quarantine flag must be removed once.

Easiest — one command does everything (installs prerequisites, removes the
quarantine flag, launches):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/drewling/zero/master/macapp/install-zero.sh | bash

By hand: open the DMG, drag zero to Applications, then in Terminal:

/usr/bin/xattr -cr /Applications/zero.app

Use the full /usr/bin/xattr path — a Python or Homebrew xattr earlier in your
PATH may not support the recursive flag and will silently fail, leaving the app
blocked. (On macOS 26 the old right-click → Open trick no longer works for
ad-hoc-signed apps.)

Full setup (Google + Claude CLIs, first run) is in the README.

zero 1.6.21

Added

• zero ships with its own Google sign-in. New installs connect Gmail through zero's own Google client — no more creating a Google Cloud project and pasting a JSON file. The onboarding's credentials step is skipped automatically when the built-in client is present.

Changed

• Sign-in asks for far less. zero now requests only the Gmail permission it actually uses (gmail.modify) plus your basic identity — no Drive, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Slides, or Tasks. The consent screen is shorter and the request matches exactly what the app does.

Installing

Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe, Apple Silicon). zero is signed ad-hoc, not notarized by
Apple, so a downloaded copy is quarantined and Gatekeeper refuses to launch it —
expected for a source-available app. The quarantine flag must be removed once.

Easiest — one command does everything (installs prerequisites, removes the
quarantine flag, launches):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/drewling/zero/master/macapp/install-zero.sh | bash

By hand: open the DMG, drag zero to Applications, then in Terminal:

/usr/bin/xattr -cr /Applications/zero.app

Use the full /usr/bin/xattr path — a Python or Homebrew xattr earlier in your
PATH may not support the recursive flag and will silently fail, leaving the app
blocked. (On macOS 26 the old right-click → Open trick no longer works for
ad-hoc-signed apps.)

Full setup (Google + Claude CLIs, first run) is in the README.

zero 1.6.20

Fixed

• A failed "Add account" no longer blames the wrong thing. When Google turned a sign-in away with a bare access_denied — which most often means the sign-in was cancelled, or the app's Google project hasn't been verified for the scopes it needs — zero would confidently tell you the OAuth consent screen was "Internal" or "in Testing," even when it wasn't. It now says that only when Google's response actually points at the audience or test-user settings, and otherwise shows the real error so you can act on it.

Installing

Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe, Apple Silicon). zero is signed ad-hoc, not notarized by
Apple, so a downloaded copy is quarantined and Gatekeeper refuses to launch it —
expected for a source-available app. The quarantine flag must be removed once.

Easiest — one command does everything (installs prerequisites, removes the
quarantine flag, launches):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/drewling/zero/master/macapp/install-zero.sh | bash

By hand: open the DMG, drag zero to Applications, then in Terminal:

/usr/bin/xattr -cr /Applications/zero.app

Use the full /usr/bin/xattr path — a Python or Homebrew xattr earlier in your
PATH may not support the recursive flag and will silently fail, leaving the app
blocked. (On macOS 26 the old right-click → Open trick no longer works for
ad-hoc-signed apps.)

Full setup (Google + Claude CLIs, first run) is in the README.

zero 1.6.19

Added

• zero keeps itself up to date. It quietly checks GitHub for new releases in the background and, when one is ready, shows a banner with a one-tap "Update now" and a "See what's new" link to the changelog — the update downloads, swaps itself in, and relaunches on its own. You can also check any time from the three-dot menu ("Check for Updates…"), which tells you when you're already on the latest version, and zero posts a notification once an update has been applied. Auto-checking can be turned off in Settings.
• Links in email previews are clickable, and quoted history collapses. Previews used to show the whole thread as one wall of text with dead links. Now the latest message is shown on its own with working links, earlier messages in the thread fold behind a "Show N earlier messages" toggle, and the quoted reply history under a message ("On … wrote:" and > lines) hides behind a caret you can expand — so a long back-and-forth reads as the one message that actually needs you.

Fixed

• The progress bar moves and says what it's doing. A run could sit on "Sorting recent mail… 0%" the whole time and look frozen, even though it was working — with a single account there was nothing to move the bar and no detail while the slow part (reading each thread) ran. The bar now advances through real stages — "Reading mail (12 of 40)", then "Sorting with AI" — so you can see it's making progress.
• No more Documents permission prompt freezing a run. The first run after an update could stall behind a macOS "zero would like to access your Documents folder" dialog you might never see (a menu-bar app has no window to surface it). The classifier no longer reaches anywhere near your Documents folder, so the prompt is gone and runs start cleanly.

Installing

Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe, Apple Silicon). zero is signed ad-hoc, not notarized by
Apple, so a downloaded copy is quarantined and Gatekeeper refuses to launch it —
expected for a source-available app. The quarantine flag must be removed once.

Easiest — one command does everything (installs prerequisites, removes the
quarantine flag, launches):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/drewling/zero/master/macapp/install-zero.sh | bash

By hand: open the DMG, drag zero to Applications, then in Terminal:

/usr/bin/xattr -cr /Applications/zero.app

Use the full /usr/bin/xattr path — a Python or Homebrew xattr earlier in your
PATH may not support the recursive flag and will silently fail, leaving the app
blocked. (On macOS 26 the old right-click → Open trick no longer works for
ad-hoc-signed apps.)

Full setup (Google + Claude CLIs, first run) is in the README.

zero 1.6.18

Fixed

• Copy and paste work in the panel. ⌘C, ⌘V, ⌘X, ⌘A, and ⌘Z had no effect anywhere in the panel, including the Google setup command during onboarding, so the only way to copy or paste was the right-click menu. The shortcuts now reach the focused field directly.
• Setup no longer needs admin rights for the Google CLI. On Macs where Node was installed system-wide, the installer hit a permission error trying to add the Google Workspace CLI and skipped it, leaving setup broken. It now installs into your home folder when the system location is locked down, no password required.

Fixed

• The panel reads the same over any window behind it. The graphite that darkens the panel was layered beneath the frosted-glass effect, so a bright window behind it showed straight through and washed the panel and its text out to near-invisible, while over a dark window it looked solid. The tint now sits above the glass, so the panel is the same readable dark surface whatever is behind it, light or dark, with just a hint of glass shimmer.
• First launch opens under the menu-bar icon, every time. The very first open could still land in the bottom-left corner: the check that decided the icon was ready accepted its not-yet-placed position at the screen origin. zero now waits until the icon is genuinely in the menu bar before opening beneath it, and never drops the panel into a corner.

Installing

Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe, Apple Silicon). zero is signed ad-hoc, not notarized by
Apple, so a downloaded copy is quarantined and Gatekeeper refuses to launch it —
expected for a source-available app. The quarantine flag must be removed once.

Easiest — one command does everything (installs prerequisites, removes the
quarantine flag, launches):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/drewling/zero/master/macapp/install-zero.sh | bash

By hand: open the DMG, drag zero to Applications, then in Terminal:

/usr/bin/xattr -cr /Applications/zero.app

Use the full /usr/bin/xattr path — a Python or Homebrew xattr earlier in your
PATH may not support the recursive flag and will silently fail, leaving the app
blocked. (On macOS 26 the old right-click → Open trick no longer works for
ad-hoc-signed apps.)

Full setup (Google + Claude CLIs, first run) is in the README.

zero 1.6.17

Fixed

• The panel reads the same over any window behind it. The graphite that darkens the panel was layered beneath the frosted-glass effect, so a bright window behind it showed straight through and washed the panel and its text out to near-invisible, while over a dark window it looked solid. The tint now sits above the glass, so the panel is the same readable dark surface whatever is behind it, light or dark, with just a hint of glass shimmer.
• First launch opens under the menu-bar icon, every time. The very first open could still land in the bottom-left corner: the check that decided the icon was ready accepted its not-yet-placed position at the screen origin. zero now waits until the icon is genuinely in the menu bar before opening beneath it, and never drops the panel into a corner.

Installing

Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe, Apple Silicon). zero is signed ad-hoc, not notarized by
Apple, so a downloaded copy is quarantined and Gatekeeper refuses to launch it —
expected for a source-available app. The quarantine flag must be removed once.

Easiest — one command does everything (installs prerequisites, removes the
quarantine flag, launches):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/drewling/zero/master/macapp/install-zero.sh | bash

By hand: open the DMG, drag zero to Applications, then in Terminal:

/usr/bin/xattr -cr /Applications/zero.app

Use the full /usr/bin/xattr path — a Python or Homebrew xattr earlier in your
PATH may not support the recursive flag and will silently fail, leaving the app
blocked. (On macOS 26 the old right-click → Open trick no longer works for
ad-hoc-signed apps.)

Full setup (Google + Claude CLIs, first run) is in the README.

zero 1.6.16

Fixed

• The panel opens under the menu-bar icon on first launch. The very first time you opened zero it could appear floating in the middle of the screen instead of tucked under its icon; clicking the icon afterwards always placed it correctly. The first open happened before macOS had finished putting the icon in the menu bar, so there was nothing to anchor to yet. zero now waits for the icon to land, then opens beneath it.

Changed

• Steadier panel background. The panel could look almost see-through over a light window behind it and noticeably more solid over a dark one. The surface is firmer now, so it reads consistently whatever is behind it, while keeping its glassy feel.

Installing

Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe, Apple Silicon). zero is signed ad-hoc, not notarized by
Apple, so a downloaded copy is quarantined and Gatekeeper refuses to launch it —
expected for a source-available app. The quarantine flag must be removed once.

Easiest — one command does everything (installs prerequisites, removes the
quarantine flag, launches):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/drewling/zero/master/macapp/install-zero.sh | bash

By hand: open the DMG, drag zero to Applications, then in Terminal:

/usr/bin/xattr -cr /Applications/zero.app

Use the full /usr/bin/xattr path — a Python or Homebrew xattr earlier in your
PATH may not support the recursive flag and will silently fail, leaving the app
blocked. (On macOS 26 the old right-click → Open trick no longer works for
ad-hoc-signed apps.)

Full setup (Google + Claude CLIs, first run) is in the README.

zero 1.6.15

Fixed

• Adding a Google account works again. After signing in through Google you could hit "Couldn't add account: signed in but couldn't read the account email", with no way forward, on both the installer and the disk image. zero read your address from the sign-in tool's response by scanning for a single line of data, but the tool now prints that response across several lines, so the address always came back empty. zero now reads the whole response, and if an account genuinely cannot be read it shows the real reason (for example the Gmail API not being enabled) instead of a dead end.

Installing

Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe, Apple Silicon). zero is signed ad-hoc, not notarized by
Apple, so a downloaded copy is quarantined and Gatekeeper refuses to launch it —
expected for a source-available app. The quarantine flag must be removed once.

Easiest — one command does everything (installs prerequisites, removes the
quarantine flag, launches):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/drewling/zero/master/macapp/install-zero.sh | bash

By hand: open the DMG, drag zero to Applications, then in Terminal:

/usr/bin/xattr -cr /Applications/zero.app

Use the full /usr/bin/xattr path — a Python or Homebrew xattr earlier in your
PATH may not support the recursive flag and will silently fail, leaving the app
blocked. (On macOS 26 the old right-click → Open trick no longer works for
ad-hoc-signed apps.)

Full setup (Google + Claude CLIs, first run) is in the README.

zero 1.6.14

Fixed

• Drafting settings now save reliably. Saving your sign-off name and house style could fail with "Couldn't save drafting name" and silently wipe the field. The Save button sends both fields at once, and the two requests raced over the same temporary file, so one crashed and clobbered the other. Saves are now serialized and use separate temp files, so both fields always persist.
• The arrow above the panel now blends into it seamlessly. The little arrow and the panel body were tinted by two separate layers that could never match, and the header sat on a darker fill than the rest, so a faint line showed at the top. The whole panel, arrow included, is now one continuous surface.
• The repeated "zero would like to access files in your Documents folder" prompt is gone. It came from a leftover scheduled task from an old development build that pointed inside the project folder. The app itself never needs your Documents folder.
• Email previews read cleanly. Long tracking links, rows of asterisks, and hard line breaks mid-sentence are tidied so a preview flows as normal text.

Changed

• Lighter, more even panel surface. The panel no longer darkens toward the bottom, and the header and action bar share the one surface, for a calmer, glassier look that still holds its contrast over a bright window behind it.
• Calmer shimmer. The loading shimmer is dimmer, slower, and rests longer between passes.

Improved

• Mail you bring back stays back. If zero set something aside and you restored it, the next run could quietly set it aside again. Restored conversations are now remembered and never re-archived, so zero stops fighting your choices.
• Stops following a rule it should not. A stale learned note could nudge zero toward archiving payment-failure alerts, which it should always keep. Learned notes are rebuilt cleanly each run so that cannot linger.
• Steadier under load. Saving settings, restoring mail, and a daily run can no longer step on each other's files, and a single account that fails to refresh no longer fails the whole run.

Installing

Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe, Apple Silicon). zero is signed ad-hoc, not notarized by
Apple, so a downloaded copy is quarantined and Gatekeeper refuses to launch it —
expected for a source-available app. The quarantine flag must be removed once.

Easiest — one command does everything (installs prerequisites, removes the
quarantine flag, launches):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/drewling/zero/master/macapp/install-zero.sh | bash

By hand: open the DMG, drag zero to Applications, then in Terminal:

/usr/bin/xattr -cr /Applications/zero.app

Use the full /usr/bin/xattr path — a Python or Homebrew xattr earlier in your
PATH may not support the recursive flag and will silently fail, leaving the app
blocked. (On macOS 26 the old right-click → Open trick no longer works for
ad-hoc-signed apps.)

Full setup (Google + Claude CLIs, first run) is in the README.

zero 1.6.13

Fixed

• The menu-bar icon now reliably appears — the real fix. For a version or two the icon was invisible for some people, and stayed invisible no matter how the app was relaunched. The cause turned out to be subtle: macOS remembers, per app, whether your menu-bar icon is shown or hidden, and a first-launch crash in an earlier build left that setting stuck on "hidden" for zero specifically. Once stuck, nothing the app did could bring the icon back. zero now ships under a fresh app identity, which clears that stuck state for everyone — the icon shows on launch as it should. The ⌥⌘Z shortcut to open zero from anywhere, and opening the panel on whichever display you're actually using, are included too. (Because the app identity changed, macOS asks once more for permission to show notifications.)

Installing

Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe, Apple Silicon). zero is signed ad-hoc, not notarized by
Apple, so a downloaded copy is quarantined and Gatekeeper refuses to launch it —
expected for a source-available app. The quarantine flag must be removed once.

Easiest — one command does everything (installs prerequisites, removes the
quarantine flag, launches):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/drewling/zero/master/macapp/install-zero.sh | bash

By hand: open the DMG, drag zero to Applications, then in Terminal:

/usr/bin/xattr -cr /Applications/zero.app

Use the full /usr/bin/xattr path — a Python or Homebrew xattr earlier in your
PATH may not support the recursive flag and will silently fail, leaving the app
blocked. (On macOS 26 the old right-click → Open trick no longer works for
ad-hoc-signed apps.)

Full setup (Google + Claude CLIs, first run) is in the README.