Changelog.

Ask

• Ask can save a picture from the web into your note: from a page it read, a search result or a link you paste (even with Web off). It downloads a copy, asks before the edit that places it, and the picture's card says which site it came from. Ask for a few pictures to choose from and pick them on a card; previews load only when you ask.
• Ask reads only web addresses this chat has already seen, from your messages, search results and pages it read, and asks once per site before opening any other, so a page can't make it send your notes somewhere.
• Ask can save a PDF or document from the web into your Library, and a web page as a note after you approve it. Saving pictures, files and pages is free.
• Ask can tidy your notes: rename, move, tag and pin them, move them to the Trash, and make or rename folders, planned on a card. Nothing changes until you apply it, and Undo puts it back.
• Ask can make one change across your notes ("change late October to Oct 14 everywhere"), showing each note's change first and saving a version of each. Changing several notes is Canto Pro.
• Ask can also rename the note beside it, put a file attached to the chat into the note, add to today's note, send a note to future you, turn a CSV file into a table, and work out sums, units and dates exactly.
• Try again and Regenerate ask the question the way it was first sent, action and mentioned notes included. Every key that sends a chat to a cloud model for the first time asks first, as the composer does.
• A free research try is used when you press Start on the research plan, not before, and edit requests no longer pull in unrelated files from linked folders.

Links

• Copy a note's link with Edit › Copy Link (⇧⌘C), or a Markdown link with ⌥⇧⌘C. It pastes as the note's title in Mail, Notes and other apps, and as a link to the note in another Canto note. Also in Share, the sidebar, All notes, ⌘K and a canvas's or chat's menu.
• A canto:// link opens Canto's window when it was closed, and links to canvases work.
• Links from other apps: Hookmark, Shortcuts, Raycast and Alfred can ask Canto to open a note, search, open a tag or folder, or fill in Quick capture (nothing is saved until you press Return). An app gets the open note's title and link only after you allow it, in Settings › Connections › Links from other apps.
• Settings › Keyboard no longer takes keys a menu command uses, and shows how to give any menu command your own keys. In a note, ⇧⌘E exports and ⇧⌘H goes Home instead of aligning or highlighting text.

Notes and editing

• A note you open again shows what changed meanwhile (a to-do ticked in Tasks, an edit from another Mac), and typing no longer puts the old text back.
• When a note changes elsewhere while you have unsaved edits, the note says "Changed elsewhere" with Keep mine and Use the other; the version you don't keep stays in Version history.
• Closing a note or moving it to the Trash right after typing keeps every keystroke. Renaming a note that isn't open sticks.
• A note that couldn't be saved is tried again every 30 seconds, and one that can't be read says so, with Try again.
• Restoring a version is one Undo step, pasting a link over selected words makes them the link, and Quick capture to today's note while it's open goes through the editor.
• Web pages and drawings attached to notes open in Canto, without their styles or forms.

Sync, backups and restores

• Turning iCloud sync off and on again sends everything you changed meanwhile, and a note you deleted for good stays deleted on your other Macs. A note left open can no longer write over an edit synced from another Mac.
• A backup or a workspace file never changes this Mac's own choices (sync, usage data, cloud models, web search and the other switches in What leaves this Mac). Adding a workspace brings only settings you haven't changed here.
• A restore that fails part way changes nothing. Folders a backup had linked wait in Settings › Connections › Folders to link again.
• Deleting a note or folder no longer makes "Conflicted copy" notes on your other Macs.
• "When you save a note" backups make at most one snapshot every 15 minutes and still cover your last change, and scheduled backups skip a vault that didn't change.
• If Canto can't open your notes at launch, starting with an empty vault keeps your notes file beside the new one.

Privacy and security

• The built-in web reader never opens a page on your Mac or local network, even through a redirect, and pages and pictures Canto reads connect only to the address Canto checked.
• A page Canto reads can't open a Save panel, and a file saved from the web is marked as downloaded.
• Turning Usage data off stops it at once: nothing collected before is sent afterwards.
• Settings says that letting other devices reach Canto's MCP server isn't encrypted, and asks first.
• Send Diagnostics can include the last 300 lines of Canto's log, with keys, passwords, email addresses and your name in folder paths taken out, shown line by line before sending. Untick it to leave the log out.
• Canto runs on Electron 44.10.1, with Chromium's latest security fixes.

Speed

• A faster first window: Canto opens without waiting for your license, loads tools for other apps, imports and update checks only when first used, and reads your recent chats once, after the window has drawn.
• Linked folders use far less memory: Canto's file readers stop after a minute with nothing to read, and Macs with 16 GB or less run two of them.
• Smoother streaming: while an answer streams, only that answer redraws, long chats draw older answers only when you scroll to them, and saving a long chat no longer reads it back.
• Fewer wakeups: Canto checks itself less often when no window is in front and not at all while its windows are hidden, updates search and to-dos after you edit instead of every 20 seconds, and works out Inbox suggestions without reading whole notes.
• Videos and sounds in notes can be scrubbed, notes with many pictures open faster, and typing in a research note with an evidence ledger stays quick.

Settings and setup

• Get beta versions works on every copy of Canto, off by default on a finished version. If you test betas, turn on Settings › Updates › Get beta versions before 1.0 arrives, or Canto stops offering betas once it updates to 1.0.
• Setup has an optional step for a free Exa key, so research can search the web from the start.
• Custom domains for published pages are ending. Settings › Connections no longer adds a domain; a domain you have shows its end date, and your pages stay up at their shared.lonelyduck.io addresses. Published pages no longer share one rate limit, so a busy page can't take the others down.

Fixes

• A message waiting on a card goes back to its own chat when you switch chats, and Try again no longer deletes your question when the send can't start yet.
• Reading every file waits out a short outage, and deleting a chat for good stops its reading. A web search that times out says so.
• Restoring a backup from Settings › Backups works again: it refused every backup made since backup names started to include the data folder's name.
• A new install no longer shows What's New for the version you just installed when the first session was short.

Going back to beta 9

• Beta 9 opens a vault beta 10 has used, and asks you to agree to its own license agreement again.
• Beta 9 drops what beta 10 added to a chat when it saves that chat (Ask's cards and their Undo), and doesn't show Folders to link again.

Ask reads what you ask it to

• On a server or cloud model, a chat that reads your linked folders gets the folder tools with every message, and "go through all of them" keeps the tools the chat already used, in six languages.
• Long notes are read to the end, section by section, instead of stopping at 8,000 characters, and long linked files page by page with their printed page numbers. A new list of your notes tells the model how many there are.
• Results too long for a server or cloud model keep their shape and say where to read on, instead of losing their middle.
• Ask acts on a clear request instead of asking whether to start, and says how much it read: "Read 13 of 387 files · 3 in full".

Web search

• Exa, with a free key from exa.ai ($10 of searches a month, no card): it finds pages by what they're about, reads pages, and can read a page a site turns Canto away from.
• Brave Search. Canto keeps a Brave result's link, title and date, never Brave's own text, as Brave's terms ask. The model still reads Brave's excerpts while it answers.
• Settings › Assistant › Web search is now four jobs (Find pages with, Read pages, When a site turns Canto away, Research reports), then your accounts, each with its free tier and this month's use. If you used Tavily, it keeps finding pages for you.
• A service you turned off no longer reads pages, and a search a service refused says why ("Exa's credit for this month is used up.") instead of finding nothing.
• DuckDuckGo is one experimental row, off unless you used it in beta 8; the built-in browser only reads pages now. Keiro is listed only when you saved a key for it. Tavily searches use 1 credit unless a model asks for more.
• Research with no web search service set up says so in its plan before you start, with a key to set one up, then reads your notes, files and past chats instead of stopping.

Notes

• Code pasted into a code block stays in it, exactly as copied: lines that start with #, -, > or 1., tabs, and text like $HOME/bin:$PATH no longer turn into headings, lists or formulas below the block. A code block copied from VS Code, a web page, ChatGPT or Claude.ai pastes as one code block in its language.
• Pictures from "/": type /img, /png or /media. With a screenshot on the clipboard Paste picture comes first. Picture from a link… starts with a picture address you copied and loads nothing until you press Show preview.
• The Evidence table fits its columns to what's in them. Confidence reads in full words with a filled, half or hollow dot, and the column for sources against steps aside when nothing contradicts a claim.
• Chat answers have space between their paragraphs again, quotes look like quotes, and tables in a chat beside a note no longer break short words across lines.

Folders on this Mac

• No freeze with a big linked folder. Each folder is watched with one change stream instead of one watch per file, and Finder saving a folder's view no longer counts as a change.
• Canto never checks a folder or reads its documents on its main thread, so a slow, sleeping or network drive can't freeze it, and it never downloads an iCloud Drive or Dropbox file by itself.
• A file Canto can't read for now (locked, not on this Mac, its drive away) is tried again half an hour later, instead of at every change in the folder. If Canto's file readers stop, they start again, or the reading pauses and says why.
• The folder card says where the folder lives (on this Mac, in iCloud Drive, in Dropbox, on an external or network drive) and which files aren't on this Mac. The page says Read and Can't read.

Models

• Canto no longer starts its built-in AI engine at launch when new chats use a server or a cloud model, which removes a long freeze on the first launch after a restart or an update.
• Built-in models run on a newer llama.cpp with new Metal kernels.
• Models that keep thinking when Canto needs only a quick answer, such as MiniMax M3.1 Flash on Ollama Cloud, now get room to think, so research notes from them get their figures and placed citations again. Their details in Settings › Models say Always thinks, with Forget.

Security and privacy

• What leaves this Mac says it plainly: a chat on a cloud model sends the notes and files it reads, including files in folders you linked. Before a chat first goes to a cloud model, Canto says it may also send what it finds in your linked folders, and the cloud receipt under an answer counts files too ("2 notes and 1 file sent").
• The license agreement changed (the files a cloud chat reads, and the search services that read pages for you), so Canto asks you to agree once more.
• Canto now runs on Electron 44.9.3, which fixes a certificate flaw that could let a server pretend to be a secure site and brings 162 Chromium and V8 fixes. Every other package is on its latest version too.
• A specially crafted reply or Markdown file can no longer slow the chat or a folder's viewer to a crawl, and a web search request that carries your key never follows a redirect to another site.

Faster and fixed

• An idle Canto stays idle: windows are told when something changes instead of checking every few seconds, and image descriptions no longer read slowly with a big linked folder.
• A picture you add to a chat on a built-in model no longer holds your message for up to two minutes while Apple Intelligence describes it. Canto sends once Apple Vision has read the picture, waiting at most 15 seconds for the description, and your next messages read the description once it comes.
• The log names what held Canto up, including a window that stopped answering, so a freeze can be traced from Help › Send Diagnostics.
• A copy of Canto without its update information says "This copy can't update itself" in Settings › Updates instead of logging errors on every launch.
• The selection bar no longer rebuilds its buttons every time it moves.

Going back to beta 8

• Beta 8 opens a vault beta 9 has used. It leaves beta 9's new tables alone, and beta 9 finds them again when you come back.
• Beta 8 asks you to agree to its own license agreement again, and beta 9 asks once more after that.
• Beta 8 can't read every file. It shows a reading's answer as a plain answer, and a paused reading waits for beta 9. If you go on with such a chat in beta 8, beta 8 drops the reading's card and the line that says what was read, so back in beta 9 that chat can't show them or resume that reading; what Canto read stays listed in the inspector's Context until you forget it.
• Beta 8 doesn't have Exa or Brave Search: it finds pages with another service you set up, or none.
• Beta 8 draws an Evidence table beta 9 wrote with its own look.

Ask and folders

• The room bead before the model shows how full the chat is, amber from 80% and red from 95%. A click, or ⌥⌘P, opens Room in this chat.
• @ a folder. Type @ and part of a folder's name, at any depth, and that message reads only that folder; Keep for this chat makes it the chat's scope. You can also drag a folder from the sidebar onto the message box.
• "Only use the Theory folder" now works in French, German, Spanish and Hungarian, and is offered before you send too. The Sources button has Find a folder, with pinned folders on top.
• No freeze before each message. The search of your linked folders now runs in the background and skips small words like "the", "de" and "les", so a question finds the files about it. Research's Library searches run in the background too.
• The sidebar shows when a folder is being read, waiting or paused. Word matches show their page.

Pictures

• From this Mac. "/" Picture from this Mac… and Edit › Attach Files… (⇧⌘A) open the picture panel at once, in your screenshots folder. A pasted screenshot becomes a picture in a note, or joins the chat in Ask. HEIC and TIFF are converted on the way in.
• Models that read images get the picture, ready as soon as it's added. A server model's details in Settings › Models have Reads images (Automatic, Yes or No). If a model refuses a picture, Canto sends its description instead and says so.
• Ask places pictures. Attached pictures get handles (P1, P2…), and Ask can put them where they fit in a note, reviewed like any edit, with one Undo. Placing in more than one note is Pro (or a free try).
• A picture can have a description (its menu › Description…), used as alt text in exports and published pages.
• Fixed: Ask could insert a picture by web address. It now places only pictures from the chat or the note.

Models

• Cloud providers, directly. Connect Anthropic, OpenAI, Google AI Studio, xAI, Mistral, DeepSeek or Groq with your own API key in Settings › Models › Cloud › Add a cloud provider…. Canto talks to them directly, keeps the key in this Mac's Keychain, and you pay the provider. Free on every plan.
• Each provider has its own card (its models, this month's cost, Disconnect) and its own switch in What leaves this Mac. One monthly limit covers OpenRouter and every provider.
• Every paid OpenCode model answers. Models on OpenAI's Responses API, Anthropic's API and Google's Gemini API work through OpenCode Go and Zen.
• Claude, GPT, Grok and Gemini models think the way each allows, and Think says Always for one that can't stop.
• Tool use keeps the model's reasoning between steps, which also fixes DeepSeek and Kimi K3 losing their train of thought.
• Prompt caching for Anthropic models, and one cache per chat for OpenAI and xAI: long research turns cost less, and the limit counts cache reads at their own price.
• A busy cloud model says so and Canto tries once more; a spending limit is said plainly. A model request never follows a redirect elsewhere, so your key goes only where you set it.

Figures

• Six new figures: a range of estimates, a quote wall, a mind map, what we know and don't, an evidence ladder, and a spectrum of where sources stand. Each has a row in "/".
• A quote wall's quotes are checked word for word against the sources the chat read, never against the answer.
• Charts are checked like the other figures ("Figures from the model"), are written as rows that can cite, and search finds them by their labels. Stacked bars draw stacked.
• Right-click an item in a note's figure and choose Ask about this.

Citations

• Printed page numbers. An article printed as pages 237–260 is cited "p. 241", not "p. 5", and the card still opens the right page. A passage across two pages is "pp. 4–5". PDFs added before beta 8 cite the PDF page until read again.
• Zotero. Import authors and years from a Better BibTeX or CSL JSON export (Settings › Writing › Citations), read on this Mac and reviewed before saving. Export a note's references as BibTeX, RIS or CSL JSON from its ⋯ menu.
• Passages from linked folders that Canto reads before answering are sources now, with chips and Open at page.

Security and privacy

• Keys only Canto can read. Another app asking for one gets the macOS password prompt. Your keys move over by themselves.
• A picture a model writes never loads by itself. A chat shows the site's name with Load; a note keeps it as a link. Pictures from the web is off in a new vault (earlier vaults keep their setting).
• Backups sealed with this vault's own key, not one every copy of Canto knows. To restore one on another Mac, save the key first: Settings › Sync & storage › Backups › Save backup key…. Backups no longer carry the MCP token.
• Canto refuses to start with debugging switches and ignores certificate and proxy settings in its environment. Attachments open in another app only when they're documents, pictures, sound or video.
• Crash reports and caches stay out of Time Machine, and Canto's folders are readable only by your account.
• The license agreement changed (pictures you send to a model that reads images, and the cloud providers you can connect), so Canto asks you to agree once more.

Faster and fixed

• Saving a note no longer slows as the vault grows, and compacting the vault waits until the Mac is idle. Settings and Quick capture open faster.
• Titles no longer show " ", and pages in Japanese, Korean, Chinese and other non-UTF-8 encodings read as written.
• The Audit lens no longer scrolls sideways, and Help › Send Diagnostics records long freezes it used to miss.
• On a busy Mac, Settings › Models no longer opens a model menu before it knows which models are on this Mac (it listed none, or left out Delete download).

Going back to beta 7

• Once beta 8 has moved your keys, beta 7 can't find the vault key and says it can't open the vault. Install beta 8 again and it opens as before.
• Beta 7 can't restore a backup beta 8 made without a password, and it drops a picture's description when it saves the note.