v1.0.0 · Windows Native Probes, Daemons on Windows & Dependency Refresh · 2026-09-18#

• Windows native probes: CPU, datetime, battery and GPU are read through the Win32 API (platform/windows/) instead of sysinfo's PDH counters and PowerShell/wmic subprocesses — the default fetch went from ~575 ms to ~33 ms warm on a 16-thread machine, with identical rendered values
• Daemons on Windows: the animated-logo and live-stats daemons are now implemented (ui/win_daemon.rs); the worker shares the console, --daemon-stop/--daemon-live-stop signal its stop event and it exits on its own when the shell leaves the console
• Daemons exit when the terminal closes on every platform: they poll stdout for the pty hangup instead of lingering as orphans rendering into a dead pty, restoring the terminal and removing their PID/rows files
• Fixed the live daemon losing the disk module on every platform: the default module lists said "disks" while the probe gate and renderer only know "disk"
• xfetch | head no longer panics: stdout write errors are ignored on the static render path, matching the daemon and animation paths
• Guest safety net: native and wasm plugins, effects and extensions default to a 30 s timeout when timeout_secs is unset (0 disables the cap)
• Module colors now accept names, 256-color indexes ("196") and hex RGB ("#FF8800"), the same formats as the logo color
• Configs starting with a UTF-8 BOM now parse (PowerShell 5.1 Set-Content -Encoding UTF8 and Notepad write one) instead of silently falling back to the defaults
• Atomic installer writes: binaries and manifests are staged and renamed over the target in both installers; install-prebuilt.sh now picks the musl build on musl distributions (Alpine)
• Dependency refresh: rustls 0.23.43 → 0.23.45 fixes RUSTSEC-2026-0285; major upgrades with no code changes for base64 0.23, sha2 0.11, dirs 7 and sysinfo 0.39; ureq stays on 2.x (v3 needs a migration)
• 218 tests plus 6 wasm end-to-end tests, clippy clean, zero advisories in the lockfile

v0.9.0 · WebAssembly Guests, Host Calls & Useful Examples · 2026-09-12#

• Sandboxed WebAssembly runtime: plugins, effects and extensions can be .wasm artifacts (core modules and components) executed by wasmtime with manifest-declared, deny-by-default capabilities (HTTP, exec, filesystem, environment) and limits for time, memory and output
• Same protocol: core modules keep the JSON stdin/stdout contract; components export run from the xfetch:runtime WIT world with typed host imports
• Guest tooling: xfetch wasm inspect, xfetch wasm run and xfetch wasm wit; installers accept prebuilt artifacts, build commands, artifact_url or direct URLs
• New xfetch-guest-api crate for Rust core-module guests, and wasm-compatible with_timeout in all API crates
• Useful examples in four languages: crypto prices, IP geolocation, pacman package counts and /proc stats, plus night mode, update footer and localized labels extensions
• Fixed the swap glyph in generated configs and removed the remaining emoji from presets and weather docs
• Guest logs are filtered by default (only warn/error print); XFETCH_WASM_LOG_LEVEL (off..debug) controls the threshold
• New xfetch update command: checks GitHub releases, verifies prebuilt downloads with SHA256 and only replaces recognized prebuilt installs (cargo install and package-manager installs are never touched)
• Windows prebuilt installer (install-prebuilt.ps1): downloads the release ZIP, verifies SHA256 and installs it per-user
• Wiki pages for the WebAssembly runtime and the new guests in English, Spanish and German
• 195 tests plus CLI end-to-end wasm tests, clippy clean

v0.8.0 · Crates.io Install, Slimmer Dependencies & HTTPS Public IP · 2026-08-21#

• crates.io: cargo install xfetch-cli is now supported
• Dependency tree slimming: removed the AVIF encoder chain (ravif/rav1e/rayon) — 196 → 133 crates, zero vulnerabilities; image codecs limited to what the logo renderer uses; API crates pinned to a fixed commit
• Public IP over HTTPS: public IP probes now use TLS (Mozilla roots) with strict IpAddr validation, a 64-byte body cap and no redirects
• Logo catalog hardening: fetched logo art rejects ANSI escape sequences and control characters, falling back to the default logo
• 147 tests, clippy clean

v0.7.0 · Configurable Labels and Value Formats · 2026-08-20#

• labels config map: renames the key shown per module in every layout; an empty string hides the key (icon-only row); colors keep using the raw module key
• formats config map: value templates with {field} placeholders per module — CPU {brand}/{model}/{cores}/{freq}, GPU {name}/{vendor}/{model}/{vram}, memory/swap {used}/{total}/{percent}, disk {fs}, os {distro}/{version}/{arch}/{wsl}, packages one field per manager plus {count}/{manager}/{managers}, battery {percent}/{state}, uptime {days}/{hours}/{mins}, datetime {date}/{time}; unknown fields render empty, {{/}} escape literal braces
• Battery fix (Linux): peripheral batteries (e.g. Logitech HID++) are no longer counted as system batteries
• 141 tests, clippy clean

v0.6.0 · Themes, Live Stats Daemon & Per-Platform Modularization · 2026-08-19#

• Theme format simplified: theme set edits only the theme key, preserving comments and formatting; themes no longer carry icons (a per-user font choice, filled from defaults); new logo_color and logo_colors (per-row) fields
• Live stats daemon (daemon_live): pins the fetch at the top of the terminal and re-probes a lightweight module subset every daemon_live_refresh seconds; hot reload via daemon_live_reload (config and theme watched); flags --no-daemon-live, --daemon-live-stop, --daemon-live-reload
• Windows: winget counts only packages installed via winget; Chocolatey left the core probes (returns as a plugin); shell detection walks the parent process chain (cmd.exe is no longer reported as PowerShell); version-to-logo mapping uses build numbers
• Plugin and extension timeouts: new subprocess.rs with bounded pipe drains — grandchildren holding the pipe can no longer hang xfetch; optional per-plugin/per-extension timeout_secs in the config; with_timeout helper in the API crates
• Per-platform modularization: macOS and Linux mirror the Windows layout (platform/<os>/version.rs, software.rs, network.rs, ...); Arch splits pacman (official) from a new aur entry (pacman -Qm); Gentoo portage count surfaced; WSL-aware presentation
• Effects: intro animations via the new effects config key and xfetch effects install/list/remove commands

v0.5.0 · Performance, Package Managers & Distro Logos · 2026-08-18#

• Performance rounds: package counts read directly from distro databases (dpkg/pacman/apk/flatpak, microseconds instead of subprocesses); PATH pre-check before spawning probes; battery/datetime moved into the parallel section; public IP hosts queried in parallel; probes spawned all-then-join (cold fetch 8.7 s → 0.05 s on WSL)
• Distro logos in --gen-config: fetches the ASCII logo of the detected OS/distro from the new xfetch-cli/logos catalog, with --logo <id> override and XFETCH_LOGOS_URL for forks
• New --layout <name> flag for --gen-config; the configs/ folder was removed — the template is now embedded in the binary and installers generate the first config with xfetch --gen-config
• WSL presentation: new os_wsl_style key (off / minimal / full)
• More package managers: Void (xbps database) and Gentoo (portage) support; unknown config keys are ignored
• Windows: winget support added; choco list --local-only no longer miscounts; scoop list counts rows properly
• Parallel plugins: plugins run in parallel threads — API untouched, no plugin changes needed

v0.4.0 · Daemon Mode, New Layouts & Hang Fixes · 2026-08-17#

• Daemon mode (--daemon): pins the animated logo in a fixed scroll region and exits immediately; stop it with --daemon-stop
• External command timeouts: run_cmd_with_timeout() kills hanging commands — snap without the snapd daemon no longer blocks the fetch; per-command timeouts for package managers and hardware probes
• Platform separation: new src/info/platform/{linux,macos,windows}/ structure with a shared contract and shared/ machinery
• New layouts: section-box (bordered boxes per module group) and custom-x (fully customizable border templates with {fill}/{title}, width auto/full/fixed)
• New options: show_keys, key_width, logo_color (names, 256-color indexes and hex RGB), logo_padding, logo_type (auto/ascii/image)
• XDG_CONFIG_HOME support (macOS fix) and local CI scripts (scripts/ci.sh, scripts/ci.ps1)

v0.3.0 · Image Rendering & Extensions · 2026-07-25#

• Kitty image rendering overhaul: Added logo_kitty toggle (native protocol vs half-block), logo_gap for configurable image-text spacing, logo_width/logo_height for explicit sizing, and auto-responsive width (28% of terminal, clamped 12–42 cols)
• Cursor positioning fix: Replaced MoveUp/MoveToColumn with SavePosition/RestorePosition for correct cursor behavior across all image protocols
• Stacked layout fix: Fixed print_stacked_output() to handle image-only logos (was ignoring images without ASCII text)
• Extension API: Created api/crates/extension-api/ — ConfigProviderRequest / ConfigProviderResponse protocol, config_providers[] config field, stdin/stdout JSON communication
• config-roulette extension: Picks a random or daily config from a JSON routes list, supports 100+ routes
• layout-override extension: Forces layout and/or module set at config load time
• Extension CLI: Added xfetch extension install/list/remove commands
• 100 image-based configs for config-roulette with logo_gap: 3 and logo_kitty: true

Phase 0 · Foundation & Core#

• Initialize Rust project with dependencies
• Cross-platform OS detection (Linux, Windows, macOS)
• System information gathering module
• Configuration system with JSONC support
• UI rendering engine with crossterm

Phase 1 · System Information Modules#

• OS name & architecture display
• Kernel version detection
• Hostname resolution
• Shell detection and display
• Terminal emulator detection
• CPU model & frequency information
• GPU detection (discrete & integrated)
• Memory and RAM usage display
• Disk usage statistics
• Battery status and percentage
• System uptime calculation
• Package count for multiple managers (pacman, dpkg, scoop)
• Desktop environment / window manager detection

Phase 2 · Visual Customization & Layouts#

• Custom ASCII art support from text files
• Image/SVG logo support via viuer
• ANSI color codes in ASCII logos
• Icon customization per module (Nerd Fonts)
• Color customization per module
• Default layout (side-by-side)
• Pac-Man layout with custom header/footer
• Side-block layout
• Tree layout for hierarchical display
• Section layout for grouped information
• Color palette display with style options

Phase 3 · Documentation & Examples#

• Installation guide
• Configuration guide
• Quick install script for Linux/macOS
• PowerShell install script for Windows
• 20+ example configurations
• Sample logos (text and SVG)
• Uninstallation scripts
• Layout documentation

Phase 4 · Package Manager Expansion#

• RPM package manager support (Fedora, RHEL)
• APK package manager support (Alpine)
• Nix package manager support
• Homebrew package manager support (macOS/Linux)
• Chocolatey package manager support (Windows)
• Multiple installed package manager detection
• Package count detection performance optimization

Phase 5 · Network & Connectivity#

• Local IP address detection
• Public IP address fetching (with privacy option)
• IPv6 support
• Network interface information display
• Option to disable IP fetching for privacy

Phase 6 · Enhanced Modules#

• Music player integration (MPD support)
• Spotify current track display
• Weather module with location API
• Timezone and world clock display
• User info and login status
• Display resolution and refresh rate
• Theme and color scheme detection

Phase 7 · Additional Layouts#

• Compact layout for minimal output
• Horizontal layout variant
• Bottom layout with logo below info
• Minimal layout (text-only)
• Layout preview documentation

Phase 8 · Performance Optimization#

• Parallelized slow hardware probes
• Module data caching
• GPU detection optimization for multi-GPU systems
• Lazy loading for optional modules
• Benchmarked and profiled performance
• Modularized file structure

Phase 9 · CI/CD & Distribution#

• GitHub Actions for automated builds
• Binary releases for Linux x86_64, macOS (Intel & ARM), and Windows
• AUR package for Arch Linux
• Homebrew tap for macOS
• Install scripts covering all platforms (Linux, macOS, Windows)
• Automated Rust installation in install.ps1 for Windows

Phase 10 · Community & Ecosystem#

• Themes repository and registry
• Theme download manager (plugin)
• Online theme preview tool
• Community theme contributions process
• Plugin system for custom modules
• Community issue templates for xfetch, plugins, configs, and api
• Contribution guidelines

Phase 11 · Testing & Quality Assurance#

• Unit tests for info module
• Unit tests for config module
• Integration tests for layouts
• 41 tests total, all passing

Phase 12 · Advanced Features#

Out of respect for the privacy of our users: we have decided to eliminate even the possibility, we maintain this as a record of what should not be done under any circumstances in the future.

Phase 13 · Documentation & Marketing#

• Comprehensive user manual
• Project website with showcase
• Developer documentation