Version Tracker 1.2.0: 47 Sources, Snapshots, and a Smarter Menu Bar

Version Tracker 1.2.0 is the biggest update since launch. It's not one headline feature — it's 47 sources instead of 44, a Mac App Store that no longer needs a companion command-line tool, a new way to see exactly what changed on your Mac over time, a menu bar that finally behaves like a background app should, and a round of fixes that came directly from what you reported. Here's everything in it.

47 Sources: Google Apps, JetBrains Plugins, and Xcode Join the List

Version Tracker now tracks 47 sources, up from 44. Three new ones join this release:

• Google apps (Keystone). Chrome, Google Drive, and every other app Google updates through its own Keystone mechanism are now detected and updated. These apps ship with no Homebrew cask, no Sparkle feed, no built-in updater dialog, and no GitHub release — before 1.2.0, nothing on your Mac was watching them.
• JetBrains + Android Studio plugins. Your installed IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm, Android Studio, and other JetBrains IDE plugins are now inventoried and checked against the JetBrains Marketplace.
• Xcode via xcodes. If you manage multiple Xcode versions with the xcodes CLI, they're now inventoried and updated by channel — stable or beta — just like everything else in your dashboard.

A fourth, smaller addition: Consul now resolves through its official, host-pinned HTTPS download page, since it ships no cask, feed, or GitHub bundle of its own to check against.

Mac App Store Tracking Without Homebrew or mas

Until 1.2.0, Mac App Store inventory and update detection depended on mas, the community command-line tool. If you didn't have it installed, your Mac App Store list simply stayed empty.

That dependency is gone. Version Tracker now reads your on-disk _MASReceipt and queries the iTunes API directly, so Mac App Store apps show up and get checked for updates with no command-line tool required at all.

Snapshots: See Exactly What Changed on Your Mac

Snapshots capture the complete state of your installed software — applications, AI components, Apple developer tools, and alternative updaters — at a single point in time. Take one before a big change (a migration, a major macOS upgrade, a cleanup session), take another after, and compare the two directly to see exactly what was added, removed, or updated in between.

Export the comparison whenever you need a record: for your own documentation, for a support request, or simply to satisfy your own curiosity about what a "quick update session" actually touched.

A Menu Bar That Actually Works in the Background

The menu bar panel got three changes that all point the same direction: fewer reasons to open the main app.

• Updates run headless. Installing an update from the menu bar panel now runs in a background worker instead of launching the full app window.
• The icon animates while a scan or an update is actually running, so you always know something is happening without opening the panel to check.
• The update list collapses once it gets long, so a big batch of pending updates doesn't turn the panel into an unreadable wall of rows.

Underneath, the panel was rearchitected around a shared data layer with the main app, so the two always agree on what's outdated — no more menu bar and main window quietly telling you two different things.

Two more additions round this out: a confidence level per update source, with automatic fallback if a Mac App Store listing ever disappears mid-check, and a daily scan at a fixed time alongside the existing interval-based scanning, plus configurable backup retention in Settings.

Respecting How Your Apps Actually Update: Setapp and Adobe

Two changes in 1.2.0 exist because an app's update mechanism is sometimes tied to something more fragile than the app itself: a license.

Setapp apps are now protected

Apps installed under /Applications/Setapp/ update and license themselves through Setapp, not through Homebrew. Prior to 1.2.0, Version Tracker had no awareness of this, and could offer to adopt a Setapp app into Homebrew or upgrade it via a cask — which breaks its Setapp license.

Adobe apps now tell you the truth

Adobe update detection depends on RemoteUpdateManager, an enterprise tool that ships with Adobe's Admin Console deployments but not with a normal consumer Creative Cloud install. Without it, no Adobe update can actually be detected — but until 1.2.0, Adobe apps were still listed as if they were being checked.

They now show “Updates managed by Creative Cloud” and an Open action instead of a misleading update button. If your Mac does have RemoteUpdateManager (typical on managed enterprise installs), nothing changes — detection keeps working exactly as before.

Smaller Fixes That Add Up

1.2.0 also closes out a long list of issues, several reported directly by customers. The ones you're most likely to have noticed:

• Apps no longer vanish between scans. A known update used to be silently dropped if a network check failed — mostly affecting Mac App Store apps. It's now kept until the next successful check.
• Claude Code plugins stopped looping. Plugins whose source repo moves without a version bump (superpowers, coderabbit) were re-flagged on every single scan with no update able to resolve it. That non-actionable noise is gone; real version or tag updates still show normally.
• Ollama and Microsoft AutoUpdate no longer stay awake. Some checks have to start these services to query them (ollama list launches Ollama.app; msupdate --list starts the Microsoft AutoUpdate agent), and Version Tracker used to leave them running after every scan, including the scheduled daily one.

Beyond those: Mac App Store detection keeps working after mas 7 removed its account command, pip no longer flags false positives from Apple's bundled Command Line Tools Python (altgraph, six, wheel), Cargo crates compiled from source get a longer timeout so they stop failing at 60 seconds, dashboard counters and per-source badges no longer disagree with themselves, and batch update reports no longer let failures quietly disappear on the next scan. The full release notes list every fix in detail.

Security and Privacy Hardening

This release also includes a round of hardening from an internal security audit. In short: the privileged helper now verifies that every part of its own executable path is owned by root and re-checks the caller's identity immediately before running anything; brew and mas were removed from its allowlist; package installation is fail-closed with a hardened PATH and guards against argument injection; backup checksums are verified before Homebrew casks install; logs no longer contain your software or App Store inventory; and admin/sudo prompts are now localized in all 5 languages.

Version Tracker updates itself automatically in the background, so there's nothing to do to get 1.2.0. If you're not running it yet, you can grab the latest build from Version Tracker.