ChronoSync for Mac

What's new in this version:

ChronoSync 11.0.5
Enhancements and changes:
- Improved compatibility with InterConneX running on iOS 18
- Added logic so that real-time file system change triggering diagnostics are generated when ‘SchedulerDebug’ is enabled
- Added logic that reduces the possibility that a file system change-triggered sync task would itself trigger another scheduled sync execution if running with SmartScan enabled and no actual file system changes occurred in between task executions

Fixed:
- Eliminated a potential crash when an iCloud-based sync’s attempt to gain coordinated access to a directory stalled long enough to trigger a timeout or abort, but was successfully attained after the timeout/abort logic kicked in
- Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when reloading the scheduled items database at exactly the wrong moment
- Fixed some auto layout UI glitches in the “Error Handling” section of the Options Panel
- Fixed some typos in the German General settings panel
- Fixed a bug whereby an AppleScript that triggered a sync or container task to begin execution could not properly monitor the state of that execution


ChronoSync 11.0.4
Fixed:
- a regression whereby the Schedule Editor Simple Interval panel was not saving changes
- a bug whereby the completion status was not being updated at the conclusion of a Task Container


ChronoSync 11.0.3
Updated;
- OpenVPN updated to version 2.6.12

Fixed:
- Authentication for SOCKS proxies is now correctly supported
- Resolves issue where certain dynamic challenge requests may be ignored
- Various bug fixes and enhancements


ChronoSync 11.0.2
Enhancements and changes:
- Added workarounds to changes in macOS 14.4 that broke File Provider support
- Added logic to the Readiness test that suggests the target should be iCloud or a File Provider so it better determines whether or not the iCloud or File Provider should be used

Fixed:
- Fixed a bug whereby the navigation buttons for task group hierarchies in the Organizer window were not being drawn properly
- Fixed a bug that didn’t allow drops to occur (during a drag & drop operation) on the icons in the Organizer window


ChronoSync 11.0.1
Enhancements and changes:
- Added the ability to resize the ‘Status’ column in Task Container documents and to remember the new column size in between saves
- Eliminated a brief hang that could occur if Sync Task was stored on a file server and that server is offline and/or unmountable
- The ‘No Bootable Backup over ChronoAgent Connection’ readiness test will now only prevent CA-based bootable backups if the source system is signed

Fixed:
- a bug whereby task groups were showing up in the Scheduled Item Editor
- a bug whereby connections to InterConneX Sharespaces could not be established
- a bug whereby ICX connections were getting flagged with “No Full Disk Access” readiness warning
- a bug whereby resource forks would sometimes fail to be preserved with some file managers (notably, AWS S3)
- a bug whereby the Safe Copy temporary name constructed as a destination file would break some multi-byte character sequences
- a bug whereby installed File Providers were not being queried properly on pre-macOS 13 systems
- a bug that could cause a crash when closing Sync Tasks with custom archive locations specified over a remote connection
- a bug that was causing the bootable folder blacklist to be applied to File Provider Extension targets
- a bug that would not properly differentiate multiple accounts configured for certain File Provider Extensions


ChronoSync 11.0.0
Enhancements and changes:
- New File Provider Extensions connection for managing cloud-stored files such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and Box as well as other cloud services
- Updated iCloud Drive support to be fully compatible with macOS 14, Sonoma
- Cloud Targets now report “Locally Mapped Cloud Storage” for the size of cloud service targets
- New “Suspend Scheduler while on battery power” option
- Added Task Groups to the ChronoSync Organizer window
- Added Task Search to the ChronoSync Organizer window
- Changed some icons displayed in the ChronoSync Organizer window
- All secure network communication now uses the latest version of OpenSSL
- Increased the default copy buffer size for all copy operations
- Increased the default data exchange buffer sizes in AWS S3 and Google Cloud connection pro files to improve data transfer performance
- Added control over data exchange buffer size in AWS S3 and Google Cloud connection profiles
- Improved the performance of executing shell tasks that required reading back output from the task
- Updated the SFTP library to the latest version of libssh2
- Add the ability to ‘Ignore attribute change errors’ on SFTP connections
- Added readiness warnings to instruct the user to switch to iCloud if they have selected a target that is managed by iCloud
- Added bootable backup deprecation warnings to Bootable Backup assistant (macOS 11 and later
- Added a “Should Be Data Volume Backup” readiness warning that is displayed if the user has chosen their root Data volume as a target
- Now tracks whether the remotely connected ChronoAgent has full disk access and presents a readiness warning if it doesn’t
- Added “~/Library/CloudStorage” to the list of blacklisted folders
- Added “~/Library/Mobile Documents” to the list of blacklisted folders
- The installer no longer updates the login items for all users. Instead, we only update the current user’s login items to avoid causing some strange issues
- The uninstaller will now unregister the product from our backend server
- Trial keys are no longer registered with our backend server
- Updated the Full Disk Access assistant to present different steps on macOS Ventura and newer, accounting for the slight changes in the User Interface of System Settings on modern macOS
- We now ignore the SF_DATALESS flag when comparing BSD flags
- Implemented mouse-over animation to several buttons to provide more active User Interface feedback
- Application-wide change to use modern terminology used in latest macOS versions
- Updated application icon
- Updated OLH (which was neglected for several revisions)
- Updated hard coded links to our website now use https instead of http

Fixed:
- Added more logic to try and prevent target verification when the window is being closed, which would ultimately lead to a crash
- Fixed a possible crash by verifying sync task documents in the task organizer in the main thread
- Fixed a bug in the “Dissection not supported” readiness warning that would not switch to “Merge” when fixing, if merge is supported by the file managers
- Fixed a bug whereby “Fix” was not available in the “Should Be Bootable” readiness test that is displayed when the root system volume is selected as a target
- Fixed a bug when duplicating sync tasks whereby the ‘con figuredSystemIdenti fier’ property was not being preserved in the duplicate
- Fixed a bug that could cause conflicts in bi-directional syncs when a file pair that never had Extended Attributes suddenly had EAs appear on one side
- Fixed a major bug whereby snapshots would get wiped out when using ChronoSync simultaneously on different user accounts by specifying a user name when launching the ChronoAgentLocal component. This is used to create unique snapshot trackers
- Fixed some problems with the register/unregister process
- Fixed some missing translations and un-connected UI outlets in the Task Organizer, SFTP connection profile editor and the Scheduler settings pane
- Fixed a bug whereby Mirrored Data Volume backups were not being represented in the direction view
- Fixed a bug whereby cleaning up saved application states after a bootable backup was prone to raising an exception if there were non-folders in the /Users directory. This would end up reporting that the ‘bless’ operation failed and generate an error (not to mention fail to cleanup all users on the system)
- Trimmed the amount of log messages being generated in the Release build
- Corrected some incorrectly sized UI elements in non-English languages
- Fixed a bug whereby Data Volume Backups were not setting up dissection on CoreTypes.bundle. This could lead to errors if files in that bundle changed in between Data Volume Backup runs.


ChronoSync 10.3.4
Enhancements and changes:
- Added a separator to the sync task log when relocating an archive
- Added a Readiness Error to prevent bootable synchronizations over ChronoAgent connections when running macOS 11 or later on the destination
- Changed the way lost agent connections are dealt with when multiple copy threads are active, in an effort to increase stability
- Added logic to ensure that some maintenance on a remote sync target connection is only performed in the main thread, in an attempt to eliminate an obscure crash
- Hardened the AWS S3 Storage Provider to better deal with lost connections in the middle of a file transfer

Fixed:
- Fixed a bug that could cause unreported failures when attempting to change an archive’s location to a volume with a different “Ignore Ownership” state
- Fixed a problem that could could cause changes to a volume’s “Ignore Ownership” setting to fail
- Fixed some localization problems in the Bootable and Data Volume assistants that were claiming volumes need to be HFS+ formatted
- Fixed a bug whereby a Readiness Error would prevent synchronization if a previously established custom archive location was not available, even if sync settings had been changed so that no archiving was being performed
- Fixed some UI problems on the Options/Archive Settings panel whereby some custom archive location controls weren’t being disabled when archiving was disabled
- Fixed some cosmetic problems on the last panel of several Assistants when running on macOS Ventura
- Fixed a bug in the Backup Multiple Folders assistant that could lead to a crash if the assistant failed to create any destination folders that it was asked to create


ChronoSync 10.3.3
- Fixed a crash that could potentially occur when creating a New Sync Task Document


ChronoSync 10.3.2
Enhancements and changes:
- Added the ability to alter API behavior when accessing AFP, SMB and HFS targets via plist settings
- Disabled caching when using non-Carbon APIs
- Modified how the Readiness Manager recalculates the readiness state to fix several erroneous readiness messages

Fixed:
- a bug whereby permissions were incorrectly set for parent folders of the Archive
- a bug whereby changing the location of the Archive was not properly recognized
- a bug whereby a Sync Task would not properly disconnect from targets upon close in certain instances


ChronoSync 10.3.1
Enhancements and changes:
- The Amazon S3 connection profile editor now allows larger part sizes to be specified

Fixed:
- Fixed a bug whereby running ASR with the destination volume mounted would sometimes cause ASR to fail because it couldn’t unmount the volume. We now force-unmount it prior to invoking ASR
- Fixed a bug whereby the Data Volume Assistant would not set the destination target properly if it were erased & renamed as per user settings
- Fixed a bug in the volume info cache whereby it wasn’t really collecting information about local volumes. The bug was introduced after the first update to v10.
- Fixed a bug whereby the target’s allowSmartScan property was not factored in when determining if a specific target should be checked when testing for admin access
- Fixed a bug whereby a copy task invoked by the synchronizer could conceivably report the wrong error message when an error was reported to the user
- Fixed a bug whereby changing target options would not necessarily force the readiness state of the synchronizer to be recalculated


ChronoSync 10.3.0
Enhancements and changes:
- Added Data Volume backup Operation and Setup Assistant. This supports full backup of just the 'Data' portion of macOS 11, Big Sur, and newer versions of macOS.
- Added the assertion that SmartScan on macOS 12, Montery, requires admin access
- Modified the Bootable Backup and Data Volume backup list of automatically excluded items
- Added logic to detect certain types of fsEvent database problems associated with updating fsEvents on the same volume from different OS versions
- Updated/added a variety of readiness warnings to deal with Data Volume Backup and
- SmartScan issues
- Updated licensing terms

Fixed:
- Fixed a problem that could cause -2070 errors when copying files with no creation dates between HFS+ and APFS filesystems
- Added the ability to alter iCloud application container collection behavior via plist msettings
- Fixed a bug whereby removing a rule from an expanded rule group could cause a crash
- Fixed a bug whereby an Archive could not be relocated to a folder on the active Data volume
- Fixed a bug whereby the bootable blacklist was being applied to a target that mreferenced the root level of any volume
- Fixed a bug that could cause a crash on application launch if a file helper’s associated application was removed from the system


ChronoSync 10.2.0
Enhancements and changes:
- Added Bootable Backup support on Apple Silicon/M1 Macs for macOS 12.4
- New power manager behaviors
- Modified the Bootable Backup list of automatically excluded items

Fixed:
- Fixed a bug whereby ChronoSync was not properly creating a Keychain entry
- Fixed a bug whereby some Direct Messaging e-mail provider connections were failing


ChronoSync 10.1.0
Enhancements and changes:
- Added more informative error messages to the console when an agent connection is lost
- Made a wholesale change throughout ChronoSync regarding how sheet windows are displayed and managed, removing old, deprecated APIs
- Added logic to simulate user activity when running the Clone Volume command
- Improved exception handling when loading and saving sync task documents

Fixed:
- a bug whereby pre v4 sync task documents could not be opened
- a bug whereby responding to the completion of a relocation of the archive was taking place in a background thread which would raise an exception
- a bug whereby a relocation of the archive was not guaranteed to create a new archive with the proper document ID
- a bug when duplicating sync tasks or choosing a new, custom archive location where the source archive path was not properly constructed
- a bug that could leave interval timers in place when closing Sync Task and Container Task document windows that could lead to a crash
- a bug whereby certain classes could respond to events in a background thread which would raise an exception in newer versions of macOS
- a bug whereby the Bootable Backup Assistant could allow the user to advance to the next step even when there were no valid source volumes to choose from
- a bug whereby when collecting information about a mounted volume, an exception could be raise if some volume details were unobtainable
- a bug which could cause failure to delete items in an archive when the corresponding sync task is being deleted
- a bug that could cause failure to duplicate an archive when duplicating a sync task
- a potential crash that could occur when refreshing the Analyze Panel’s contents while running a sync task
- a bug whereby relative date rules were not getting properly encoded/decoded in v10 format sync task documents
- a bug whereby custom archive locations were not being properly decoded from pre-v10 file formats
- a bug whereby the “Allow SmartScan” setting for Target Options was not being properly interpreted
- a bug whereby the SyncDocumentDeleter would not generate any error messages if it failed because it could not locate an archive that it was instructed to delete
- a bug whereby the SyncDocumentDeleter would not prompt the user about archive deletion if the sync task was never previously run
- a bug whereby package merge operations were not being asked to aggregate modi fication dates of merged packages, thus causing unnecessary calls to aggregate package contents after the merge was completed. This was causing timeouts and lost agent connections on some systems
- a problem with the SyncDocumentDuplicator whereby it would continue to duplicate the task document even if an error occurred while duplicating the task document’s archive
- a problem with the SyncDocumentDuplicator and SyncDocumentDeleter whereby no attempt was made to mount a target archive’s volume when duplicating or deleting an associated archive
- a problem whereby the SyncTargetArchiveMover would not properly cleanup after itself if a problem occurred when moving an archive
- a bug whereby when specifying a custom archive location in the Options Panel ChronoSync would fail to move non-document relative archives


ChronoSync 10.0.0
Enhancements:
Apple Silicon Native:
- ChronoSync v10 is a Universal binary Application

New Minimum OS:
- ChronoSync v10 Requires macOS 10.12, Sierra, or newer

Return of Google Cloud Support:
- Existing connection profiles work but will need to be re-authenticated
- Added Direct iCloud Support

All-New Support for Big Sur and Monterey Bootable Backups:
- The Bootable Backup Setup Assistant uses the ASR tool to create a cloned image on the destination volume as part of the bootable task creation process
- After the full system clone is made, only the data volume is backed up
- When an OS version change is detected, ASR will be automatically employed to re-image the destination without disrupting any existing Archiving of the user’s data
- When the user manually configures a bootable backup, the Volume Group Converter will provide the option to re-image the destination (using ASR)

New Archive Management:
- Archives for new Sync Tasks are located in a document-specific folder relative to “_Archived Items”
- Old documents still store archives just beneath “_Archived Items”
- The location of “_Archived Items” may be changed on a per-target basis. It can reside at any location that is reachable by the Target’s File manager.
- Added ‘Actions->Archive->Maintain Archive’ to run just the maintenance step of a synchronization. This is useful if the maintenance will free up disk space, which may be necessary to complete the synchronization.
- Added ‘Actions->Archive->Cleanup Archive” tool, to reclaim the specified amount of disk space from the archive
- When duplicating sync tasks via the Organizer window, the option to retain the archive will actually copy the entire archive to a new, document specific location
- New Sync Task Document File format
- ChronoSync v10 will prompt to update the file format the first time you open a sync task document
- Scheduled syncs that have not been upgraded work fine
- The “File->Save as” window allows saving in either the new or old format
- Eliminated Most Blocking UI Logic
- Improved Sync Engine
- Updated OpenSSL Library
- Updated SFTP Library
- Various UI Enhancements
- New Data Encoding for Scheduler Database, Connection Profiles and other Application data
- New Version Numbering Scheme

Changed:
- Implemented the “No Bootables” readiness test that checks if you’re trying to make a 12.3 (or later) bootable backup on an Apple Silicon machine. If so, it will generate an error and not let you proceed.
- The Bootable Backup Assistant will not present any source volumes that have a signed OS installed on them if running on Apple Silicon and macOS 12.3 or later.
- The ‘ShouldBeBootable’ readiness warning, that is triggered when the user has chosen a System volume as their source target but not a Bootable operation, is now considered an error if CS is running on Catalina or later.
- The active-boot-volume-to-file-server readiness warning only evaluates if we are directly accessing a local file system for our source.
- When changing the sync operation from non-bootable to bootable, we now force the re-selection of targets. This avoids several loopholes that existed whereby the sync task would not be properly constructed if the user chose targets before changing the operation to bootable.
- Now more accurately determines the mount point for a ‘System’ volume in an APFS volume group, even if it has multiple mount points due to pending software updates.
- Error messages generated by the post-synchronizer (responsible for making destination volume bootable) will now be included in notification emails.
- Enhanced the logic that determines if a bootable system is installed on a volume.
- Filename case changes are now factored into bootable backups.
- Added more diagnostics when comparing volume specifiers.
- The Analyze panel now provides better feedback when one of the targets is attempting to mount a volume.
- The Folder-to-Disk-Image Assistant now defaults to APFS when configuring the disk image on Mojave and later.
- Added checks to make preserving folder timestamps within a package more reliable on filesystems that are unreliable in this regard e.g. some SMB file servers and ExFAT volumes.
- Significantly reworked the sequence in which a target attempts to mount volumes.
- Employed new volume ejection/dismount strategies.
- Employed new Spotlight disabling strategies.
- Enhanced some diagnostics when copying or moving files.
- Fixed various cosmetic issues in the user interface.
- Added periods to some tooltips that were missing them.
- Updated online help.

Fixed:
- Fixed a bug whereby attempts to suspend Spotlight indexing on a volume was actually disabling Spotlight for that volume
- Fixed a bug in the Bootable Backup Assistant whereby it would sometimes show the boot volume as a selectable source twice
- Fixed a bug in the Bootable Backup Assistant whereby it would sometimes show data volumes of volume groups in addition to the system volume
- Fixed a bug in the Bootable Backup Assistant whereby it would sometimes show “as is” as a formatting option when the destination was not properly constructed to allow “as is” as a choice
- Fixed a bug with the Restore operation whereby it would not connect to the target file managers when setting up the configuration sheet and thus an improper icon would be displayed
- Fixed a grammar error in the Disk Image Assistant
- Fixed a crash that could occur when deleting a rule.
- Fixed a bug that would cause a scheduled item to be added twice if created from th
- Document Organizer window
- Fixed some bugs that could cause tickle threads to get created when reclaiming a lost connection
- Fixed a crash that could occur when switching to the Analyze Panel
- Fixed a potential problem whereby the app could not properly detect if the background scheduler was launched because the OS needs the main run loop to run in order to update its list of running applications
- Improved the validation of contextual menu plugins (aka System Service) items added to contextual popup menus in Analyze, Archive and Trial Sync outline/table views (and a few other places). Such items will not appear if the involved targets do not support Finder interaction
- Fixed a bug whereby sync task documents that were initially created when the user closed the sync task window and gave it a file name would not immediately show valid sync task information in the Organizer window
- Fixed a bug whereby the window title of a sync task’s Log would not be correct if the sync task was a duplicated copy of another sync task and the log was being displayed from the Organizer window
- Fixed a bug whereby attempts to mount the volume upon which a target disk image resides would fail
- Fixed a bug whereby scheduled syncs would issue two concurrent attempts to mount target volumes in separate threads. Was only an issue if one of those attempts failed, in which case a crash could occur
- Fixed a bug whereby some target volumes could incorrectly be identified as mounted when they were in fact not mounted
- Added logic to ensure that container and sync task documents get saved on the main thread when run from the background scheduler
- The Bootable Backup Assistant now explicitly waits for connection to be established with the destination target after creating the sync task document before moving on to complete the document configuration
- The Bootable Backup Assistant now gracefully handles any exceptions raised while attempting to clear saved application states on the destination target
- Added more thread fingerprinting when executing code on various operation queues
- The Toolbar Pathname Controller now behaves consistently with AppKit’s handling of command-clicking window names
- Added a missing period to Japanese text in the Document Organizer window
- Fixed a crashing bug that could occur when attempting to connect to an SMB server using a supplied username & password
- Fixed a bug whereby the read-only status of the Data volume in a targeted APFS volume group was not being properly determined. CS always thought such volumes were writable
- Fixed a bug in the OS Version mismatch Readiness test whereby if the OS version could not be determined from the destination volume, but could from the source, a mismatch was not being reported
- Fixed a bug in the signed source volume test whereby if the OS version could not be determined from the destination volume, an OS mismatch was not being detected and thus post-sync re-imaging would not be performed
- The Volume Group Converter will now mark the associated synchronizer as ‘busy’ when running a clone operation. This prevents events such as volume mounts/dismounts from resulting in targets updating themselves while the clone operation is running
- Fixed a bug whereby the Validator Setup Sheet’s Help button wasn’t wired to an action in non-English languages
- Fixed a bug whereby the OS mismatch readiness test was still being performed when targets weren’t verified
- Fixed a bug whereby the ‘bless’ utility was not being properly executed when the source was a signed system
- Fixed a bug whereby if a sync was being started as part of a container task, but it couldn’t be started because it was busy, it would still retain its encapsulated state
- Fixed an uncaught exception that could be raised when removing a rule from a rule group
- If the fsEvents database reports no activity since the reference event, a test file is created then deleted on the target volume and fsEvents is queried again. If it still reports no activity, the fsEvent query is reset and designated as such. A log message is generated warning the user that there may be a problem
- Attempted to harden code that deals with volume mount/unmount events so that they cannot cause a crash when a target is being instantiated
- Fixed a bug whereby SmartScan would be attempted even if the corresponding file manager did not support SmartScan
- Fixed a bug that could cause a crash if a target’s relative pathname was only one character long
- Fixed some potential deadlocks that could occur when using the Bootable Backup Assistant and having volumes mount & unmount at the same time
- Remote connections now produce more meaningful diagnostics
- We now obtain a generic icon when an exception is raised on a remote connection rather than terminating the remote connection
- Added diagnostics to the exception handler that traps exceptions raised when trying to run a scheduled item


ChronoSync 4.9.13
Changes & Enhancements:
- Updated the list of AWS S3 endpoint regions
- Added a warning to the Bootable Backup Assistant that explains why macOS Big Sur volumes aren't listed as sources and directs users to our tech-note on how to create a macOS Big Sur bootable backup
- Worked around a macOS Big Sur behavior that made it difficult to identify a targeted APFS volume group after an OS update
- Worked around a macOS Big Sur bug that was causing exceptions to be thrown when running scheduled sync tasks on some systems

Fixed:
- Fixed some bugs with the Resolve Alias feature that was introduced by macOS Big Sur changes
- Corrected a recently introduced auto-layout bug in the Archive Handling options panel


ChronoSync 4.9.12
Changes and enhancements:
- Cells in the Schedule Editor Advanced Interval panel used for selecting day-hour-minute ranges are now highlighted using the current system Accent Color
- If the sync task document is unnamed, the Sync Task Document Name toolbar item will display "Unknown" instead of being blank
- Modified various target selection dialogs so that the file selector dialog is able to fully dismiss before the selection is processed
- Added logic to deal with the possibility that the Task documents folder does not exist, in which case it will revert to the "~/Library/Application Support/ChronoSync/Tasks" folder when naming/creating new tasks.
- Implemented a new Data Volume-Only Mismatched macOS Readiness Warning. This prevents Data Volume-Only backups on macOS 11, Big Sur, if the source and destination OS versions are different.
- When selecting a target that represents the root folder of the Data volume of an APFS volume group, and running on macOS 11, Big Sur, the target will now be forced to refer to the Data volume instead of the System volume group. This allows Data Volume-only backups on macOS 11, Big Sur.
- The Create Bootable Backup Readiness Test will now prevent a bootable backup from occurring if macOS 11, Big Sur, is installed on the source target volume.

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug that could result in forcing the synchronization of all multiply-hard-linked files on the initial run of a synchronizer
- Fixed several problems identifying System volumes on macOS 11, Big Sur
- Fixed numerous cosmetic glitches on macOS 11, Big Sur
- Fixed a bug whereby opening the Document Organizer or Scheduled Tasks Manager window from the TouchBar would not prevent ChronoSync from automatically terminating if it was launched for a scheduled synchronization.
- Fixed a bug in the Multiple Folder Backup Assistant, to prevent folders in the common "/Volumes" parent folder from being combined into a single sync task
- Fixed a typo whereby "quickly" was displayed as "quicky" in various controls and tooltips
- Fixed a bug whereby the Archive Panel outline view would not be scrollable after refreshing on app activation
- Fixed a bug whereby, on an initial sync, if the data size trigger was in effect, it could result in an older file replacing a younger one
- Fixed a bug whereby counting files in a branch would not skip excluded items. This is used by the validator and could lead to an erratic progress bar and scan count
- Fixed bug that could result in an erratic Validator progress bar mostly noticeable on macOS 11, Big Sur
- Fixed a bug whereby some of the predefined rules had the word "Template" in their name
- Fixed a bug in identifying that macOS 11, Big Sur, is installed on a mounted volume
- Fixed a bug whereby push notifications could not be configured if the Mac system name contained an ampersand character
- Fixed a bug whereby the Ignore Ownership Readiness Test would not immediately update its status after responding to the 'fix' command


ChronoSync 4.9.11
Changes and enhancements:
- Modified Bootable Backup sync task behavior to account for macOS 10.15.5 not allowing creation of valid firmlinks. On macOS 10.15.6+ ChronoSync provides the 'Fix' Readiness option to configure the required valid APFS Volume Group. On macOS 10.15.5 systems, the backup volume must be erased using the Bootable Backup Setup Assistant to create the required APFS Volume Group for Bootable Backup
- Altered the logic so that sub-second timestamps have to differ by 2ms or more for a file-pair to be considered different when comparing package file contents
- Added the ability to detect if a connected ChronoAgent implements the firmlink creation to allow Remote Bootable Backup on ChronoAgent connections
- Added logic to allow instantiating sync task documents in-memory if for some reason the underlying macOS system doesn't allow document creation read from storage/disk
- The Google Cloud connection profile type is no longer available to users UNLESS an existing Google Cloud connection profile is defined. In this case, the user is able to edit and create Google Cloud profiles, but they won't work due to API changes on Google's side
- The Bootable Backup Readiness Test now generates an error if the source target of a bootable backup resides on a macOS 11 (aka Big Sur) or later system
- Added the ability to specify a custom location for mounting APFS snapshot volumes via the 'Snapshot_Mount_Folder' plist setting on macOS 10.15 or newer
- Snapshot mount points now use 0755 permissions
- The Bootable Backup Assistant does not present source volumes with Big Sur (or later) installed on them as potential sources for a Bootable backup operation
- Applied fall back logic to all error conditions that occur when attempting to obtain attributes for an item
- Improved recognition of the active System component of the boot APFS volume group and its Data counterpart
- Increased the priority of the Bootable Backup Readiness test so that it is evaluated before many other readiness errors and reported to the user before other terminal conditions
- If a bootable backup operation encounters an error when running the UpdatePreboot tool, the entire output generated by UpdatePreboot is dumped to the ChronoSync-console.log
- Snapshot mount points are now created by the ChronoSync process instead of ChronoAgentLocal on macOS 10.15 or newer
- Determining if volumes are mounted is now done in a more Big Sur compatible way
- Modified the console messages produced when post-processing a bootable backup to provide a clearer idea of what is happening when diagnosing problems
- Changed the package aggregation algorithm to improve bulk file and folder attribute collection
- Added the ability to collect diagnostic messages when invoking the Restore operation
- Modified the Validator date compare to take into account date value rounding that can occur

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug whereby deleting a task document from the Organizer window would not delete any scheduled items that are referencing that task document
- Fixed a bug whereby interpreting millisecond timestamps attached to files on APFS filesystems was subject to a scaling error when converting between time representations. This could result in unnecessary file data copying
- Fixed a bug whereby the Volume Group Converter would raise exceptions and fail to completely convert a single volume to a volume group if the user just previously retargeted their destination and opted to preserve sync history
- Fixed a bug whereby the Volume Group Converter wouldn't work correctly in some right-to-left scenarios
- Fixed an error handling bug when collecting attributes to force a rescan of the directory contents instead of causing an immediate fatal error
- Fixed a bug when collecting attributes for directory contents and identifying items that should remain invisible to apps and be ignored
- Fixed a bug whereby if a sync task document window is open, and the completion summary sheet is displayed, scheduled synchronizations for that sync task will fail because the summary sheet does not get auto-dismissed
- Fix for a cosmetic problem displaying checkboxes in the Trial Sync Selector on Big Sur
- Fixed a bug regarding priority of Readiness Tests when working from a saved sync task document


ChronoSync 4.9.10
Changes and enhancements:
- Implemented work-around for failing bootable backups on macOS 10.15.5 (Catalina). See tech note: https://www.econtechnologies.com/chronosync/TN-CS-Bootable-10-15-5-Catalina.html
- When instantiating new sync and container tasks from their default template file, we now catch any exception that is raised.
- Hardened all logic involved with reading result data back from any shell task to better deals with situations that could cause indefinite hangs.

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug whereby an exception that occurs while Blessing the destination after a bootable backup would cause the application to terminate.
- Fixed a bug in the AWS S3 Connections whereby if the user's account was restrictive to the point that they weren't allowed to list buckets, the connection 'Test' would fail and not allow the user to manually specify a bucket name in the next panel.
- Fixed a bug whereby attempts to mount the volume that a target disk image resided on were likely to fail on Mojave (and later) systems.


ChronoSync 4.9.9
Changes and enhancements:
- Improved reliability and compatibility when mounting disk images
- Completely reworked the OAuth code to conform to the latest authentication requirements from Google. This includes a custom landing web page presented upon success.
- Changed the interval at which each connection profile’s connection status is retested if a connection profile is deemed to be 'available'
- Added logic to the Background Scheduler that checks to see if any other instance of the Background Scheduler is running and terminates duplicate instances
- A target connecting to an AFP File Server will now use Carbon-based APIs for accessing the target by default
- Improved error logging when testing the availability of AWS S3 servers

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug whereby the Catalina APFS Volume Group Readiness Test would not reliably present the "Fix" option
- Modified how ChronoSync communicates with the hdiutil tool to combat a possible hang
- Eliminated the attempt to unmount a volume for connections that do not support volume mounting
- Fixed the long-standing "Synchronizer deallocated with task views in place" bug that was related to Task Containers that were trying to adjust a non-existent progress sheet


ChronoSync 4.9.8
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a problem that would cause files moved to a synchronizer's archive to become locked
- Fixed a bug whereby Archive Maintenance was failing to remove old archive files on a Catalina bootable backup
- Fixed a bug whereby the user could not delete files in a Catalina bootable backup archive using the Archive Panel
- Fixed a bug whereby the user could not restore files from a Catalina bootable backup archive using the Archive Panel
- Fixed a bug whereby deleting a file from the archive during the maintenance phase of synchronization would fail if the folder containing that file in the archive was locked
- Fixed a bug whereby creating a folder in the archive during a synchronization would fail if the parent for that folder was locked


ChronoSync 4.9.7
Changes and enhancements:
- Implemented the ability to 'force mirror' empty folders as part of the bootable blacklisting. Applied this logic for saved application state folders & preference files
- Implemented the FireWire Bootable Device readiness test that will flag a warning if attempting to create a bootable backup of a Catalina (or later) system onto a FireWire device because Catalina does not support booting from FireWire devices
- Implemented the Archive Performance readiness test that will flag a warning if archiving is enabled on a target that does not offer an efficient move/rename capability.The warning suggests performance may be poor and offers to 'Fix' the problem by disabling archiving. Currently this is only triggered by cloud-based targets
- Implemented the Safe-Copy Performance readiness test that will flag a warning if safe-copy is enabled on a target that does not offer an efficient move/rename capability. The warning suggests performance may be poor and offers to 'Fix' the problem by disabling safe-copy. Currently this is only triggered by cloud-based targets
- Modernized routines and implemented additional logic when attempting to move files to the trash so that any restrictive ACLs are temporarily removed from the files to ensure success. This eliminates a potential problem when moving files to the trash without admin access
- Modernized file lock/unlock routines
- Implemented the 'SFTP_SkipShellProbe' public plist property which will indicate that SFTP connections should skip the test for shell support and assume that shell operations are unsupported
- Implemented the 'SFTP_ReconnectDelay' public plist property which will indicate a pause (in seconds) that should be introduced between a failed probe for shell support and a reconnection without shell support

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a regression bug whereby Terabyte-sized numbers would be formatted as if they were Gigabyte-sized
- Fixed a bug in the Backblaze storage provider whereby if a single large-file transfer took more than 24 hours to complete, the authorization token for that transfer was allowed to expire resulting in a failed file transfer
- Fixed a bug whereby the APFS Compound Volume readiness test was always allowing the 'Fix' option when the destination volume was HFS+ formatted, regardless of the operating system running on the destination volume Mac. Thus older OS's connected via ChronoAgent would present 'Fix,' which would allow the APFS Volume Converter to be invoked and was certain to fail if the destination OS was not Catalina or later
- Fixed a bug whereby a set of bootable backup operations was still being unnecessarily performed on non-Catalina systems
- Fixed a bug whereby determining the version of the OS installed on a bootable target was destined to fail if the target was connected via a ChronoAgent connection
- Fixed some bugs to generate more meaningful error messages when converting volumes to APFS Volume Group format for Catalina Bootable Backup
- Fixed a bug whereby a logic error in the 'Archive Deletions Not Supported' readiness test that could have caused a crash
- Fixed a bug whereby, with a certain combination of task settings, the Analysis Report would fail to print the last page of the report
- Fixed a bug that could cause the Validator to hang while validating a large sync set that contained package files
- Fixed a bug when determining if a volume is mounted whereby it was assumed that calling diskutil with the "-plist" argument would return results in plist format. This is not the case when connected to a ChronoAgent running on an old (pre 10.5 era) OS and triggered an exception


ChronoSync 4.9.6
Changes and enhancements:
- The APFS Volume Group Converter utility is now capable of converting an HFS+ formatted volume to an APFS Volume Group
- If a download is in progress for an in-app-update when the application is quit by the user, the termination will be aborted and the download progress panel window will be brought to the front
- The Configured System Identifier readiness test can now be ignored to allow the sync task to be run on different systems without the warning preventing it from running
- Improved the Trial Key Retriever reliability on macOS 10.15, Catalina (or later)
- Improved shell task execution reliability to better handle errors and exceptions

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a problem whereby if "Launch at login" was enabled and so was "Use background scheduler," the Background Scheduler could conceivably be launched twice at login
- Fixed a long-standing bug whereby the results of running external commands and tasks could be misinterpreted because of failing to read the entire output/result from running that command affecting operations such as mounting Disk Images or Blessing bootable backup targets
- If running on macOS Catalina (or later), the Background Scheduler uses the UUID of the corresponding 'Data' volume to prevent a situation whereby an OS update causes a change in the UUID of the System volume
- If running on macOS Catalina (or later), the configured system identifier stored in Task Documents is derived from the UUID of the corresponding 'Data' volume to prevent a situation whereby an OS update causes a change in the UUID of the System volume
- Fixed a problem whereby a change to the System volume's UUID caused by an OS update could trick the mount detection logic for a given target to fail, forcing the user to re-select the target
- Fixed a bug whereby selecting a pre- or post- sync script could cause the application to crash
- Fixed a consistency problem whereby kilobyte file sizes and transfer rates were displayed with the K symbol instead of KB
- Fixed a bug whereby a file-folder pair (i.e. folder on one side, file on the other, both with the same name) marked for synchronization would not display a status icon in both the Analyze panel or the Trial Sync Selector sheet window
- Fixed a bug whereby a file-folder pair (i.e. folder on one side, file on the other, both with the same name) was likely to generate a folder enumeration error when running a Trial Sync (the error was benign if the user just ignored it)
- Fixed a bug whereby auditing differences in a file-pair would not factor the file size in some circumstances resulting in the File/Folder Information in the Analyze panel failing to display a file size difference in red
- Fixed a problem whereby some some displayed file attributes in the Analyze panel would remain in cache after file entries were reloaded
- Fixed several bugs in the Synchronizer, Bootable Backup Assistant and APFS Volume Group Converter whereby errors and/or incorrect behavior would result if there was an existing APFS Preboot volume on the destination but it wasn’t spelled exactly 'Preboot' e.g. 'PreBoot'
- Fixed a Catalina-specific bug whereby file system observers would fail to detect deep file system changes if the root folder being modified resided on your boot system's 'Data' volume causing live triggered syncs not to run after deep file system changes were made
- Fixed a bug in our custom target selector whereby rapidly selecting folders before their contents were displayed could conceivably cause a crash
- Fixed a bug in our custom target selector whereby rapidly selecting folders could result in unnecessary fetches of folder contents and extraneous re-display of folder contents
- Fixed a bug in the APFS Volume Group Converter utility whereby it was assumed that the destination volume had ownership enabled but that isn't necessarily the case
- Fixed a bug whereby a copy task could be initiated with a user abort pending and the copy would have to fully complete before the abort was recognized
- Fixed a bug in the Backblaze B2 storage provider whereby move/rename operations on files larger than 5 GB would always fail
- Fixed a bug in the Backblaze B2 storage provider whereby move/rename operations on files that result in a timeout would get caught in a timeout loop until the move/rename operation succeeded


ChronoSync 4.9.5
Changes and enhancements:
- Added support for Archiving over Backblaze B2 connections
- Added support for identifying and managing APFS Volume Groups
- Added support for properly handling firmlinks in Bootable Backup
- Added support for APFS Volume Groups to the Bootable Backup Assistant
- Added the Compound Volume Group readiness check to ensure that a destination volume is constructed properly for Catalina bootable backups
- Implemented the all-new Volume Group Converter utility that allows a single APFS volume to be converted to an APFS Volume Group on macOS Catalina. This utility activates when the user attempts to 'fix' the readiness warning
- The Bootable Backup Assistant now presents the option of creating a sibling APFS volume. To get this option, you must select an existing APFS volume as your destination. When presented with formatting/erase options for that volume, you'll now have the option to create a sibling volume. This will create an all new volume in the same container as the destination volume you selected
- The Bootable Backup Assistant now enforces unique volume names when naming your destination volume (either after choosing to erase it or to create a sibling volume).The restriction is such that you cannot choose a name that already exists in your destination APFS container, unless you are erasing an existing volume and keeping the same name. Note that duplicate volume names are allowed, just not in the same APFS container
- The Bootable Backup Assistant now makes sure that Preboot and Recovery volumes are dereferenced when deleting or erasing existing APFS volumes
- The Bootable Backup Assistant now creates a bootable sync task that has Aggressive Smart Scan enabled on the destination
- The Bootable Backup assistant will now append "Not recommended" to the "Proceed as-is" formatting option if a) the source and destination are APFS volumes AND b) they have mismatched crypto users as a crypto user mismatch is likely to produce errors from the UpdatePreboot utility
- Implemented logic whereby sync task targets configured on pre-Catalina systems will automatically update the VolumeSpecifier object (if necessary) after being opened for the first time after a Catalina upgrade
- Now attempts to suspend Spotlight operation on Admin Access Volumes
- Improved volume detection and mounting efficiency
- Modified Full Disk Access detection logic for macOS 10.15 (Catalina)

Converted to using bookmark objects instead of alias objects to track the location of various files and folders. This affects the location of:
- The main 'Tasks' (aka 'Sync Documents') folder
- Any sync task ever opened by ChronoSync and tracked in the Organizer
- A scheduled item's reference to the sync task that is scheduled
- A container sync task's reference to all contained sync tasks
- A sync (and container sync) task's reference to pre- and -post- sync scripts
- Any File Comparison Helper's reference to the helper application
- Improved the Readiness Manager efficiency by caching commonly used sync task properties when evaluating all readiness tests
- The Resolve Alias and Freeze Filesystem readiness warning is no longer generated if the target file manager is not running with root privileges because a snapshot will not be taken unless you're running with root privileges
- The 'Aggressive' SmartScan mode now functions as it was originally intended by turning off self-audits. Previously, all this setting did was reduce the frequency of self-audits
- All assistants that create uni-directional sync tasks with SmartScan enabled will now enable Aggressive Mode on the destination target
- The Delete Action UI presented from Analyze when manually deleting files now displays the "Deletion is permanent" warning using the OS's secondary label color instead of disabled text color
- If the application is instructed to terminate due to a system shutdown or restart, and there are currently scheduled syncs running, the warning dialog that tells the user about the running sync will auto-dismiss after 10 seconds. If this happens, the app will behave as if the user instructed the dialog to abort all syncs and terminate. If the user interacts with the dialog within the 10 second window, system shutdown/restart can be cancelled
- On application termination, will now shut down any active Bonjour service listeners before quitting
- Retrieval of a graphic resource when displaying an update notice is now performed asynchronously in a background thread to avoid the potential of a rather long block before the update notice was displayed
- When selecting a target, a new VolumeSpecifier object is now always created even if the new target resides on the same volume as the previous target to prevent potential problems whereby not all properties of the volume are collected, and some of those properties may have changed since the target was last specified
- Optimized the mount detection logic for non-local volumes for ChronoAgent-connected targets for which we have valid device information and a device GUID
- SmartScan query reset log messages will now indicate the name of the volume where the reset occurred
- File system freezing log messages now indicate the volume name which contains the frozen filesystem
- Disabled self-validation when creating alias objects
- The "/Cores" folder is no longer part of the bootable backup blacklist
- The "/Volumes" folder has been added to the auto-exclusion blacklist
- Eliminated the use of deprecated APIs when attempting to move items to the trash
- Copying and/or deleting dylib files in the /Users domain will no longer trigger the execution of update_dyld_shared_cache at the end of a bootable backup synchronization

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug in the False Mount Point Detection Readiness Test that could lead to erroneous false-mount-point warnings when the real problem was that the target was not connected
- Fixed a bug in the Validator whereby validating the root level of a volume could introduce an error and premature termination of the validation process
- Fixed a bug in the SFTP storage provider whereby it was assumed that an SFTP server would always provide a list of valid authentication methods which could cause a crash
- Fixed a bug whereby if the user had selected a file-pair in Analyze and the program was in the midst of fetching file information as a result, and the user then switched back to Setup and selected a different file manager, the program could crash when trying to display the results of the file information fetch that was still pending
- Fixed a bug whereby attempting to create the parent path of a nested item which had no parent that could result in unexpectedly synchronizing all files or creating a new destination folder outside of the sync tree
- Fixed a bug whereby entering a blank value in the "Max retry attempts" field (when scheduling tasks) would raise an exception
- Fixed a bug whereby when executing external tasks, an overflow of the error stream's pipe buffer would cause a long stall and slow execution of the task. This was most evident when running update_dyld_shared_cache during the "Optimizing" phase of a bootable backup. A stall would occur if that task generated a lot of error output
- Fixed a bug whereby the Resource Fork Unsupported Readiness Test would generate a warning even if the sync task had 'preserve resource forks' set to NO
- Fixed a bug whereby the Full Disk Access Readiness Test could erroneously report that full disk access was required on the right target, if it needed testing
- Fixed a bug whereby the partition scheme readiness test would sometimes be performed when a target volume was not mounted, resulting in an erroneous warning about the partition scheme
- Fixed a bug whereby the VolumeSpecifier might not perform its final, 'forced' attempt to unmount a volume if the standard efforts to unmount the volume failed
- Fixed a bug whereby the Bootable Backup Assistant would indicate that an HFS+ filesystem must be selected even though there were APFS options presented
- Fixed some bugs in the archive management logic whereby assumptions were being made about the location of the sync task archive that could cause some features to break if the archive were located anywhere but at the root level of the corresponding target
- Fixed a bug whereby the archiving logic would produce an error if the archive data structure became out-of-sync with the filesystem with regards to a package becoming a folder. It now self heals if an attempt is made to archive a file that resides within a package rather than the package as a whole. This sort of problem was possible when enabling dissect packages on a sync task that was previously run with standard/merge package handling
- When calling update_dyld_shared_cache as part of the 'Optimizing' phase of a bootable backup, some newly added arguments will not be passed to the utility on pre-10.14 systems since older OS's don't appear to handle them properly
- Fixed a bug in the Sync Task Document Window Controller whereby a UI change was being performed in a background thread
- Fixed a bug whereby inconsistent information could be returned about mounted disk images, causing a sync task target to lose information necessary to mount the disk image
- Fixed a bug whereby the test to see if a sync target's volume contained a bootable operating system was being performed on a file server connection. This was always destined to fail
- Fixed a bug whereby when un-registering with the push notification server, we now properly re-establish hardware identity properties to prevent a reset from continuing to occur every time a push notification is sent


ChronoSync 4.9.4
Changes and enhancements:
- Changed Strict Volume Identification to no longer examine deviceModel and deviceProtocol
- Implemented full Diagnostic Logging support in the InterConneX connections

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug when communicating with an InterConneX sharespace as a target whereby it was not likely going to be able to copy into a locked folder
- Fixed a bug whereby if invoking a Trial Sync and target validation fails, subsequent attempts to invoke a standard sync (after correcting the cause of the validation failure) would invoke Trial Sync again unexpectedly
- Fixed a few diagnostic messages that were being generated in non-debug builds
- Fixed the logic used to determine a unique, temporary file name for copying to a remote cloud or InterConneX target as it had concurrence issues and could return non-unique filenames if called simultaneously from different threads
- Fixed a bug whereby setting the UF_HIDDEN, UF_IMMUTABLE and UF_APPEND BSD flags on a file stored in an InterConneX target was prone to setting random values for those flags
- Fixed a bug whereby extracting a file path from a collection record could result in a corrupt path. This could lead to errors or even a crash
- Fixed a bug whereby the read-only destination readiness test would report "Left target is read-only" when BOTH targets were read-only, even though it was a left-to-right sync


ChronoSync 4.9.3
Enhancements and Changes:
- Changed the algorithm for determining temporary file names to be less prone to natural filename collisions during concurrent copying tasks.
Now handles any exceptions when obtaining attributes from an SFTP directory entry and treats this condition as a non-directory entry (i.e. it just skips it)
- When a comparison helper is called, the sync target's file manager is now used to obtain information about the files being compared
- Now validates any relative alias object created and compares it against the original item to catch potential mismatches
- Now only replacing the reference to the task document when modifying a scheduled item if it has actually changed
- Improved memory management in the Backblaze B2 storage provider
- Added logic to the sync task document loader so that it can better deal with potentially damaged task documents
- Significantly reduced the size of the scheduler database and the overhead of loading/saving it
- More efficiently instantiate scheduled items from the scheduled items database to handle potentially corrupt elements
- Modified how the scheduled item database gets saved so that multiple changes made in quick succession are coalesced before saving
- Reduced app activation overhead by no longer reconstructing the Templates contextual menu on every activation of the app
- Updated the Trial Sync results window to clean up a path to an item before passing that off to a helper tool or external service such a 'Get Info in Finder' to ensure that the path represents the file object on the real target and not a snapshotted version of it
- Now performs a sync history reset (retaining exclusions) after changing Package Handling, Sync Operation, and Sync Triggers on a previously synchronized task document to ensure all appropriate information gets collected and items are handled correctly on the next run
- Changed the terminology used to identify Backblaze B2 application keys & account IDs to match the latest B2 terminology and to be consistent (i.e. English) across all languages
- All the cloud service connection profile editors have had their authentication's credential fields set to character-wrap instead of word-wrap.
Added logic that ensures any excluded file-pair does not have any other status set

Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug whereby the pre-defined AWS S3 endpoint strings were inadvertently translated in non-English languages
- The ChronoAgentLocal-Console.log file is now being rolled-over automatically
- Fixed some auto-layout problems in the AWS and Backblaze B2 connection profile editors
- Fixed some bugs whereby many commands were not properly setting the thread-specific error property when they completed
- Fixed a bug that occurs when launching comparison helper applications in a manner that was incompatible with files residing on an APFS snapshot volume
- Fixed a bug whereby an alias located in the immediate descendant of a resolved folder alias would not be resolved correctly
- Fixed a bug that was affecting the synchronizer's ability to identify self-referencing aliases when 'resolve aliases' was in effect and the target currently referred to an APFS snapshot volume
- Fixed a (harmless) bug that could result in wasted time and a guaranteed low-level error (and console messages) when trying to do Trial Sync or Sync Selection on an APFS snapshot
- Fixed a bug in resolving an alias on an APF