✨ The same notes appear inside Velnode right after you update — reopen any time from the ☰ menu → What's new.

Changelog

All notable changes to Velnode Browser are documented here, newest first. Format follows Keep a Changelog; versions follow Semantic Versioning (-beta.N marks pre-release builds).

Download the current release: https://velnode.app/download · Verify checksums: https://downloads.velnode.app/latest/SHA256SUMS.txt

v2.3.3-beta.15 — 2026-07-29

FIXED

You can type straight after deleting a chat. Deleting a conversation from Vee's folder list — or clearing the current one — used to leave the message box unresponsive for a while, with clicking back into it making no difference. The confirmation step was a Windows system dialog, which took keyboard control away from Velnode. It's now a proper in-app confirmation: the panel dims, you get Cancel (already selected) and Delete, Esc closes it, and the cursor lands back in the message box the moment it closes.
Alerts no longer sit on top of your bookmarks. Notices like "your session expired" were positioned by fixed measurements that didn't account for the bookmarks bar or the first-run "make Velnode your default browser" bar, so they could cover them. Every panel and notice in the toolbar area now positions itself from the real window layout, so this can't drift again.
Only one sync message at a time, and it names the real cause. When your account session expired you could get two warnings at once, one of them claiming you were offline when you weren't — the queued-changes count was being read as a network problem. Velnode now shows the single message that actually explains the situation, and only says you're offline when you genuinely are.
Failed updates say so. A download or restart that didn't work could report success and leave a button doing nothing. Failures are now reported properly, with guidance on what to do.
Sync stops retrying with an expired session. Velnode kept attempting to sync every few minutes after a session expired, which quietly inflated the "changes queued" count. It now waits until you sign in again.

CHANGED

A quiet finishing touch on the dashboard. The empty space below the shortcuts now carries a subtle Velnode mark and "Made in Aotearoa", so the page reads as complete rather than cut off.

v2.3.3-beta.14 — 2026-07-29

NEW

Velnode now tells you when an update is waiting. A small ⟳ Update ready badge appears next to the version in the title bar, with a matching dot on the ☰ menu. Click it for the version number, a short summary of what changed, and a Restart now button if you want it straight away. It stays put until the update happens — no pop-up windows, no system notifications.
Updates now install themselves when you close Velnode. Because releases are signed from beta.13 onward, Velnode can safely finish an update on its own: it downloads and verifies in the background, tells you it's ready, and applies it the next time you quit. No installer to run, no wizard to click through. You'll still see the What's new panel the first time you open the new version, so nothing ever changes without an explanation.
Updates are checked against our publisher signature. On top of the checksum verification that was always in place, Velnode now refuses any update that isn't signed by DIGNITY NEWZEALAND LIMITED — so even a compromised download server couldn't push a tampered update onto your machine.

FIXED

Sign-in sessions no longer fail silently. Account sessions expire after 30 days, by design. When that happened, the warning could sit on top of your bookmarks bar with no way to dismiss it, and its Sign in again button led to a page insisting you were already signed in — a dead end. The alert now sits clear of your bookmarks, can be dismissed, and takes you straight to a sign-in screen with your email already filled in; sync resumes the moment you sign in. Nothing on your device was ever at risk. Sessions that expired while Velnode was closed are now reported too — previously they were completely silent.
Vee Brain downloads explain themselves. If downloading or removing an on-device brain failed, Velnode showed an internal error code — and the message disappeared within a fraction of a second, so a blocked download looked like a button that simply did nothing. Failures now stay on screen and say what happened in plain English, along with the fix. The most common one: Local-Only Mode deliberately blocks downloads, and now says so.
More light-theme contrast repairs. Following beta.13's pass over accent and red elements, the same treatment now covers green (success) and amber (warning) chips, badges and pills — 55 further places where coloured text on a tinted background fell below the WCAG AA readability standard in light theme. Dark theme is unchanged.

CHANGED

Help and documentation updated for signed installs. The guides that walked you through the old "unknown publisher" warning have been rewritten now that every installer is signed and verified.

v2.3.3-beta.13 — 2026-07-29

NEW

Velnode installers are now digitally signed. This is the first release signed with our organization-validated certificate — Windows now shows DIGNITY NEWZEALAND LIMITED (our registered company name) as the verified publisher instead of "Unknown publisher" when you install or uninstall. Every update also remains byte-verified against the release feed's checksum, as before. (Windows SmartScreen may still show a caution screen for a while — its reputation for a newly signed publisher builds up as downloads accumulate. That's normal and fades on its own.)
Send feedback from inside Velnode. Found a bug or have an idea? ☰ menu → Help → 💬 Send feedback (or the Send feedback button on the new-tab dashboard) opens a short form that goes straight to us. No email app, no account required.
Open your web dashboard from the account page. Signed in? Your in-app account page now has an Open web dashboard row that takes you to your account on the web (account.velnode.app) in one click.

FIXED

Popup sign-in windows now finish signing you in. The known limitation from beta.11 is resolved: sites that use a small popup for "Sign in with Google / Facebook" now get a real, tightly constrained sign-in popup that can talk back to the page that opened it — so the sign-in completes. The popup is locked down hard: web pages only, capped at two at a time, no popups-from-popups, and it closes with the page that opened it. As part of the same hardening, the safety checks around popups and new tabs now refuse rather than allow if they ever hit an internal error — protections fail safe, never open.
Light theme is easier to read. Accent-coloured and red (danger) buttons and highlights in the light theme were retuned to meet the WCAG AA contrast standard everywhere they appear.

v2.3.3-beta.12 — 2026-07-22

FIXED

Vee's follow-up suggestions now appear on the standard brain. The tappable suggestion buttons under Vee's answers — until now only the larger Pulse brain showed them — appear on Spark too, which is the brain most people use. When Spark writes its own suggestions they're kept; when it doesn't, Velnode builds sensible ones from your question, so the buttons are there either way.
"Skip this screen next time" finally skips it. Ticking the box on the welcome screen used to change nothing — a leftover from early development quietly erased the choice on every launch. It now works: tick it once and Velnode opens straight to your dashboard.

v2.3.3-beta.11 — 2026-07-22

FIXED

Links that open in a new tab work again. Clicking a link a website marks "open in new tab" — sign-in buttons, "view document" links, help pages — used to do nothing at all, with no error. They now open as a normal Velnode tab, the way you'd expect in any browser. This had been broken for every website.
Hardened as it was fixed. Websites can never open separate floating popup windows (everything becomes a tab), a page that tries to spam tabs is capped at 3 per 10 seconds, and no website can force Velnode's own internal pages open.

KNOWN LIMITATION

Some sign-in buttons that use a small popup box (typically "Sign in with Google / Facebook") may show the sign-in page but not finish signing you in on the original page. Sign-ins that open as a normal page work fine. A proper fix is planned.

v2.3.3-beta.10 — 2026-07-21

FIXED

Vee answers your question again on the larger brain. On Vee Brain — Pulse, some questions came back as nothing but a row of follow-up suggestion buttons, with the answer itself missing entirely. Ask it to name three native birds and you got three suggestions and no birds. Pulse now answers first and offers the follow-ups afterwards, the way it was always meant to.
The cause was in Vee's own instructions, not in her thinking. The example Vee was shown of "a good reply" was a row of suggestions with no answer attached — so on the larger brain she copied it. Her instructions now state plainly that suggestions come after a complete answer and never instead of one, and the example shows a real answer followed by its suggestions.

v2.3.3-beta.9 — 2026-07-21

FIXED

Vee no longer replies with suggestions and no answer. On the larger brains a reply could come back as nothing but a row of follow-up suggestion buttons, with the answer itself missing. That happened when Vee formatted her whole answer as suggestions and Velnode lifted every line out of the bubble. Velnode now leaves the reply alone rather than emptying it.
Settings now tells the truth about the graphics speed-up. The last release moved the speed-up into the installer, but the settings screen kept checking the old download folder — so it reported “Not installed yet” on every install, even while Vee was demonstrably running on the graphics chip. Settings → Local Vee brain now reports what Vee is actually running on, and says so as soon as you have asked a question.

v2.3.3-beta.8 — 2026-07-20

NEW

Vee now uses your computer's graphics chip — and it is dramatically faster. On-device Vee used to do all its thinking on the processor, which is why the first answer could take over a minute. Velnode now uses your graphics chip where it can. On the test laptop (an ordinary AMD Radeon built into the processor), the first words of an answer went from 83 seconds to 4 seconds. Your own machine will differ, but if you have a graphics chip that Vee can use, the difference is not subtle.
Nothing extra to install, and nothing extra to decide. The speed-up downloads automatically with your Vee Brain — about 23 MB on top of a download that is already over a gigabyte, so roughly 2% larger. The Velnode installer itself does not grow. If your computer cannot use it, nothing is downloaded and nothing is shown.
Settings → Local Vee brain now shows what Vee is actually running on — your graphics chip or your processor — with a switch to turn the speed-up off if a graphics driver ever misbehaves. It tells you the truth about what is in use rather than what we hoped would be in use.

FIXED

Vee answers the part it knows instead of refusing the whole question. Asking for something Vee can only partly answer — "UBE powder suppliers", say — used to produce a flat "I can't provide that information." Vee now tells you what ube powder is and who typically stocks it, and only declines the part that genuinely needs the live web.
"How to" questions about the world are no longer answered with Velnode's own help pages. Asking something like "explain in detail how to cook khichadi, step by step" could return browser documentation instead of an answer — and the more detail you asked for, the more likely it was to happen. Fixed.
Answers no longer stop in the middle of a word. When a reply reached its length limit it used to cut off mid-sentence, which looked like a crash. It now ends on a complete sentence.
On-device Vee has more room to answer. The hidden instructions sent with every question were taking up more than half the available space. Trimming them roughly tripled the room left for the answer itself, which also makes replies start sooner.

v2.3.3-beta.7 — 2026-07-20

FIXED

On-device Vee answers your question instead of refusing it. A brief over-correction in the last build made the local brains sometimes decline questions they could easily answer (for example, a recipe) as "not within my capabilities." Vee now answers directly from what it knows by default, and only says it can't for things that genuinely need the live web or real-time data.
No more fake "let me look up…" narration. When a local brain can't do something, it no longer pretends to search or "check the Unified Vault" — it gives a straight, honest answer or says plainly it can't and what you could do instead. This is now enforced in the app itself, not just requested of the model, so it holds even on the smaller brains.

v2.3.3-beta.6 — 2026-07-20

NEW

New on-device brain: Vee Brain — Spark. A small, fast AI model that answers in seconds on an ordinary laptop and needs only about 2 GB of free memory — so an 8 GB machine can run it and still do everything else. Spark is now the recommended pick for most computers; Pulse stays as the highest-quality option for powerful PCs, and Volt as the balanced middle. Choose in Settings → Local Vee brain. (Spark is an opt-in ~1.1 GB download, nothing is bundled.)

FIXED

On-device Vee no longer pretends to do things it can't. For questions it can't answer (like looking up suppliers online), Vee used to reply with filler — "let me look up… I'll check…" — and never actually answer. It now either answers directly from what it knows, or says plainly it can't do that and suggests what you could do instead.
The memory check is now sized to the brain you chose. Smaller brains (like Spark) are no longer turned away on machines that have plenty of room to run them.
Vee warns you the moment memory is too tight, before every answer — instead of silently grinding for minutes when your computer has run low.
Suggested follow-up questions never leak as raw ">" text anymore, even when the model tucks them into the middle of an answer — they always become tappable buttons.

v2.3.3-beta.5 — 2026-07-19

FIXED

On-device Vee no longer re-reads everything for every question. Only the first answer after launch pays the slow context read — follow-up questions now start answering in seconds (measured: a question that took 5–7 minutes live now shows its first words in about 5 seconds once warmed up). Questions that pull in fresh product documentation still take a little longer, and Vee streams while they work.
On-device answers now appear sentence by sentence instead of arriving all at once after a long silence — you see Vee typing as she thinks, with all of her identity and safety protections intact.
Follow-up suggestion buttons no longer leak into the answer text. When Vee tacked her suggested next questions onto the end of a sentence, they showed as raw "> …" text; they now always become tappable buttons.
Off-topic questions no longer pull in Velnode help documentation. Asking about something unrelated (say, cricket) previously mixed Velnode manual excerpts into the answer's context.
The "reading your context" note only appears when there's actually a wait — quick answers no longer flash it.

CHANGED

Settings and the user guide now say plainly that on-device Vee needs about 4 GB of free memory while answering, and that the brain frees that memory after 30 minutes of no use.

v2.3.3-beta.4 — 2026-07-19

FIXED

No more silent dead-ends from the on-device brain. If the AI helper crashes (usually from running out of free memory while loading the model), Vee now tells you immediately with a clear message instead of waiting forever. Velnode also checks your free memory before loading — if there isn't enough (~4 GB free needed), you get an instant "close some apps and ask again" instead of a stall.

NEW

The answer seal now names the brain. On-device answers show "🔒 Vee Pulse — stayed on your device" (or Vee Volt), so you always know exactly which engine answered.

v2.3.3-beta.3 — 2026-07-19

FIXED

Vee now tells you when an on-device answer is warming up. The first local answer after launch can take a minute or two while Vee reads your context on the CPU — previously the chat just sat silent, which looked broken. You'll now see "Vee is reading your context…" until the answer starts streaming, and the Settings page sets the same expectation. Later answers in a session are quicker.

v2.3.3-beta.2 — 2026-07-19

FIXED

Vee Brain — Pulse no longer stalls on its first answer. On machines with less free memory, Pulse could grind for minutes without replying (it was using too much RAM and silently "thinking" behind the scenes). Pulse now uses the same lean memory footprint as Volt and is barred from hidden thinking entirely — answers start streaming promptly.

v2.3.3-beta.1 — 2026-07-19

NEW

Meet Vee Brain — Pulse. A new, much smarter on-device brain for Vee (~2.5 GB, optional download). Answers are sharper and more direct — real opinions instead of rambling, and better step-by-step help — all generated entirely on your machine, nothing sent to the cloud. Find it in Settings → Local Vee brain and tap Download Pulse.
Your current brain is now "Vee Brain — Volt." If you already installed the local AI, nothing changes — it keeps working under its new name as the lighter option. Each brain's card shows exactly what engine and licence it uses, with full details in Open-Source Notices.

v2.3.2-beta.14 — 2026-07-19

CHANGED

Groundwork for default-browser support. Improved how Velnode registers with Windows so it’s ready to open your web pages and files. A one-tap “Make Velnode your default browser” option is on the way in an upcoming release.

v2.3.2-beta.13 — 2026-07-19

NEW

Velnode now opens the links and pages you send it. When Velnode is your default browser, clicking a web link in another app (email, chat, documents) opens it in Velnode instead of doing nothing. Double-clicking a local web page or image file — .html, .htm, .svg, .webp, and related types — opens it in a Velnode tab too.
Cleaner Default Apps listing. Velnode now registers only the things it genuinely handles (web links and web-document files), so the Windows "Default apps" and "Open with" lists stay accurate.

v2.3.2-beta.12 — 2026-07-19

NEW

Set Velnode as your default browser. Velnode now registers with Windows, so it shows up in Settings → Default apps and you can make it your default browser.

FIXED

Video fullscreen now works. Clicking the fullscreen button on a YouTube video (or any site) now fills the screen, with the standard "press Esc to exit" — it was blocked before.
The sidebar is easier to find. The first time you close the left sidebar, a one-time hint points at the toolbar icon that brings it back.

v2.3.2-beta.11 — 2026-07-17

FIXED

The sidebar now closes completely. When you collapse the left sidebar, the edge is clean — the cyan re-open tab and clock pill no longer stay pinned to the screen. To reopen it, hover the far-left edge or use the new sidebar icon in the toolbar.

v2.3.2-beta.10 — 2026-07-17

FIXED

"View full changelog" now opens the release notes correctly. In the new What's New panel, that link led to a "Missing token" error page; it now opens the full changelog.

v2.3.2-beta.9 — 2026-07-17

NEW

"What's New" now appears after each update. When Velnode updates, a panel shows what changed in that version — new features, fixes, and security improvements — pulled straight from the release notes so it's always accurate. You can reopen it any time from the ☰ menu under "What's new".

v2.3.2-beta.8 — 2026-07-17

NEW

Right-click menus on the favorites bar. Right-click a bookmark, a folder, or an empty part of the bar to open it in a new tab or window, edit or rename it, copy its link, delete it, add the current page or a new folder, open the bookmark manager, or hide the bar — matching what you'd expect from Chrome or Edge.

FIXED

Menus and dropdowns now close when you click or press Escape on the page. Previously, opening the ☰ menu, a favorites folder, Downloads, your account menu, or any similar popup and then clicking on the web page left it stuck open. Every one of these now closes as soon as you click the page or press Escape, wherever your focus is.

SECURITY

Internal files and secrets are no longer packaged in the installer. Tightened what ships inside the app so development-only files and credentials can never be bundled, and added an automatic pre-publish check that blocks any release whose contents are incomplete, corrupted, or contain a secret — the safeguard that would have caught the faulty beta.7 build before it went out.

v2.3.2-beta.7 — 2026-07-15

FIXED

Ctrl+T (New tab) and the tab shortcuts now work. The keyboard-shortcut dispatcher targeted a toolbar button that was removed in an earlier redesign, so New Tab silently did nothing. All tab shortcuts (new, close, next/previous, jump to 1–8/last) are now verified end-to-end in the running app.
Documentation cleanup. In-app guides no longer reference internal development files, and the web docs site cross-page links now resolve (previously some returned "not found").

v2.3.2-beta.6 — 2026-07-15

FIXED

About page: corrected the company logo. The About Velnode page previously showed a placeholder mark instead of the official Dignity New Zealand Limited logo; it now displays the genuine one.

v2.3.2-beta.5 — 2026-07-03

Maintenance build — no feature changes. This is the public-launch build for the 14 July announcement.

v2.3.2-beta.4 — 2026-07-03

Maintenance build — no feature changes. Verifies the new in-app update path end to end.

v2.3.2-beta.3 — 2026-07-03

NEW

Update inside the app. When a new version is available, click Download the update and Velnode downloads it right here (with progress), then Restart to apply installs it — no trip to the website. Every download is integrity-checked against our published release before it can install. (While the beta is unsigned, Windows still shows a one-time "unknown publisher" prompt; that goes away once we're code-signed.)

NOTES

Also includes the beta.2 documentation refresh and the new web docs at https://downloads.velnode.app/docs/.

v2.3.2-beta.2 — 2026-07-03

Documentation update — no feature or engine changes.

CHANGED

All in-app guides (☰ → Help) refreshed for the public beta: the real install flow (SmartScreen guidance, checksum verification), how updates work (Velnode notifies you and links the download page — it never installs anything by itself), donation channels, accurate platform status, and general corrections.
The same guides are now also published on the web: https://downloads.velnode.app/docs/

FIXED

Vee no longer answers that Ctrl+Shift+T opens the Timeline — that shortcut reopens your last closed tab. (Open the Timeline from the dashboard or ☰ → History.)

v2.3.2-beta.1 — 2026-07-03

First public beta. Velnode is now downloadable by everyone — a lightweight, privacy-first browser with a built-in local AI assistant (Vee), made in Aotearoa New Zealand.

HIGHLIGHTS OF WHAT'S IN THIS BETA

Vee, your on-device assistant — summarize pages, ask about your own browsing data, run multi-step workflows. Works fully offline with the optional local model (opt-in download), or bring your own cloud API key.
End-to-end encrypted sync — bookmarks, history, notes, workspaces, pins, settings, and the password vault sync across devices through your free Velnode account. Only ciphertext ever leaves your device; the vault additionally keeps its own passphrase.
Password vault — save-on-submit logins and payment cards, sealed with strong encryption, with a 24-word recovery kit and encrypted backups.
Anti-fingerprinting — canvas/WebGL farbling, a common-hardware cohort, clean Chrome user-agent, and font-enumeration protection. Always on in incognito; opt-in for normal windows, with a per-site allow list.
Privacy by default — ad/tracker blocking, reader mode, enhanced incognito, no telemetry, and zero third-party trackers anywhere.
60-second browser import — bookmarks, history, and CSV password exports from Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi, with duplicate-safe merging.
Lightweight by promise — ~182 MB installer, fast start, and every heavy feature (local AI model, plugins) is an opt-in download. Your laptop's resources are yours.
Veehive plugin store — first-party, signed plugins with per-capability permissions.

CHANGED SINCE THE LAST INTERNAL BUILD (V2.3.1)

Vee now answers "how do I…" questions about Velnode's own features deterministically from the built-in guide (no more model guesswork).
Vee can recall from all 17 of your local data stores ("show my recent timeline", "my downloads", …) without hallucinating.
Fixed a 5-second typing freeze after deleting a chat.
Vee no longer recommends other browsers' extension stores when asked about plugins.
Live-test dashboard now tracks every active checklist.

KNOWN LIMITATIONS (BETA)

Unsigned installer — Windows SmartScreen will warn; click More info → Run anyway. Code signing (and with it, automatic updates) ships in an upcoming release. Verify your download against the published SHA-256 checksums if you want certainty.
Update notifications only — the app tells you when a new version exists and links you to the download page; it never installs anything by itself while builds are unsigned.
Windows 10/11 (x64) only — macOS and Linux are planned.
Velnode Pro (hosted Vee AI) is not yet available — cloud sync is free for everyone.

Feedback and bug reports: [email protected]

Earlier development (v1.0.0 – v2.3.1, 2026-05-23 → 2026-06-27)

Velnode was built in the open-but-private through 40+ tagged releases before the first public beta, including: the plugin platform and signed plugin store (v1.14.0), the password vault and recovery system, browser import, the NSIS installer and update pipeline (v1.30.0), Velnode accounts with end-to-end encrypted sync (v1.31–1.32), Stripe billing groundwork (v2.1.0), the account web dashboard (v2.2.0), the anti-fingerprinting build (v2.3.0), and the Vee persona kernel. The milestone-level record lives in the project roadmap; per-release engineering notes are preserved in the canon manifest.