Release notes

v1.3.1 — Your network's edge, and what uninstalling leaves behind

2026-08-28 20:11 ET · current

First, a correction to what the last release told you. v1.3.0 said NetVane scans only your own network, and refuses addresses outside it. That was not fully true, and this release makes it true. Two ways around it existed. A scan range written with one end in one private range and the other end in a different one covered every public address in between — both ends looked local, so the range was allowed, and everything between them was not local at all. And targets written straight into the settings file were never checked against that boundary; only targets chosen in the app were.

Both are closed. A range or subnet must now be inside your own network across its whole extent, and the settings file is held to exactly the same rule — anything outside it is ignored, and NetVane tells you which entries it ignored and why.

If you only ever picked targets inside the app, on your own network, nothing about your scans has changed. But the claim we published was broader than the behaviour, and you should hear that from us rather than discover it.

• Uninstalling now removes everything it should. If NetVane was open when you uninstalled it, Windows could not delete the running program — but the uninstaller removed its own entry from Add or Remove Programs anyway. You were left with a working copy of NetVane that Windows no longer listed and no longer had any way to remove. NetVane now closes itself first, so an uninstall finishes the job whether the app was open or not. The desktop shortcut is removed too; it used to stay behind, pointing at a program that was gone.
• Your data is still kept, and that has not changed. An uninstall asks before deleting your scan history, and answering No — or uninstalling silently, which never asks — leaves it exactly where it was. Reinstalling picks up where you left off.
• Installing from a package manager no longer opens NetVane by itself. Installing with a tool like WinGet or Chocolatey started the app on your desktop without being asked. It no longer does. Updating from inside NetVane still reopens the app afterwards, as it always has.
• A copied portable folder is now genuinely its own copy. Copy a portable NetVane folder to a second machine or a backup drive and the copy used to keep reading and writing the original folder's database, while looking completely independent. Both now use their own. If you had copied a folder before this release, the copy will correct itself the first time you change a setting.
• NetVane now speaks up if it cannot find its database. If a settings file arrives from another machine or another user account — a restored backup, a migrated profile — it can point at a folder that does not exist on this computer. NetVane now says so plainly, names the account it appears to have come from, and tells you exactly what to change. It will not guess a replacement, because guessing where your data lives is how software writes to the wrong database.

v1.3.0 — Independently reviewed, and tightened in the places review found

2026-08-26 20:57 ET

NetVane has been through two independent security reviews of its privacy and security claims. This release is what came out of them. Most of it you will never notice; the parts you might are below, and a few of them make NetVane deliberately stricter than it was.

• NetVane now scans only your own network. Addresses outside your local network — anything publicly routable — are refused rather than scanned. If you were pointing NetVane at an address beyond your LAN, that no longer works, and that is the intended behaviour for a tool whose promise is that it stays on your network.
• Undoing a fix asks first. Restoring a port-forward re-opens a way in from the internet, so it now shows you exactly what it is about to restore and waits for you to confirm — and afterwards it re-reads your router and only says “Restored” if the router agrees. If it can’t confirm, it says that instead of claiming success.
• The record of changes NetVane made can’t be erased. The remediation log was always meant to be append-only. Restoring a backup used to be able to replace it; now it cannot. Entries from a restored backup are added alongside your own and marked with the date they were imported, and the restore itself is recorded.
• A device that can’t be fully checked is no longer reported as secure. When NetVane tests a device for default passwords it stops after a small number of attempts so it never locks anyone out. If it runs out of attempts before trying everything it knows, it now says the result is inconclusive rather than “secured” — an unfinished test is not a clean bill of health.
• The internet-activity list is complete and exact. It now names the precise host each request went to, counts every DNS probe individually, and describes every category of request it records. Sending a problem report no longer includes raw log text at all — the report is built from a fixed set of named fields, so nothing free-form leaves your machine.
• Uninstall leaves less behind. If you had turned on start-at-login, uninstalling now removes that setting from Windows too.
• Clearer wording about the evidence pack. The Business evidence pack carries a checksum. That detects corruption or casual modification — it is not a signature, and we have corrected the places where we described it as proof a file had not been edited. The pack now says so itself.

v1.2.2 — A complete internet-activity list, for scans by name as well as by address

2026-08-25 17:46 ET

NetVane keeps an internet-activity list inside the app: a running account of every request it makes beyond your own network, so you can check that claim rather than take our word for it. This release closes the one gap in it.

• Scans by name are now on the list too. When you scan a target you type as a name rather than an address, NetVane has to resolve that name to an address first — and that lookup is the single part of a scan that can travel beyond your local network. It now appears in the internet-activity list like everything else, recorded the moment the lookup is made. The list is therefore a complete account of what left this machine during a scan, whether you scanned by address or by name.
• Scanning itself is unchanged. A scan of an address contacts only your own network and adds nothing to the list, so an empty list after an address scan remains the honest, checkable proof it always was.

v1.2.1 — Small corrections, and NetVane where you already look for software

2026-08-25 03:13 ET

A maintenance release. Nothing here changes what NetVane does; it makes three things behave the way they always should have, and it puts NetVane in the places people install Windows software from.

• Searching Settings for “licence” now takes you to the licence. It was sending you to Scanning instead, because the search was matching the small grey notes that explain why a locked control is locked — several of which mention a licence — and following those rather than the setting you meant. It now ignores those notes, and the Activate a licence button is findable by search as well.
• The uninstaller now tells you what it keeps. NetVane leaves behind a single timestamp recording when it was first run on the PC, so the trial cannot be restarted by reinstalling. It records nothing about you or your network and is never sent anywhere — but it was not mentioned anywhere you would see it. The uninstall prompt now says so, and so does the licence panel inside the app.
• The internet-activity list now names the right destination. When you send a problem report, NetVane records that request in the session list showing every internet request it has made. The request was always recorded and always went where it should — but the list named a different address of ours than the one actually contacted. It now shows the real one. That list exists so you can check NetVane’s behaviour rather than take our word for it, so it being precisely right matters more than the size of the error.
• You can now install NetVane through Windows package managers. NetVane has been submitted to the Windows Package Manager and to the Chocolatey community repository, and a Microsoft Store listing is in preparation. Both install the same signed installer published on this site, verified against the same checksum the app’s own updater uses, so however you install it you get the identical file. Nothing changes for existing installations.

v1.2.0 — NetVane Business, your data usage, and fixes on by default

2026-08-24 10:31 ET

• NetVane Business — $99, once, forever — is now on sale. Everything in Pro, licensed for one organisation and up to 3 administrators, plus a printable compliance evidence report (what was scanned and how, what was found, which risks were accepted and why, and every change NetVane made with its audit trail) and a machine-readable evidence pack carrying its own integrity checksum, so a recipient can detect corruption or casual modification in transit. The report says in its own words that it is evidence to support an assessment, not a certification. Both are included in the 14-day trial.
• See how much data your network used. A new card on the Security screen charts daily upload and download for the last two weeks, read from the counters your router already keeps. Days when NetVane wasn't running are faded and labelled honestly rather than drawn as if your usage collapsed. Nothing new is collected, and none of it leaves your machine.
• One-click fixes are on out of the box. The licence agreement covering active remediation is published, so the switch now ships enabled. Nothing acts on its own: every fix still asks for your explicit confirmation, snapshots the previous state, offers undo, and records itself in an audit log you can always read.
• Flow analytics accepts sFlow alongside NetFlow v5/v9 and IPFIX, and the guide gains step-by-step router setup for UniFi, pfSense, OPNsense, MikroTik and OpenWrt — including the Windows Firewall rule everyone would otherwise trip over.
• Locked features name the right edition, locked menu items explain themselves politely, a Business licence shows who it covers, and the vulnerability database is refreshed — 4,638 CVEs tracked with updated exploit-probability rankings.

v1.1.0 — NetVane Pro, and what stays free forever

2026-08-20 02:48 ET

NetVane now has a paid edition, so it is worth being precise about what changes for you and what does not.

Free is not a trial. Scanning whenever you like, every device, the map, the security score, every finding explained, known-exploited vulnerability matching, read-only confirmation that an exposure is genuine, reports you export yourself, presence history, internet quality, local backup and the egress ledger stay free — no account, no time limit.

Vulnerability and device-fingerprint updates stay free too. NetVane tells you it is checking your network against known problems; doing that against a database we had stopped updating would be selling you a worse answer. Accuracy is not a paid feature.

NetVane Pro — $19, once, forever — is the automation. Scheduled unattended scanning, alerts to your phone or chat, running in the background from the tray, multiple subnets and VLANs, extended history retention, credential checks that find devices still on default logins, and one-click fixes. A perpetual licence for one person on every computer they use — not a subscription, and it never expires.

Every install still gets 14 days with everything unlocked — no card, nothing to cancel. After that NetVane stays free forever; it simply stops doing the unattended work for you.

Nothing is ever taken from your data. A licence that lapses steps you down to the free product and leaves your history, devices, labels and notes exactly where they are. History already recorded is never deleted: a shorter retention window applies from the moment it takes effect and cannot reach backwards.

When something needs a licence, it says so where you would look for it. The settings that need Pro stay visible and explain themselves rather than disappearing, and a scan that covers fewer networks than you configured tells you which ones it skipped.

Windows names the publisher correctly. The installer and the app are signed as GRCSAC — the name on the certificate, which you can check in Properties → Digital Signatures.

Updating from the portable build now warns you first that it will install NetVane in the normal way, because a single self-contained file cannot be swapped in place.

v1.0.5 — Signed installer, alerts on your phone, and history you control

2026-08-13 12:04 ET

NetVane is now signed. Windows used to warn that the publisher was unknown. The installer and the app are signed as GRCSAC, so Windows names the publisher instead of warning about it.

Alerts, on whatever you already use. Webhook alerts can now be formatted for ntfy, Discord and Slack as well as raw JSON, with a copy-and-paste recipe for each.

You decide how long history is kept. Retention is yours to set, and nothing is ever removed retroactively.

Updates no longer depend on a single address, and both places are checked against the same signature. Vulnerability and device data are verified before use too.

A Licence panel, and a 14-day look at everything. Nothing is locked in this release. When licensing begins, expiry only steps you down to the free product — your history stays and findings stay visible.

Uninstall now says exactly what it removes, including your licence, and which of those things you can get back.

Third-party notices ship with NetVane and are published at /notices/.

v1.0.4 — Keyboard access throughout, readable activity, better network names

• Everything in the app can now be reached from the keyboard. The “Fix →” rows — on the Overview, on the Security screen and inside a device’s details — could previously only be opened with a mouse. They are now proper buttons: press Tab to reach one and Enter to open it, and screen readers announce them correctly.
• Long activity messages are readable again. Rows in Recent activity and Top exposures were cut off after a single line, which hid most of the detail on exactly the events that matter most — such as a device that has quietly started listening on a new port. They now wrap onto as many lines as they need, and the time on the right stays visible.
• Clearer network-owner names, from a more dependable source. The database that identifies who runs the outside services your devices talk to now reads “Google LLC” and “Cloudflare, Inc.” rather than “GOOGLE” and “CLOUDFLARENET”, and comes from a supply that can’t quietly go missing the way it did earlier this month. Country information for large content-delivery networks is an estimate — the same address is often served from several countries at once.
• Device names are back for internet addresses. NetVane had stopped looking up the names of public addresses so that its privacy ledger would stay empty. It now performs the lookup and counts it in the Local-only panel — the honest trade: you get the name, and every request NetVane makes is still accounted for.

2026-08-07

v1.0.3 — Status lines that say what was measured, and the Network-owners download restored

• Status lines now say exactly what NetVane checked. NetVane tests your router, locally — by design it never sends traffic out to the internet to probe your connection. But several status lines said “internet healthy” from that router check alone, so if your provider went down while your router stayed up, NetVane still showed green. Those lines now read “Your router is responding normally” — true to what was actually measured — and when your router stops answering, “Your router isn’t responding — your internet is likely down.”
• The “Network owners” intelligence download works again. The downloadable database that names who operates the outside services your devices talk to (used to annotate traffic alerts) had gone missing from our update server on August 2 — the download button failed with an error until today. It is back, freshly rebuilt, and our server-side checks now treat a missing download as the loud failure it should have been, so a gap like this can’t sit unnoticed again.

2026-07-31

v1.0.2 — How long NetVane keeps your history, in writing

• NetVane now tells you how long it keeps your history. It always worked this way, but it was never written down: everything from the last 180 days is kept, and your 120 most recent scans are kept however old they are — a scan ages out only once it is both older than six months and outside those 120, so the more generous of the two always applies. Scanning weekly that’s over two years of history; monthly, a decade. Your device list, labels, notes, accepted risks and settings are never removed. It is now stated on the privacy page, in the FAQ, in the specifications, in the user guide, and in the app under Settings → Data & backup.
• The map’s history slider is no longer covered by the controls above it. The time-lapse scrubber and the map’s control bar shared the bottom edge, so part of the slider could not be grabbed. They now sit on separate rows.
• Overview rows no longer lift like buttons when you point at them. They are rows of figures, not cards; only the colour changes now.
• “Refresh now” tells you what happened. It used to repaint silently, so on an unchanged network it looked broken. It now confirms the refresh — and says so plainly if the app could not reach its own server rather than claiming success.

2026-07-31

v1.0.1 — A privacy panel that names every last call

• The Local-only panel now accounts for everything. NetVane's privacy panel counts every internet request the app makes, and it was under-reporting itself: the network-owner database update, the DNS speed benchmark and a support report you send were counted but not named, and a few appeared as internal codes rather than plain English. Every category now reads as a phrase, and the panel's list of what NetVane can ever send is complete.
• One entry was simply wrong. If you had turned on the internet-exposure report, the panel listed it as an outbound internet call. It never was: that report asks your own router what it publishes, over your network, and contacts nothing outside. It no longer appears as internet activity, because it isn't.
• Clearer wording where it counts. The pre-scan notice now says exactly what the default checks do and don't do, the credential-testing option states every condition required before it will run, and the welcome screens say "nothing about your network is sent anywhere" rather than a blanket "nothing is sent anywhere" — which the panel itself would contradict the moment an update check ran.
• Help and the guided tour match the app again. Several pointed at buttons and tabs that had moved, and two useful things were missing: pressing ? opens help, and you can search devices by MAC address.

2026-07-30

v1.0.0 — NetVane 1.0

NetVane watches your home or small-office network from one private Windows app: it discovers every device, tells you what each one is, scores your security exposure, and gives you step-by-step fixes — all on your own machine. Nothing NetVane scans or monitors leaves your network.

What NetVane 1.0 does:

• Sees everything on your network — continuous discovery and inventory of every device, with an interactive topology map: hierarchy and force layouts, pan, zoom and saved arrangements, with multi-router and double-NAT nesting.
• Tells you what each device is — local device fingerprinting identifies make and model for common home devices, without sending anything about your network anywhere.
• Scores your security exposure — detected service versions are matched, offline, against a bundled CVE database built from public sources, with known-exploited flagging, exploit-probability scoring, and the fixed version to upgrade to.
• Checks your smart home is contained — whether your IoT devices can reach the rest of your network, or are properly kept to themselves.
• Shows who is talking to what — per-device flow analytics when your router exports flow data, and presence: who is on your Wi-Fi, and when.
• Watches your connection — an on-demand connection check, a DNS resolver benchmark and a speed test, plus gateway integrity monitoring.
• Runs itself — scheduled scans, scheduled reports, change alerts, and backup and restore.
• Updates cleanly, on your terms — no silent background updater: NetVane tells you when a new version exists (if you allow the check), verifies every download, and replaces itself completely — one window, always the version you are running.