48 releases · v1.1.53 current
Roadmap
What is being worked on, what is next, what is being thought about, and what has been decided against. Nothing here has a date on it: a one-person roadmap with dates is a promise broken in public.
Now
1.1.54 is written up and not downloadable yet, so the version on the site is still v1.1.53. Alongside it, this is the work actually in hand.
Notes kept in iCloud Drive
iCloud touches files after Skein saves them, and every touch was being read as an outside edit, which cost you typing lag and could produce a conflict copy of a note nobody else had opened. 1.1.13 makes a touch that changed nothing cost nothing. Offloaded files are the remaining half: opening a vault macOS has evicted should download it with a progress bar rather than blocking on each file in turn.
Guarding the file, not just fixing it
A picture in a note is held in the file as Markdown and shown to you as a picture, and for two days a bug threw that Markdown away as you typed. It is fixed, and the honest problem is that three separate pieces of code touch that one piece of information. A check that fails the build when a fourth one forgets is what stops the same class of fault returning.
Tabs that do not answer a click on Sequoia
A reader who had just moved from Sonoma to macOS Sequoia wrote that with several files open his tabs stopped responding to clicks and would not switch at all. It is not reproduced here: it needs a Mac on Sequoia and there is not one, so the next step is the short recording he was asked for.
Next
Each of these is the missing half of something that already ships. Finishing what exists beats starting what does not, and it makes this list checkable against the app rather than aspirational.
Opening a very large vault quickly
A reader opened Skein on 5,550 notes and waited minutes. The releases from 1.1.13 took that apart: the sidebar draws from the file names alone, the vault is read across four lanes behind it, the canvas stopped re-reading every file when a card moved, a launch stopped re-filing every note into a search index it had already built, and 1.1.33 makes building that index and reading links grow in proportion to the vault rather than faster. Nothing on the path is outstanding but the only measurement that counts, which is not ours: his vault, his machine, his answer.
Later
Wanted. No order implied within the list, and no promise that any of it arrives.
Skein for iPad
Wanted, and decided: there will be a Skein for iPad. The order matters, though. It comes after the iPhone app, which is being brought up to date with the Mac first, and the Mac version stays the one everything else is measured against.
Not planned
Things people reasonably ask for and will not get. This is the section that earns the other three, and it matters more here than on the other two sites: an app with no plugins owes you a list of what it has decided against, because you cannot add any of it yourself.
Plugins
Permanent, and the most important line on this page. Every feature is in the app when you download it, which is what makes it possible to say the app does not talk to a network and to mean it. A plugin system would hand that promise to somebody else.
A sync service, or a publish service
Put your vault in iCloud Drive or Dropbox and it syncs like any other folder. There is no Skein account to make, no server holding your notes, and no subscription to sell you, which is also why the launcher is a launcher rather than a sign-in screen.
A theme gallery, or custom CSS
Skein has curated themes, and now a theme editor: seven named things - window, page, text, quiet text, dividers, and two accents - with the contrast measured and shown as you change them, because a theme you cannot read is the actual risk. What is still refused is the two things this entry was always about. No community gallery to browse, and no stylesheet to drop in. You can change the colours Skein has; you cannot restyle the app. Curated is not the same promise as configurable, and that is the half worth keeping.
The bolted-on extras
A web browser inside the notes app, a slide deck maker, an audio recorder, a random-note button, tab groups and saved workspace layouts. Each is somebody's favourite and none is what a knowledge manager is for.
Anything with AI in it
Nothing in Skein sends your notes anywhere, because nothing in Skein talks to a network at all. That is a stronger claim than a privacy policy and it only stays true by refusing this.
Recently shipped
The last three. This list is generated from the release notes, so it cannot fall behind the app.
1.1.53
Any font on your Mac for your notes, properties in your order and in full, and text selected in any app can go straight to today's daily note.
1.1.52
Skein opens notes again on macOS 27, and a picture dropped into a note stays on the page and fits the text width.
1.1.51
Clicking a tag shows the notes with that tag, templates bring their properties, numbered lists carry on after sub-bullets, and Skein opens again on macOS Sonoma.
All 48 releases, in full, on What’s new.
This order is not fixed. Something a reader actually needs beats something on the list, and several of the entries above arrived that way: tell me what is missing.