These release notes separate implemented code, verified behavior, public deployment, Store status, and future infrastructure. Subscribe through the Atom feed for durable product updates.
12 OCT 2026 / SEARCH v0.34.27Stable queries and technical destinations
Background shell updates preserve active search queries, typed input and selected website actions. Later updates offer a user-selected refresh. Official VS Code downloads match the short VS Code name; specification and BIOS queries reject unrelated model or business pages. Reviewed website spelling suggestions require selection. Five primary WPILib, Zephyr and Espressif documentation pages extend robotics and microcontroller coverage. Missing hardware and general web coverage remain limited.
11 OCT 2026 / SEARCH v0.34.25Your query and website destinations
Search keeps your original query. Spelling suggestions require selection. A reviewed GoDaddy name offers a separate website-opening action, without counting it as an indexed result or availability check. Bare website addresses rank existing home and language landing pages ahead of deeper pages. Ordinary results link directly to publishers without automatic Wikipedia or owned-guide fallback. Added three reviewed primary webpages, including government web-development standards. Coverage remains limited.
11 OCT 2026 / SEARCH v0.34.24Website addresses and neutral results
Ordinary Web searches omit owned Tech Life Hybrid guides unless you ask for them. A website address has a separate, user-selected opening action; it is not counted as an indexed result or a reachability check. Spoken addresses show the interpreted spelling for confirmation. Added 21 reviewed publisher webpages, including NVIDIA GPU references and Microsoft C++ documentation. Normal searches retain no automatic Wikipedia fallback. Coverage remains limited.
05 OCT 2026 / SEARCH v0.34.6More publisher coverage, clearer video collections
The independent index gained 254 page and media records for 3,794 total. South Africa news searches now include more official tourism press destinations; announcements without verified publication dates are not presented as newly published. NASA+ series and topic directories, plus the official South Africa press-centre landing page, appear as web collections rather than news articles. Classification recognises its episode and scheduled-player destinations as videos when indexed; this category does not confirm that a broadcast is currently live or that playback is available. Four additional NASA reference directories retain their web category despite generic NewsArticle metadata. Publisher attribution, image relevance and crawl safeguards remain enforced. Worldwide coverage remains limited, and several country, research and video queries still have no independent matches. Indexed records are not website visitors.
05 OCT 2026 / SEARCH v0.34.5More independent coverage, clearer science categories
The independent index gained 260 page and media records, including official travel references, learning pages and publisher videos. Ireland heritage now finds an additional official reference. NASA's evergreen planet and astronomy overview pages appear as web references even when their template labels them NewsArticle; dated announcement articles retain their news category. Existing image relevance and publisher safeguards remain in place. The index contains 3,540 records, not a complete worldwide web index. Some country and category queries still have no independent matches; indexed records and crawler checks are not website visitors.
04 OCT 2026 / SEARCH v0.34.4More relevant independent Images
Crawled images now match their publisher titles and descriptions instead of unrelated navigation and footer text. Placeholder images and decorative logo files are excluded from results. Acronym expansion requires capitalized title words, so incidental lowercase prose cannot gain an unrelated NASA ranking bonus. Local category, crawler, Maps privacy and HTTP regression checks passed. This repair uses the existing independent index; worldwide coverage remains limited.
01 OCT 2026 / SEARCH v0.34.3Useful Maps and more relevant News and Research
Maps now understands destination phrases such as “directions to Toronto Canada,” respects named countries, rejects missing coordinates, and ignores a carried-over news date filter. Nearby searches ask for a city instead of guessing your location; Open map links take you to the verified source. Route calculation remains at the map provider. Current news queries exclude undated Wikinews archives and old dated stories unless you request a year or archive; recent publisher stories take priority over directories. World News no longer promotes game-world marketing as international news. Added current source feeds from the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Library of Congress, and National Science Foundation with bounded topic selection and publisher attribution. Research requests journal articles and ranks matching scholarly links above encyclopedia context. Source counts now identify only sources actually displayed. The independent index gained 325 records: 105 web pages, 30 news records, 36 video pages and 154 image records. Newly covered queries include Galway travel, EU cabin baggage videos, NASA Crew-13, TED talks and recipes; official travel coverage deepened in Ireland, Indonesia, South Africa and Germany. Coverage remains limited; these specialist sources do not replace a complete worldwide web index.
01 OCT 2026 / SEARCH v0.34.2More reliable News and continued independent growth
Added a bounded publisher-feed News fallback with topic, country, date and domain checks. Publisher requests fetch fixed public feeds and do not carry your search query. Publication dates and feed update dates remain separate. Aligned the deployment image policy with the verified Wikimedia thumbnail host. Fixed resumed crawling that previously counted a publisher's entire history against its per-run limit and discarded deferred links; later crawls now retain those pages. Growth reports distinguish page and media records, tagged countries and coverage gaps, and release gates protect established category results. Publisher outages and queries outside the available index and selected sources can still leave gaps; this release does not provide complete worldwide web coverage.
01 OCT 2026 / SEARCH v0.34.1Restored Images and Videos, stronger news discovery
Fixed valid licensed Wikimedia image and video results being discarded after the publisher changed its thumbnail host. Kept exact host checks, creator and license attribution, and media-type validation. Expanded public news coverage, fixed verified country evidence being lost in expanded results, and recognized explicit publisher publication dates for freshness filters. Archived news edit dates are no longer labeled as new publication dates. The crawler now prioritizes discovered articles before navigation consumes its bounded budget. Maps continues to use user-requested OpenStreetMap lookup. Expanded sources remain required for live media and place searches; the independent index and specialist sources still have coverage gaps.
01 OCT 2026 / SEARCH v0.34.0Search categories and wider coverage
Expanded the saved index with international travel, language learning, recipes, education, publisher news, research papers, video pages, and permitted image metadata. Fixed the crawler that previously labeled new pages as general web results and discarded images. News, Videos, and Research now recognize the linked page's purpose and publisher metadata. Images can pass guarded index promotion with their source page. Empty categories offer matching All results and an explicit expanded-source option while preserving your query. Maps uses OpenStreetMap place lookup with expanded sources; Index Only does not include live map lookup. Added clearer guidance and reduced ranking setup work as the index grows. Robots, preview directives, private-address blocking, and regression gates remain enforced. Coverage is growing and some searches still have no matching category results.
01 OCT 2026 / SEARCH v0.33.1Broader independent coverage
Expanded the independent index with verified public pages for international rail and air travel, laptop repair, Excel formulas, weather, recipes, education, and more country services. Added 29 country choices and country-aware ranking. Searches naming a country reject unrelated country results; shared search links retain coverage and region choices. Growth runs can continue their saved frontier instead of restarting the same seed pages. Robots rules, private-address blocking, content-quality checks, and rollback remain enforced. The independent index remains smaller than the wider web.
01 SEP 2026 / WEB v0.54First-party search and sitemap discovery
The public Search site now uses Tech Life Hybrid Search as its default mode and serves a 576-record index. The bounded sitemap-first crawler implementation passes local tests, but its production operation is not exposed by the public status receipt and remains unverified.
01 SEP 2026 / WEB v0.53Search and Browser navigation
Connected Search guidance and the Browser new-tab surface to the Tech Life Hybrid website and product pages. This historical note records the product navigation work.
01 SEP 2026 / WEB v0.52Global-source crawl foundation
Expanded the reviewed independent crawl registry from 57 to 89 source roots across 32 categories. Bounded plans now allow up to 240 pages per cycle and 960 per day while robots rules, publisher display directives, duplicate controls, and promotion gates remain mandatory. This foundation is locally verified; scheduled crawling and public deployment are separate actions.
01 SEP 2026 / WEB v0.51Discoverable search help
Added a canonical Search Help center for provider boundaries, exact queries, operators, missing-result recovery, and guarded webmaster discovery. The in-app help remains fast while the durable page gives people and crawlers a stable destination.
01 SEP 2026 / WEB v0.50Product discovery updates
Added this crawlable release history, an Atom update feed, clearer browser and Store paths, and measured discovery checkpoints. Local verification passed; public deployment remains a separate release action.
01 SEP 2026 / WEB v0.49Measured discovery readiness
Recorded the live pre-release baseline, added a 7-day and 28-day observation plan, and prepared guarded IndexNow notifications. IndexNow remains disabled until a production key is configured and an owner confirms submission.
01 SEP 2026 / WEB v0.48Canonical discovery foundation
Added the canonical sitemap, robots sitemap directive, crawlable About and Privacy pages, stable redirects, social metadata, and connected Tech Life Hybrid product links.
27 AUG 2026 / SEARCH v0.47Full Web by default
Made clearly labeled DuckDuckGo results the default broad-web path while preserving the optional, smaller Tech Life Hybrid independent search and its source-visible boundaries.