Release notes

One button for whatever is in the way. When a download needs something from you, Lynx says what it is in plain words and shows the one button that fixes it: turn Lynx on in your browser, sign in, open the right setting, pick another folder. Once it’s fixed, the download carries on by itself.

Sign in once. Lynx uses your browser’s sign-in with one click, or opens its own sign-in window. Settings › Browser lists the sites you download from, each with its own Sign In button, and shows each browser as it really is.

The quality you chose. Videos download in the quality you picked, and the label always matches the file. Downloads are named after the video, not the site, and previews play for more videos.

The notch asks, not a window. With Pro, the notch asks where to save, even over a full-screen app. × puts the question aside until you click the notch. Downloads from the video button start at once.

A new video button. In your browser, one small round button sits on the video and opens when you point at it. Lynx asks once before it takes your browser’s downloads, right when it matters.

Lynx 1.2.2 needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later on a Mac with Apple silicon. It updates itself in the background and asks once before it relaunches.

Send Feedback. Tell us about a problem or an idea right from Lynx: Send Feedback sits above Settings in the sidebar, and Help has Report a Problem. You choose whether details about your Mac go along, and you can see exactly what they are. We read every message and reply by email.

Liquid glass you can see as you set it. The Glass slider in Settings › Notch now raises the notch’s liquid glass from the bottom, and the notch opens to show the change live while you drag.

A calmer Lynx. Lynx’s window opens only when you open it, never by itself, and your browser wakes Lynx only when you use it. The notch has one set of settings inside Lynx, with no second licence step.

Music first. Paused and finished downloads no longer take the player’s place in the notch. Hide from Notch takes a download off the notch while it carries on. After an update, the new notch always replaces the old one.

Lynx 1.2.3 needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later on a Mac with Apple silicon. It updates itself in the background and asks once before it relaunches.

A notch that knows what’s next. The notch opens on the page you need next and tucks away when you’re done. The Glass slider in Settings sets how much of your desktop shows through it.

Music. Lyrics keep time with the song, and a song without them says No Lyrics. Search Music shows more results in a list you can scroll.

Files you can trust. Every clip is checked before it’s saved, so a clip always plays. Turbo Mode checks every piece it downloads, so a file is never broken. Lynx never quietly saves a lower quality than the one you chose.

Fixes. Pause and Stop always do what you asked, even while a download is starting. Turn Off Notch stays off, and moving Lynx to the Trash removes the notch too.

Quicker and lighter. The Shelf and Clipboard are quicker to use and keep what you need. Downloads take less space on your disk while they run, and security is stronger throughout Lynx.

The first launch after this update needs the internet once, and Pro comes back on its own. Lynx 1.2.0 needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later on a Mac with Apple silicon. It updates itself in the background and asks once before it relaunches.

Turbo Mode on Basic. Turbo Mode now works on Lynx Basic for file downloads: plug in your iPhone, turn on Personal Hotspot, and big files arrive dramatically faster, free. Videos, sound only and Clip stay part of Pro.

Share Lynx on X. After your first download, a card on Home offers Lynx Pro free for a post about Lynx on X. Lynx writes the post for you, you can change it, and once we’ve checked it your Lynx Pro key arrives by email.

Updates that fix themselves. An update no longer downloads twice or says by mistake that it isn’t newer. A Mac that kept the old background engine running after an update now repairs itself.

Clearer words. Settings says 32 connections instead of calling it Turbo, so Turbo Mode means one thing.

Lynx 1.1.9 needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later on a Mac with Apple silicon. It updates itself in the background and asks once before it relaunches.

Turbo Mode. Plug your iPhone into your Mac, turn on Personal Hotspot, and Lynx downloads over your Mac’s connection and your iPhone’s at the same time. Big videos and files arrive dramatically faster. Only downloads use your iPhone’s data: the rest of your Mac stays on its own connection. Turbo Mode has its own place in the sidebar, with a live picture of each connection and its speed.

Set up in a minute. Choose Set Up Turbo and a small panel walks you through each step: the cable, Personal Hotspot, and the one Mac setting it may need. It opens System Settings for you when a step is done there, and moves on by itself as soon as each step is done. More phones add more speed: connect each one the same way and Lynx uses it by itself.

Downloads start at once. A video you pasted starts downloading almost the moment you choose Download: Lynx uses what it already read for the card instead of reading the link a second time. Before the first byte, the row says what is happening: Preparing, then Connecting.

Smoother notch. Search Music opens and resizes in one smooth motion, and Return plays the top result.

Fixes. The Pro welcome no longer shows a dark pill under the notch. A download paused during Turbo picks up exactly where it stopped. Clips start faster on sites that send long link details.

Lynx 1.1.8 needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later on a Mac with Apple silicon. It updates itself in the background and asks once before it relaunches.

A native Mac app. Lynx 1.1.4 is rebuilt from the ground up for macOS. On macOS 26 it is made of Liquid Glass, and it follows the accent color you chose in System Settings. Green is kept for what is live: a download that is running.

Lynx Free: 10 videos a day. Free downloads 10 videos a day, and files of any kind without limit. Today’s count shows on the Download card and in the notch.

Convert to. Choose Convert to in a download’s menu or in its details. Pictures, PDFs and documents convert on Free; video and sound need Pro.

Details where you look. Select a download and its details open beside the list. Hide them and they stay hidden until you choose View › Show Details (⌘I).

Playlists. Download All… on a playlist keeps the quality and extras you picked on the video card, and each video is numbered in playlist order.

Settings at hand. Settings sits at the foot of the sidebar, as well as in the Lynx menu (⌘,).

Browser extension 3.0.13. When the extension can’t reach Lynx on its own, Lynx comes forward to ask, instead of a silent “Connecting…”. Dia and Comet get the extension from the Chrome Web Store.

Lynx 1.1.4 needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later on a Mac with Apple silicon. It updates itself in the background and asks once before it relaunches.

The whole notch is free. Downloads, copied links, music, Clipboard and the Shelf now work in Lynx Free, with no limits. Pro is about the download manager: higher quality, longer clips and more at once.

Liquid Glass. The notch takes on the glass of macOS, with Apple’s rounded corners and quiet black and white controls. Turn on Reduce Transparency and it goes solid black. On a Mac without a notch, or on another display, it floats as a small glass island, and it can follow you to the display you’re using.

A player like Apple Music. Play, pause and skip respond the way they do in Apple Music. Swipe with two fingers to skip a song, pick where the sound plays from the island’s menu, and turn on shuffle and repeat. Lyrics can sit beside the music, timed to the song, if you choose them in Settings › Notch.

Its own bubble. When a download runs while music plays, the download buds off into a small bubble beside the notch, like a second activity on the iPhone. Click it and the notch opens.

Floating Player. Right-click the notch and choose Show Floating Player. It comes in three sizes, Mini, Player and Large, and Large has its own volume and sound output.

A Shelf that does more. Drag files to the notch and drop them on Keep on Shelf or AirDrop. Right-click a file on the Shelf to Convert to MP3 or MP4, or Make Smaller to fit under 10, 25, 50 or 100 MB. A video QuickTime already plays converts in about a second, frame for frame.

Quicker. Copied links show their card at once and read their qualities in the background, about twice as fast as before. When a new version is ready, Lynx asks once, in front of its window, before it relaunches.

Also: long file names keep their extension, and the paste field is calmer when you click into it.

Reconnects by itself. If your Wi-Fi drops or a server stops answering, Lynx waits a few seconds and tries again, a little longer each time, and picks up where it stopped. The row says “Reconnecting in 8 s” while it waits, and the notch and the browser extension show it too. If nothing arrives for several minutes, the download stops with a plain sentence saying why, instead of hanging. A server that can’t resume starts the file again from the beginning rather than leaving it stuck.

Clips you can trust. Clips are cut on whole frames, so a 10-second clip at 25 frames per second has exactly 250 frames. Every clip is checked before Lynx marks it done; an empty or cut-short file is reported as a failure. A range past the end of the video is trimmed to the real length.

Ready for the next extension. Lynx 1.1.2 is ready for the browser extension update that connects through your Mac, without a code or an Approve button; it reaches the Chrome Web Store soon. The extension you have keeps working with one Approve in Lynx.

Quicker. Looking up a link is faster and happens once, however many places ask for it. The Settings window opens at once and fits on smaller screens. Long lists of downloads scroll smoothly, and waiting rows stay still instead of spinning.

A calmer notch. It knows when an app is full screen on Macs with a notch, it never mistakes a call or a recording app for another notch app, and a copied text with one link opens just that link.

Safer. The Lynx engine now answers only to Lynx itself, its notch and its browser extension, each holding a key that stays on your Mac. Secure connections are always checked, and files can only be saved inside the folder you chose.

Also new: a cleaner welcome, and many small fixes.

Straight from the browser to Lynx. Click a download link and Lynx takes it within a moment, before the browser shows its own download bar or Save dialog, even with “Ask where to save each file” turned on. Hold Option while you click to let the browser download it instead.

The notch asks where to save. On Pro, the notch opens with the file name, the folder and Download, or Don’t Download. If you don’t answer, it closes after a few seconds and the question waits until you point at the notch again. Several downloads line up one after another. On the free version, Lynx’s Save window asks instead.

A calmer notch. The notch now stays put when you swipe between desktops and full-screen apps. While music or a video plays, the Now page keeps showing it after a download finishes. The link card has a quality menu, and after you pick from it, the notch stays open for a moment instead of closing at once. Shelf and Clipboard each have a Clear button, and Clip opens Lynx with the video ready to cut.

Better video. The preview on the download card plays in HD. Saved videos use a format that plays in QuickTime, Photos and on iPhone. Before a playlist starts, Lynx shows its total size.

More links. Shared Google Drive files and folders download like any other link.

Free and Pro. The free version runs 3 downloads at a time and makes clips up to 5 minutes. Pro clips have no length limit and Pro splits a file into up to 32 parts. The speed limit setting is gone: every download runs as fast as your connection allows.

Updates and reliability. New versions download in the background, and Lynx tells you when one is ready to install. If Lynx quits or your Mac restarts during a download, it picks up where it stopped. Errors are written in plain words. Lynx can send anonymous crash reports so we fix problems faster. They never include links, file names or what you download, and you can turn them off in Settings.

Also new: short sounds for a finished download and a copied link (Settings › General), and many small fixes.

Clipboard history. Lynx Notch has a new Clipboard tab beside the Shelf. Text, links and pictures you copy, files you copy in Finder, and new screenshots and screen recordings stay there for a day. Click one to copy it again, or drag it into a chat, an email or a folder. It’s off until you turn it on, it never leaves your Mac, and copies made by password managers are never read. Part of Pro.

Copy a link, the notch opens. Copy a video or file link in any app and the notch opens with Download, MP3 and Clip. If you don’t use it, it closes a few seconds later. It stays closed over full-screen apps and never takes keyboard focus from what you’re typing.

Auto-delete. Next to the folder on the download card, and on the notch’s link card, you can choose to move the file to the Trash 10 minutes, 1 hour or 1 day after it finishes. A minute before, the notch asks if you want to keep it. Files always go to the Trash, so Put Back still works.

The extension in one click. Lynx › Settings › Browser opens the Lynx extension in the Chrome Web Store for Chrome, Brave, Edge or Arc. Click Add, then Turn On.

Also new: a welcome screen the first time you open Lynx that shows what it does and asks once for the permissions it needs, Settings as a full row in the sidebar, and many small fixes.

Lynx is now signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so macOS opens it on the first try.

Six small updates in one day, from 1.0.1 to 1.0.6. Lynx Notch can also ask where to save a download (Pro).

Large files you download in Chrome, Edge, Brave or Arc now go to Lynx, which splits them into parts and resumes them after a dropped connection.

Clicking the pill or the popup no longer needs Lynx to be open. The extension starts it in the background.

The popup is new too. It shows the page you’re on as a card with Download, Clip and Audio, your recent downloads with progress, and switches for the pill and for sending downloads to Lynx.

The first release of Lynx as a desktop app. Downloads now happen on your computer, over your own connection, and nothing passes through our servers.

Downloading. Every quality the site offers is listed with its real size. Lynx prefers H.264 at the quality you choose, so files open everywhere, and it never gives you a lower quality than you picked. Playlists open as a list you can choose from. Several links pasted together open as one batch.

Clips. Switch any card to Clip, drag the range, pick video, vertical, square, GIF or audio, and save. Lynx downloads only the part you select.

Updates. Lynx keeps itself up to date, so downloads keep working when sites change.

Library. Videos, Music & Audio, Clips and Files, each with thumbnails and search, plus one entry per playlist.

Lynx Notch turns the space around your MacBook’s camera into a live view of downloads, copied links, music and a file shelf.

This version was rebuilt for smooth motion. In our measurements, with music playing and the notch closed, CPU use dropped from 7.1% to 0.4% of one core.

The notch now grows as your pointer arrives and opens once the pointer stops, so it doesn’t open when you’re moving to the menu bar. Content grows with the notch, and Macs without a notch get the same view at the top center of the screen.