A release about trust. ShabuBox reads your documents again, better, and tells you the truth about it while it works; answers about money come from the right line of the right document; one Files browser now serves the Inbox, Searches, Addresses and Entities alike; the scanner explains itself before it fails; and your library is guarded against the ways two Macs, iCloud, and old builds could quietly damage it.

Reading your documents again

• Better table reading, and a one-time re-read to get there — ShabuBox now rebuilds the rows of printed tables from the layout of the page itself, so a bill's ENDING BALANCE stays attached to its own figure instead of drifting away from it. Getting that right on documents already in your library means reading their pages again from scratch, so the first launch after upgrading starts a background re-read of your library. What to expect:
  • The sidebar shows "Re-reading documents…" while it is running, with a count, a percentage and an estimate, and VoiceOver reads that progress as a sentence.
  • It runs in the background. The app stays usable throughout — you can search, scan, file and ask questions while it works.
  • Typically overnight for a large library. Smaller libraries finish much sooner. It paces itself against your Mac's temperature and gets out of the way of what you are doing, so it is deliberately unhurried.
  • It resumes automatically. Quit whenever you like. The next launch picks up exactly where it left off — nothing is redone and nothing is lost.
  • Results improve as it completes. Documents are better as they are re-read, not only at the end, so answers and search results sharpen gradually while the pass runs.
  • Every reading improvement in this release arrives in the same pass. Table rebuilding was the first of several — ShabuBox also picks the sharper of two readings of a page when the first one comes back thin, and it protects the text it already has. You do not get a re-read per improvement: your library is read again once, by the finished reader, however many refinements went into it.
  • A fresh install re-reads once too, as documents are brought in. There is one re-read, not one per update — the pass is driven by which version last read a document, so a library that has been through earlier builds is brought up to date in a single pass.
  • A re-read only replaces what it improves. If reading a page again does not produce a better result than what is already stored, ShabuBox keeps the text it has.
  • Documents that aren't downloaded to this Mac wait their turn. If iCloud has moved a document's contents off your Mac to save space, ShabuBox asks for it back and re-reads it automatically once the contents are here — nothing is skipped and nothing is marked as failed. The sidebar counts those documents separately, as waiting for iCloud.
  • A document that can't be opened is not written off as blank. A file that fails to open during the pass stays pending and is tried again later, instead of being stored as an empty page.

Better answers about money

• The right figure from the right line — several fixes make ShabuBox's answers about amounts more reliable: statements that print a total alongside its adjustments no longer contribute the wrong column; when a question is about an amount, the passage that actually carries the figure now makes it into consideration instead of being crowded out by the rest of the document; and near-identical documents (the same bill from different months) are told apart by their dates even when the filename writes the date without leading zeros.
• A single-value form field is answered, not summed — asked for one box on a form, ShabuBox no longer adds up every figure on the page to get there.
• The same question now gets the same answer — asking an identical question twice, or after a relaunch, previously could surface a different supporting passage when two passages scored an exact tie. Ties now resolve the same way every time, in answers and in automatic filing alike.

One Files browser, everywhere

• The Inbox is now a view of the Files browser — the Inbox uses the same rows, the same selection, the same bulk bar and the same row menu as Files, so everything you can do to a filed document you can now do to an inbox document: rename, tag, refile, trash, Generate titles, Reduce Resolution…. Filters that make no sense before a document is filed — document type, Favorites, typed tables — stay out of the way in the Inbox.
• Searches, Addresses, Entities and the Map open the real browser — a saved search, an address, a person or company, and a pin on the map all now show their documents in the full Files browser with its sorting, filtering, split view and bulk actions, instead of a reduced list. Every scope has an honest empty state: "No documents at this address" rather than a blank pane.
• Select all N — when a page of results is selected, one click escalates the selection to the whole filtered set, however many pages it spans.
• Split view has a cursor — in Split (list with preview) mode a click moves the preview cursor without disturbing your selection, and the cursor row looks like a cursor rather than a second selection.
• Under the hood — long lists render faster: rows no longer redraw when an unrelated row is selected, the bulk bar overlays the list instead of shifting it, the filter bar's counts are memoized, and a bulk action that loses its dialog is cancelled rather than left armed.

Scanning

• Pick your scanner — Settings → Scanner lists every scanner ShabuBox can see, marks which are supported, remembers your choice, and names it in the Inbox's Scan menu. When a ScanSnap is plugged in over USB, ShabuBox no longer wanders off to a network scanner on its own.
• ScanSnap iX2500 joins the supported list over USB.
• Diagnosed before the timeout — a scanner that is busy, held by ScanSnap Home, unresponsive because its Wi-Fi is on, or blocked by macOS is now named as such immediately, with the fix, instead of a two-minute wait that ends in a generic error. The diagnostic report gains a view of the USB bus so a support conversation starts with facts.
• Scan menu explains itself — when no scanner is chosen automatically, the menu says why rather than doing nothing.

Two Macs, one library

• Curation edits merge instead of overwriting — stars, notes, tags, custom fields and collections edited on two Macs sharing an iCloud library used to erase each other in turn. Each edit is now stamped per field, and a merge can no longer delete a change the other Mac made. This works from the moment both Macs are on 2.5.0.
• iCloud conflict copies are parked, not filed — when iCloud produces a "conflicted copy" of a document, ShabuBox sets it aside in the Trash surfaces, named as a conflict copy, instead of indexing it as a second document.
• Share this Mac's search index — a new switch under Settings → General publishes this Mac's search index into the library for your other devices. It is off by default because it uses your iCloud space; the pane shows how much each Mac's index takes and lets you remove one.
• Apply curation from your other devices (experimental) — an opt-in switch in Settings → General under Curation Sync that lets this Mac take stars, notes, tags, hand-set types and collection membership set on another device — including ones that device cleared. Off by default while it is being tested; with it off, this Mac still shares its own edits, it just doesn't take any back. Turn it on only when every device sharing the library is on 2.5.0.

Protecting the library

• An older ShabuBox can't damage a newer library — the app now refuses to open a library last used by a newer version, and says so, instead of silently rebuilding its index without the newer columns.
• A full disk is not a corrupt library — ShabuBox now tells the two apart at launch, refuses to touch the library when the disk is full, and says which it was.
• Repair Library shows what it set aside — old index backups that a repair moved aside are listed with their size, so you can reclaim the space.
• A wholesale disappearance stops the rescan — if the library's folder vanishes (an unmounted disk, an iCloud sign-out), a rescan stops and asks rather than treating every document as deleted.
• Fewer things in the log — file names and document contents no longer appear in the system log in the clear.

Fixed

• A membership reload during an in-flight load was dropped, so a collection could show stale contents until the next click.
• The Favorites filter and document-type facets appeared in the Inbox where they could not apply.
• A trashed document could still be dragged; refiling into the Trash is refused.
• Removing another Mac's shared index in Settings says so when it is refused, instead of doing nothing.
• Dismissing a failed download row forgets the failure, and a failed import says it failed.
• A note's backlinks scan and the thumbnail backfill now wait for a document's bytes to be on this Mac.
• Dragging a file that iCloud has not downloaded yet fetches it first, then imports it.

Notes

• The background re-read starts on first launch and needs no action. Leave the Mac awake and plugged in overnight for a large library; it resumes wherever it stopped.
• Do not go back to 2.4.0 on a library that 2.5.0 has opened; 2.4.0 would rebuild the index without the re-read's bookkeeping and the pass would start over on the next 2.5.0 launch.
• ShabuBox now checks for updates in the background and shows what changed before installing; Check for Updates… still works whenever you like.
• Share this Mac's search index and Apply curation from your other devices are both off by default. Semantic search remains experimental.
• The test suite grew to over 3,600 tests, including new suites for the re-read pass, two-Mac curation merging, iCloud conflict copies, scanner diagnosis, and the store guards.

Straight scans, full-length scans, note features, data tables from your docs and more.

FIX

Crooked scans are finally straight — the deskew engine was rebuilt end to end. It had been measuring skew in a distorted coordinate space, over-rotating portrait pages by ~29% and nudging near-straight pages visibly crooked. Angles are now measured correctly, badly skewed pages (up to 30°) get corrected instead of skipped, rotation never clips ink at the page edge, and the page is cropped back to the paper afterward. Validated against a corpus of real scanner output.

NEW

Long paper support — Long paper (receipts, legal) in Settings → Scanner asks the scanner for its longest page instead of stopping at letter length. The scanner detects the end of the sheet; if it can't, ShabuBox safely falls back to normal length. Long pages also pass through image cleanup without being cropped, rotated sideways, or dropped as blank.

FIX

Whitened edge bands removed — pages from white-backed sheet feeders no longer keep a strip of scanner backing on the edge, even when the backing is nearly the same color as the paper.

NEW

Reprocess with feedback — Reprocess scan now remembers how a page was originally scanned and treats it the same way, and every view shows a live “Processing…” indicator while it runs.

Curate your library — favorites, notes, fields, and typed tables.

NEW

Favorites, notes, and custom fields — star documents, attach free-form notes, and define your own typed fields, including a currency type with proper money formatting.

NEW

Typed tables — documents of the same type (statements, receipts, invoices…) can be viewed as a sortable table of their fields, with column sorting.

NEW

Inspector redesign — a cleaner document inspector, unified collections, and faster search.

Identity you can trust.

FIX

Trustworthy file identity — the content-hash identity behind deduplication and thumbnails was hardened end to end: thumbnails can no longer show the wrong document’s content, rescans update atomically, and a save race can no longer lose a thumbnail.

I used to run AX (XP Class) in a highly modified Porsche 914, the Where2Race-sponsored car. I was ranked 12th overall in Nationals. It has been quite some time since I murdered some cones, and I want to run again. I have a 1966 Porsche 550 Spyder (kit, not a real one) with a Mazda 13B race engine and a tube frame. I have no idea which class I would be in or who I can run with, so I am just looking for advice or pointers on clubs in the Miramar/Fort Lauderdale/Miami area that are pretty open to returning members and can genuinely help me get back into it.

Scan filter fixes — no more black pages, no more darkened scans.

FIX

Solid-black scans with Auto-levels — pages with dense black text or off-white paper could collapse the contrast stretch and render entirely black. The stretch is now mathematically incapable of failing this way, and mid-tones come out more faithful everywhere.

FIX

Background cleanup darkened pages — the whitening filter had its color adjustment inverted, darkening every page it touched instead of lifting the paper color to white. Gray and tinted paper now cleans up to a proper white background with text left dark.

Hey everyone! I'm u/awizemann, a founding moderator and creator of ShabuBox

This is our new home for tips, tricks, suggestions, and discussions. We're excited to have you join us!

What to Post
Post anything that you think the community would find interesting, helpful, or inspiring. Feel free to share your thoughts, workflows, or questions about ShabuBox.

Community Vibe
We're all about being friendly, constructive, and inclusive. Let's build a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing and connecting, learning how others use ShabuBox in their document management workflows, with tips and tricks that might help the community.

How to Get Started

1. Introduce yourself in the comments below.
2. Post something today! Even a simple question can spark a great conversation.
3. If you know someone who would love this community, invite them to join.

Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let's make r/ShabuBox amazing.

When you finish a design, simply ask these questions as one prompt:

"What did I miss?"
"What can we do to improve the customer experience?"
"What interactions or features could be confusing or made better with what you understand about this project?"

This is a practice I have followed on several projects now, and it has been wildly successful. Almost every single recommendation was implemented. Do you use something similar? What has been your experience?

I’m sure this has been answered before, but the posts I’ve found are a bit all over the place so I’m hopeful I can get a clear answer from other owners. I have a 2013 BRZ that has stock headlights. They are dim, very dim. And I want to replace them. I do have the factory vertical light adjustment feature and I’d like to retain that if at all possible. Is there a way to just change the bulbs, or do I need to replace the entire assembly? Has anyone else figured this out? Any help is greatly appreciated.

In the beginning was the working tree, a quiet garden, files at rest, and someone typed git init to see what order might outlast a guess.

A hidden .git began to keep the shape of every passing thought — not backup, not a nightly sweep, but history, deliberately caught.

You add the fragments you believe, you stage the good and leave the rest; a commit is a thing you weave, a message pinned across your chest.

Each hash a fingerprint of time, each parent pointing to the past, a chain of cause, a chain of rhyme, where nothing true is ever lost.

Then branches — oh, the branches grow, cheap little worlds where you can play, try the reckless thing, and know that main stays safe and far away.

You checkout to another mind, you build a feature, wild and lean, and leave the trunk you left behind unbroken, patient, evergreen.

But worlds must meet. You merge, you pray, and sometimes conflict bares its teeth — <<<<<<< marks the fray, your lines above, theirs underneath.

You read them both, you choose, you mend, you make one truth from two that fought; resolve the markers, add, and send the reconciled and hard-won thought.

Sometimes you rebase, comb the past into a story clean and straight, though elders warn: don’t rewrite fast the commits others already ate.

And when it breaks — as all things do — you bisect down the guilty seam, or revert back to something true, or reflog up a vanished dream.

For git forgives the frightened hand; what feels deleted often waits in dangling nodes across the land, recoverable, behind the gates.

You push your work into the shared, you pull the labor of the crowd, a thousand authors, each who cared, their diffs converging, strange and proud.

No single mind could hold it all — the kernel, browser, tool, and toy — yet git divides the mighty wall to atoms any hand can deploy.

So here’s to Linus, terse and quick, who built in fury, ten days flat, a graph, a hash, a pointer-trick, and changed the world by doing that.

A tree, a blob, a signed commit, a DAG that time cannot corrode — we stash our doubts and stay with it, and version every step of road.

So commit often, message clear, and branch whenever dreams feel odd; the tree remembers all you were — each careful, cryptographic nod.

When you finish a design, simply ask these questions as one prompt:

"What did I miss?"
"What can we do to improve the customer experience?"
"What interactions or features could be confusing or made better with what you understand about this project?"

This is a practice I have followed on several projects now, and it has been wildly successful. Almost every single recommendation was implemented. Do you use something similar? What has been your experience?

I have been building a small document management application for Mac that is fully local and fully private, allowing a user to "chat" with their collected files. I am testing it on the latest macOS 27 and Apple Intelligence Models (M2 Mac Studio, 64 GB RAM). Unfortunately, the Apple models gate Medical and Legal prose, so I needed to look at which other models can "carry their weight" and produce real answers against real documents (and run under MLX). I have a 30-document "collection" as a corpus that remains unchanged throughout testing, and a 20-question battery that asks identical questions, with answers already known, to see where things land. Some seriously surprising results.

I am about to expand to 2 more collections with larger document sets, focused on legal and medical, but I thought I would share the initial take - Qwen3 4B is clearly the leader here.

As a follow-up, I'll to see if the Qwen3.5 model family made any improvements, leveraging the same test (again, same files and questions, just a model swap).

Update: I added a few more models to the mix (ones I am capable of running without package conflicts that would send me down a rabbit hole (sorry Gemma 4):

I have to say, for its size, Llama is a strong contender, but the winner is clear for a small model here.

Just have them watch the last season of The Bear. Jesus.

Source: U.S. Federal Register API (federalregister.gov) — all 926 executive orders across the three presidencies (Obama 278, Biden 162, Trump 486). Tools: vanilla HTML/CSS/JavaScript for the site, Python to pull/clean/structure the data; impact write-ups and polling curated by me with a cited source for each claim. Polling is drawn only from named pollsters (Pew, Gallup, AP-NORC, KFF, Reuters/Ipsos). Live and interactive: eo.alanwizemann.com