Connection Explorer v0.90 Changelog (Released 01/21/2026)

Date

1/21/2026

Version

UI: 0.90
File Version: 0.9.0.0

Changes

General:

• Added new heartbeat checks to make sure data is being populated as expected for all data pipelines.

• Updated language detection mechanism to improve reliability for non-English Windows installations.

• Database lookup optimizations to improve return times for data queries.

Alerts Panel 

• Added application icons next to process names in the alerts table

Connections Panel 

• Renamed "Process" column to "App"

• Removed redundant PID from the app name (PID is already shown in its own column)

Processes Panel

• Renamed "Process Name" column to "App"

• Added application icons next to app names

Firewall Panel

• Renamed Blocked Panel to Firewall

• Added new Inbound/Outbound controls for blocking specific network direction for apps.

• Added sparklines to show 24hr data usage per-app

• Added a functional search box with Enter-to-search behavior

• Search icon inside the box changes to X when text is entered for easy clearing

Dashboard

• Fixed missing application icons in "Top Apps by Bandwidth" section

• Removed “New IP count” widget

 Splash Screen 

• Added new loading animation

• Fixed icon being cut off at the top.

• Firewall buttons now work when running as admin

• New loading animation on some panels

• Icon cache is now properly used in all locations

• Update data lookup to use a safer method for API calls.

• New: 

  • Renamed Block to Firewall with easy block/unblock applications for inbound/outbound connections and updated layout.

  • Firewall panel now shows all active applications with sparklines instead of only blocked applications.

  • Icons added to bandwidth and other areas replacing generic placeholder icons

• Fixed:

  • Fixed categorization of events when using non-English languages

  • Fixed map centering when clicking the reset button

  • Fixed Activity timeline to better show connections/bandwidth 

  • Fixes non-English connection data not resolving

  • Improvements to alert panel loading to fix lag when loading many items are visible.

***Reserved***

I do have an issue, it is related to the known issue: 

In some scenarios, it's possible for the firewall to not have any applications listed until the first IP lookup is completed, this can take up to 15 minutes if the tutorial is not completed and should only impact the first run of the application.

The Firewall list never gets populated.

Also in my case any blocked Process does never appear in this Firewall list even after a _much_ longer time. Restarting the Connection Explorer app or the PC then completely removes any mention of said blocked Process so i can't see that it's blocked anymore, and since it's not in the  Firewall tab, i can also not unblock it. I have to do this in the Windows Firewall itself. The client also seems to be stuck on quite some connections with "Looking up..."

Windows 11 26H1 (28000.1340)

English United States install, English (Dutch) language/region

When this is happening, is the system tray application running?

The system tray application does not appear to be running.

ok first thing is to make sure the system tray app is running, the easy way to do this is to click on the Home panel and in the top right corner is a grey ? button. Click that and walk through the tutorial and about halfway through, it will look to see if the try app is running and then prompt to open it if it's not detected.

I was able to start the system tray component.  The connections appeared, and after a period of about 10 minutes, the connections were shown on the Home tab map.

I then exited the application, waited a few minutes, and then relaunched it.  When I did, it started without starting the tray component, and without notifying me that the tray component was not running, and without showing the system tray component screen you show above.

Next, I started the tray component manually.  The connections appeared, and the connections were shown on the Home tab map.  However, the Bandwidth tab stated "No bandwidth data yet.  Ensure tray app is running as admin."

So I exited the application, verified that both it and the tray component had shut down, and restarted the application.

Again the application started without starting the tray component.  I then started the tray component as Admin.  The connections appeared, and the connections were shown on the Home tab map.  However, the Bandwidth tab still stated no data.

I left the application and tray component running, and returned to check on it after an hour or so.  There was still no bandwidth data.  

Okay, now things are really strange ...

I left the app up for a few hours, verified that the system tray app was still running with admin rights, and found that no connections were showing:

As I started using my computer again, the connections did not populate.

System: Win 10 Pro Version 22H2 (OS Build 19045.6466) on a Surface Pro 9 12th Gen Intel, 32 GB RAM on an external HP monitor

I just downloaded and opened the app. All appears to be working well so far, connection wise anyway. However, I'm seeing the Block Application popup apparently being clipped and I cannot scroll down to see what else is in the popup. Since I am using WindowBlinds to skin my interface, at first I thought it was an issue with that, but I still see the clipped popup when I exclude Connection Explorer from WindowBlinds skinning. I know there's something not being shown in that popup because I can TAB through 4 or 5 additional options, only I just can't see them. I also assume that there's an OK button down there too. It's a minor problem, but very frustrating! I'm not sure that I'm successfully blocking the app.

Brian

Update -

I realized that I needed to manually start the tray app.  When I did, network connections appeared on the Connections tab, but not on the map in the Home tab.  

I will wait a couple of hours and see what things look like then.

... and now the Map is populated ...  I have no idea what is going on.

I understand.  Does that apply to the connections too?  Because my network connections go to zero even when I am actively browsing and connecting.  This appears random, when connections show and when they don't.