How do I update Harbor for Mac?

There are two Harbor builds for the Mac, and they update in completely different ways. Which one you have decides what you do.

If you downloaded it from harbor.my

It updates itself.

Harbor checks quietly in the background about once an hour, and offers you the update when one is out. To check by hand, use Harbor → Check for Updates… in the menu bar — the Harbor menu, right below About Harbor.

That’s the whole thing. Harbor downloads the update, verifies its signature, and installs it when you say so.

If Harbor never seems to tell you about new versions, check Settings → Preferences → Software updates and make sure Automatically check for updates is on. It’s easy to end up switched off by accident, and the symptom is silence rather than an error.

If you got it from the Mac App Store

It updates through the App Store app, in the Updates tab — the same place as everything else you’ve installed from there. Harbor can’t update itself: Apple doesn’t allow App Store apps to self-update, so the option isn’t in the app at all.

Which one do I have?

Open the Harbor menu.

• Check for Updates… is there → you have the direct download.
• It isn’t → you have the App Store build.

It’s not an accident that this is the tell. The App Store build is compiled without the updater entirely, so the menu item can’t be there.

The direct download gets fixes first

Worth knowing, because it explains a wait that otherwise looks like something’s broken.

When we fix a bug, the direct download goes out that day. The same release then has to clear App Review before it reaches the App Store, and that usually takes a few days. So a fix can be shipped, announced, and genuinely live while your App Store copy is still on the old version.

Nothing has gone wrong when that happens. If you’d rather not wait, the direct download is the same app and you can install it over the App Store copy — your notes are untouched either way, since they live in your account rather than in the app.

Two things to know before you do.

If you signed up with Sign in with Apple, sort out another way in first. The direct build has no Apple button — Apple doesn’t allow that on apps distributed outside the App Store — so the way you normally sign in isn’t there. Two options, either is fine:

• Add a passkey in Settings → Passkeys before you switch. The direct build offers passkey sign-in, and it needs no password.
• Use Forgot? on the direct build’s sign-in screen. That emails you a link, and the password you set through it works straight away.

Stuck on either? help@harbor.my and we’ll sort it out.

macOS may ask for your keychain password when you first open the direct build, because it notices the app is signed differently. Allow it and your sign-in carries straight over — the two builds share it — and you skip all of the above.

Billing differs too: the direct build bills through us rather than through Apple. More on that.

What we’d actually do with it

Take the direct download, unless you’d rather everything ran through the App Store. It gets fixes the day they ship rather than whenever review finishes, and it updates itself.

Either way, after we tell you something’s fixed, check your version before you decide it isn’t.