Updating Outbound
How Outbound checks for updates, the beta switch, and what happens to your rules and the filter when an update installs.
Outbound updates itself in the usual Mac way: it checks for a new version, downloads it, and installs it. Updates are signed and notarized.
Checking for updates
Section titled “Checking for updates”Outbound checks in the background once a day by default. You can also check yourself:
- The Check for Updates… item in the app menu.
- Check Now on Settings › Updates, next to the version you are running, shown as “Version 1.4.2 (89)”.
Release notes are available on the website’s changelog.
Settings › Updates
Section titled “Settings › Updates”The Updates page has three controls:
- Check for updates automatically: the daily background check. On by default.
- Include beta versions: opt in to the beta channel. Off by default; turning it on makes the updater accept beta releases, and turning it off excludes the beta channel from future checks.
- Check Now: checks immediately.
What happens when an update installs
Section titled “What happens when an update installs”Just before the update replaces the app, Outbound attempts to save a snapshot of your rules: the same backup file Settings › General › Backup writes, stored in the Snapshots folder beside your rules file with a name like pre-update-73-to-74-20261018-101500.outboundbackup. The five newest snapshots are kept. A snapshot for the same build transition within the last 24 hours is reused.
The new version’s network filter replaces the old one the next time Outbound opens. Because the replacement comes from the same publisher, macOS does not ask you to approve the filter again. If macOS needs a restart to finish the swap, Outbound says so and asks you to restart and reopen.
When the background agent launches with a changed Outbound build number, it reuses a recent snapshot for that transition or saves one from the rules currently on disk. It then compares user and rule-group rule counts with that snapshot; managed and downloaded blocklist rules are excluded. If rules went missing and you did not edit the rules file in between, an issue appears: “N rules are missing since the update. Restore the snapshot from Settings › General › Backup.” You can restore a readable snapshot from Settings › General › Backup; see Uninstalling Outbound for where the files live, and Rules for what a rule is.