Releases

Any version of Canister that is older than 1 year is unsupported and considered legacy. Chances are that a legacy version will work completely fine, but if you run into trouble, try to reproduce the issue with the most recent release before requesting support.

Canister 25.2

Verify Duplicates, on Windows. If a file is found to already exist on tape, Canister will use checksum verification to check if the files are identical or not. This is a huge time saver when something goes wrong with your LTO drive, so it's enabled by default.

Canister 25.2 (May 27th, 2025) -

New ✨

Instead of just checking for file size and modification date, Duplicate Detection can now verify duplicates.
Checksum values are no longer available for transfers done in Trial mode.

Improved

Retrieve Transfers again show up in Connect.
Various minor tweaks and fixes behind the scenes.

Canister 25.1

Queuing, Spanning & Independent Transfers for Windows.

Canister 25.1 (Feb 11th, 2025) -

New ✨

Queuing: stack multiple transfers of the same type.
Spanning: seamlessly Archive over multiple tapes.
Independent Transfers: Use each tape device to be used independently of one another.

Improved

Support for System Notifications when a Transfer finishes.
Preflight Checks now detects supported LTO drives in the "Other Devices" class.
Improved handling of LTFS format failure.
Underscores and hyphens are allowed in tape names.
Handy option to prepopulate the tape serial number with the date.
Canister will ask before cancelling an active transfer.
Write protected tapes are greyed out in Archive mode.
Set a custom location for your tape Catalogs.

Canister 24.2

Introducing Canister Pro for Mac, including an innovative Tape Library Manager, firmware update notification for Windows, Choose files to Skip and more.

Fixes a pesky crash during tape indexing and transfer (Thanks, Marty & Tayfun).

Fix for edge case involving misplaced checksums vs empty folders (Thanks, Ben).
Resolves a crash when a source happens to go MIA before Archive transfers start.

Progress bar polish, because details matter.
Correct volume name is now used when Cataloging Pro Max tapes (Thanks, Daniel).
Improved handling of the "IOCreatePlugin" alert when manually ejecting tapes.

Fix for a nasty crash involving filenames with weird emojis.
Transfer ETAs no longer disappear on extremely long transfers.
Further Connect stability improvements.
Various Console tweaks that help our team support you.

Improved firmware detection for IBM Full Height LTO drives.
Spanned catalogs are updated once again (Thanks, Diego).
Skip Cataloging in Retrieve mode (Thanks, Roger).
Tidy up various messages in the Console.

Several improvements to the Cataloging engine (Thanks, Roger 🙏)
The "Retrieve with Full Path"-checkbox works once again
Fix for detecting Ethernet-based desktop LTO drives
Improved handling of tapes formatted with LTFS by Archiware P5

Introducing Canister Pro for macOS!
New in Pro: Single Drive Tape Library support (Huge thanks to Magstor for helping with the hardware, and to our Beta Test crew Joe, Henry, and Tom 🙏).
Choose which file types Canister should skip during transfer.
Fix for a rare item counter issue when Spanning.
Various improvements down in the engine room.

Canister 24.1

Pick & Mix Collections, Ethernet LTO drive support, plus a swathe of updates for Windows.

Fix for multiple compression state messages in the Console.
Additional tweaks to keep Connect running smooth.

Fix a rare bug causing some HP drives to not show the mount button.
Catalog searches now work for everybody once again 🙂

Add more items to a Collection using Pick & Mix.
Support for Symply's Ethernet-connected LTO drives.
Preflight Checks now notifies you when new LTO firmware is available.
Catalog support is now bundled with Canister, removing the need for Apple's Command Line Tools 😅
Transfer results are logged to the Console to make sure our Support team can help you even faster.
Improved handling of incompatible tapes.

Canister 23.2

Support for Windows, Connect and NanoPure media.

Right click anywhere in the Drive node to show the Drive Menu.
Moot __MACOSX folders are ignored when Archiving.
Console Auto-Scroll improvements.
Stop button is now clickable when Spanning is waiting for the next tape.

Connect improvements to keep things running smooth.
Log LTO compression state when loading a tape.

Monitor LTO transfers from anywhere with Connect 🙌
Support for MagStor's NanoPure range of premium LTO media.

Canister 23.1

Collections for Canister, and more.

Small improvements to help our support team live their best life.
Fix for an annoying crash with some older models of Quantum and HP LTO drives.

New Netflix-Compatibility mode, disables LTO hardware compression
Improvements for LTO-6 drive behavior
Reinstate .txt file extension for Manifests
Fix for unnecessary "Completed with Warnings" transfer states (Thanks to Samuel, Andy, and Greg 🙏)

When spanning, the Transfer View scrolls to the current tape
Displays the amount of files being catalogued after mounting a tape
Transfer Logs now take into account files that have been removed from the Source during Archive
Fix for a rare crash when mounting tapes without a volume label (Thanks to Joe at The Oscars!)
Improved handling of write-protected tapes

Lights out and away we go... ETA for Archive & Retrieve is here!
Write-protected tapes are no longer selectable for Archiving, to save you from some headaches down the road.
Sometimes spanning would not progress to a next tape due to an edge case. Big thanks to Jake, Jonathan, Josh, Ray, Sam, Scott & Yves for helping with hunting down this pesky nuisance 🙏
Free space on a tape gets updated properly after archiving without having to unmount a tape first (Thanks, Christiaan & David!)
No more endless spanning caused by source files going MIA (Thanks, AJ & Darren!)
...plus lots more little improvements behind the scenes, bonus points if you spot them all!

Fix for a rare edge case that would prevent Canister from starting (Thanks, Arturo 🙏)

Newly created Destination folders are now automatically selected, saving you some clicks.
The Updates Available ribbon works again!
Fix for activation state not always showing in Preferences (Thanks, Joe & Cole 🙏)
Unresponsive LTO drives no longer cause "something unexpected happened" alerts
Fix for the Format button not being visible at all times, when spanning (Thanks, Mattia 🙏)

Fixes a crash when Retrieving lots of files (Thanks, Fulvio and Neil 🙏)
Choose where to save Manifests
Disables Cmd-Q when Spanning is waiting for a next tape

Fix for HP drives giving us headaches (Thanks to Rick, Chris, Victor, Perry, and Brice!)
Starting Canister after a Force-Quit resets LTFS properly (Thanks to Corentin, Tom, and Fulvio!)
Fix for a subtle timing issue causing unnecessary Tape Not Unloaded alerts
Tapes are now preselected when you have just one LTO drive
Fix for a rounding error in the completed Spanning progress %
Mounted tapes now come with a nice icon
Improved human-readable units in Transfer Logs
Empty folders now have the correct folder icon in the Tape Browser

Collections allow you to drag-n-drop any combination of items as a source.
Decide whether to eject, unmount, or do nothing with a tape after Archive and Retrieve.
Canister will tell you if there's a tape present but not loaded, with a new Load button.
macOS Sierra 10.12 is no longer supported.

Canister 22.3

A "Retrieve with Finder" extension, support for Ventura, and more...

Early Warning Radar for LTFS errors that cause unsuccessful transfers.
One-Click Support™️, for those cases where LTFS goes into a funk 🤪
New setting to recreate the full path when retrieving.
For your entertainment, indexing now has a nice counter.
Command-W now works on the Console and Transfer Log windows.
If formatting fails, the tape name and serial are saved for a next attempt.
New setting to prepopulate a tape's serial with the date.
Detection of files going AWOL on a source during archiving.

Fix for Cataloging not always finishing up properly
Console improvements that allow us to do even better customer support 🙂

Fix for HPE drive detection
Workaround for stalling indexes

Canister now opens in the last used mode (Archive or Retrieve).
The Transfer and Warning logs are merged.
Improved Spanning progress bar accuracy.
Fix for MagStor B-series HBA download
Several spanning percentage improvements
Indexing tapes during spanning now shows the number of files indexed.

Support for the new MagStor C-series HBAs.
Built-in a warning for starting a Repair, as that can be a bit time-consuming.
Improved illegal character prevention when setting a serial when formatting a tape.
Direct Warning Log access from the Window menu
A lot of visual polish; see if you can spot all five improvements!
Adds a Force-Quit option for when LTFS is stuck indexing. If you run into this, ping us.

New: a Finder extension to Retrieve files directly from the Catalog.
Support for macOS 13 Ventura.
Selecting or unselecting all files when Retrieving is a lot easier now.
Set a custom Catalog location.

Canister 22.2

Official support for MagStor drives, and more.

Fixes an issue where sometimes Canister could not mount a fresh tape during spanning.
Tape name and serial weren't always added to a Transfer Log after a Transfer.

Fixes an issue where Canister could not always fetch the LTO drive vendor.

Improved handling of HBAs that don't work well with LTFS.

Improved error handling for troublesome tapes.
For test purposes, skip all Preflight Checks using the cheatcode idkfa

Retrieving files now doesn't preselect everything on a tape.
The transfer view now also shows the destination folder(s).
Added LTFS version to Transfer Logs
Improved handling for tapes with WRITE PERM errors
A bunch of small copy changes to improve your well being 😁
Detection of HBAs that do not support LTFS
Improved macFUSE update flow, for when other FUSE mounts are present.
Added legacy ATTO drivers for 10.14 and older macOS versions.
As all new FUSE versions work fine with LTFS, the FUSE check now only checks for a minimum version.

Fixes an issue where Canister lost its state after hiding in the Dock
Fix for endless cataloging after formatting a tape
Cosmetic changes, most notably on the Next and Previous labels that were missing some pixels.

Fixed a crash that sometimes occurs after checksum creation.

Preflight Checks no longer requires ATTO drivers to be up to date all of the time.

We finally got rid of that ugly Mount button 😄

Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when Ejecting a tape.
Improved the color of the progress bar during Verification.

Workaround for the endless "Cleaning Up..." issue, caused by a bug in LTFS. We're still waiting on feedback from IBM and FUSE, but don't want to keep you waiting on a fix in LTFS.
New Verification Watchdog, resolving stalling verifications.
Empty tapes are no longer cataloged.

Preflight Check results are now logged in the console.

Canister 22.1

Spanning allows you to archive more data than fits on a single tape. Canister will ask you to add another tape when the first is full, and continues doing so until all data is archived.

Improvement for HP LTFS now requiring FUSE to be installed before anything else.

Fix for a rare crash related to the Erase view.

Activating Canister would sometimes show an incorrect Upgrade popup, that's fixed.
We also fixed a crash when Destinations space runs out during Retrieval.

Canister 21.2

Meet Preflight Checks: each time Canister starts, it runs a full diagnostics of your LTO setup and points out what is missing or needs updating.

Polish for some Preflight Checks.

Support for archiving Macintosh HD system disks (including /Library folders). NB: restoring macOS directly from tape is not recommended.

Support for new ATTO driver for Big Sur and more mTape serials.

Canister 21.1

Canister gains Duplicate Detection, skipping files that already exist on tape. Files with identical names, but different sizes or modification dates will replace the existing file, keeping the original available as a hidden file.

Fix for retrieving files with % in their filenames.

Our license provider WyDay released a fix for the activation issue present in macOS 10.12, 10.13, and 10.14.

Sometimes, the registration for trials didn't go as planned. All good now.

Due to a regression in macFUSE, it's no longer allowed to use commas in tape names (Thanks, Jimmy!)
Some licensees that got their license through a partner are asked to enter their email so we know who you are in case you need help.

Adds support for the new Quantum LTFS driver on M1.

Fixes a bug where sometimes a folder in a tape's root couldn't be selected when archiving.

Fixes a bug that sometimes occurred when mounting a Catalog.

Fixes a crash that sometimes occurred when mounting a tape.
Mounting, Indexing, and Cataloging stages are now visible in the interface when mounting a tape.

Checks for the new ATTO drivers, as well as for SANLink and Arcsas.
Fixes few small bugs.

Fixes a bug that caused the tape name to be NONAME.
Time Machine sidecar files (.com.apple.timemachine.donotpresent) are no longer archived.
The Transfer Log shows the destination root folder again.
Some text fields were stuck in dark mode. That's fixed.

A brand new icon 🎉
Retrieving is again done alphabetically.
Proper depicting of the source name instead of always showing the volume name.
Added an 'Already Transferred' state when a transfer doesn't contain new files.
Selecting a Destination Folder now shows the correct tape name.

Canister 20.2

A new licensing system, and a boatload of improvements.

Added support for Fuse 4.

Added support for Big Sur.

Added support (and a logo) for mLogic users.

This update makes Archiving for Discovery Channel a cinch. Simply add a metadata.xml to the root of the folder you want to Archive, and Canister will do the rest.

Canister 20.1

Canister now detects when a tape is empty or unformatted, offering you the option to format, and also provides more feedback about drive-related errors.
The console has much more output, and timestamps. Timestamps, good.
Creating a new destination folder when archiving could sometimes result in Canister ignoring it.
El Capitan users reported problems when browsing a tape and not being able to resize the browser. Fixed.
Canister handles drives that are disconnected during a transfer more gracefully.

Canister 19.1

File sequences are written sequentially to tape, speeding up retrievals.
Indexing large sources doesn’t result in spinning beachballs.
Huge transfers take up a lot less RAM than they used to.
When quitting all mounted tapes are now ejected making sure indexes are up to date.
Force-quitting the app doesn't affect tape indexes.

Canister 18.1

First Canister release 🎉

Canister 18.1.5 contains some small bug fixes. Thanks for reporting all!

Canister now mounts a tape right after erasing/formatting it, so you can start archiving straight away 🚀
Improved support for extended attributes, aliases, and bundles.
Canister sometimes crashed on quit. Fixed!

Canister 18.1.3 (November 06, 2018)

MLU update

Canister now mounts a tape right after erasing/formatting it, so you can start archiving straight away 🚀
Some Tandberg owners reported that Canister had trouble installing the correct drivers for their machine.

You can share your System Information with Support (in case you run into trouble and would like our help).
Fixed a crash that occurred when you tried to create a Transfer Log file for an empty transfer.

Last updated 1 day ago