KillerShell: all versions and old releases

1.5.0 can make KillerShell your default terminal and folder opener, adds docked details and a smoother Performance tab, and makes saves, copies and installs safer.
Fixed
- Failed document saves preserve the original and retain recovery copies when restoration fails. Administrator saves keep newer edits unsaved and cannot overwrite a later save. Saving over a file another program changed since it was opened asks whether to replace it, reload it or save a copy, with Cancel as the default.
- Failed or canceled copies and moves preserve existing destinations and recovery copies. Read-only moves retain file attributes, cancellation stops pending link moves, and cleanup leaves skipped link targets untouched. Cross-drive and mounted-volume moves stay cancellable, retain alternate streams, honor conflict choices, and report incomplete work. Canceling a permanent delete stops before the next file and reports a folder left partly deleted.
- Installation and updates verify replacements before publishing them. Signed copies require a valid update from the same publisher, and unreadable or invalid current images cannot bypass that check. Recovery cleanup verifies file identity and contents, preserves unrelated files, and lets a successful retry be uninstalled.
- Closing, updating, installing or signing out checks unsaved documents in both panes. Cancel preserves the session and live folder updates.
- Registry key renames copy the key and then remove the original instead of calling Windows' key rename, which could crash the system. Renames preserve value types, permissions and child keys, and refuse link keys or owners that a copy cannot keep. Switching between hexadecimal and decimal keeps the value unchanged.
- Text files with malformed encoding stay closed instead of changing bytes on save. Lossy saves are refused, encoding changes remain unsaved through Undo, and valid legacy and UTF-32 files round-trip unchanged.
- ZIP edits preserve permissions and attributes, distinguish case-sensitive names, and reject conflicting output paths before publication. TAR extraction validates extended metadata, and cancellation stops extraction through the final entry.
- Large expanded folders no longer freeze startup or consume gigabytes of tree controls.
- Terminal input and output stay responsive under load and when launched with redirected output. CJK, emoji and combining marks use consistent widths, unbound Alt shortcuts reach the shell, and closing a terminal releases pending work. Making a terminal shorter moves its oldest rows into scrollback instead of dropping recent output. Colon-separated color codes show their colors instead of printing stray digits. Terminal tabs follow folders whose names start or end with spaces, and WSL folders containing quotes survive tear-out, merge and session restore.
- Ending or restarting a process verifies its identity. Restart also confirms the executable is still in place and holds it until the replacement starts, so a missing file no longer ends the original first. Administrator restarts keep the original running until elevation is approved, and reused process IDs receive fresh status information.
- Terminal output cannot redirect a tab to a network share. Files extracted from downloaded archives retain Windows' internet safety mark, and CSV exports treat formula-like names as text.
- CSV and HTML exports preserve existing reports when replacement fails. File, search and storage reports declare the language they are written in, for every app language. Report columns sort from the keyboard, show visible focus and announce their sort order.
- Bundled KillerPivot verifies tenant connections, disconnects a Graph session left from another tenant when switching, reports incomplete disconnects, and preserves configuration after failed saves. KillerScripts preserves Unicode text, complete caches, and immutable script versions needed by detached child launches.
- Search remains cancellable with complex wildcards, empty

Added
- Files and folders can have a nickname, set from the right-click menu in the folder tree, saved places and listing. It shows as "Nickname (name)" without renaming anything on disk.
- A Film Grain switch in the theme menu turns the grain texture on or off on every surface. It is on by default.
- The maximize button opens the Windows 11 snap layouts menu.
- The right-click menu can compress files and folders to a new ZIP and extract a .zip, .tar, .tar.gz, .tgz or .gz here or into its own folder. Nothing already there is overwritten.
- KillerShell checks for updates on startup and offers a newer release in a dialog with an Always check on startup box. A Check for updates on startup checkbox on the About card turns the check back on.
Changed
- The saved places drawer takes at most 40% of the sidebar height and scrolls past that, so a long list leaves the folder tree usable.
- The wordmarks use Punktype and Lacquer, dialog headings use Lacquer, and the interface text and footers use Killer Sans, in place of the typewriter font in the app and on the website.
- Confirm, install and uninstall dialogs use the family setup dialog layout, with a notice icon, a larger Lacquer heading and evenly sized buttons.
- Malaise file and terminal content use a slightly lighter gray, distinct from menus, pane bars and active tabs.
- The scroll edge shadows in the file list and Performance run underneath the scrollbar out to the pane edges, as in KillerScan.
- On the 98SE theme, the Open, Save and folder picker dialogs show the selected item in a status bar with a resize grip, as Windows 98 does, and their rows use the classic narrow spacing.
- The Light theme draws a softer shadow under the toolbars.
- A new tab is named for the folder it opens on instead of "new search", the new tab button reads "New tab", and the shortcut list says Ctrl+T opens a new tab at Home.
Fixed
- Files dragged out of KillerShell drop into Microsoft Teams and other apps that refused them, because the drag now carries the same shell data Explorer sends.
- Terminal autocomplete suggestions are drawn clearly faded, so they no longer look like typed text.
- Ctrl+C in the terminal stops a running command even when KillerShell was started by a program that ignores Ctrl+C.
- Silent installs refuse an exe without a valid signature, return specific Windows error codes and reject a second concurrent install instead of reporting a general failure.
- A silent install started without admin rights, as the Microsoft Store runs it, installs for the current user with no prompt instead of failing.
- Chocolatey uninstalls run the silent uninstaller and fail with its exit code instead of opening the uninstall prompt.
- Icon-only buttons give screen readers the name from their tooltip, and controls reached with the keyboard show a dotted focus outline.
- On a small screen the window opens sized to fit the desktop instead of running past its edges.
- Resizing a dual-pane window keeps both panes visible, including with sidebars open or enlarged interface text.
- Dragging the dual-pane divider trades width between the two panes and keeps the window the same width.
- Opening the second pane near the right edge of a monitor slides the window left to make room instead of squeezing the panes, and closing it slides the window back.
- Closing the second pane on a snapped window keeps the window snapped and gives the space back to the first pane, and a later split no longer closes to the wrong width.
- The folder tree's scrollbar thumbs grow on hover, stay easy to grab while dragging, and remain clear of the content fades.
- In a narrow pane the folder path and the terminal's working folder move to their own row below the buttons, so they stay readable instead of being squeezed.
- On the 98SE theme, the interface, menus and dialog captions use Microsoft Sans Serif instead of Killer Sans and Tahoma.
- Kept app icons sharp at fractional display DPI and app zoom by caching exact pixel sizes from a co

Added
- Bash prompts match the PowerShell style, identify the WSL distribution, and support theme colors, Git status, and prompt editing.
Fixed
- "Open terminal here" launches Ubuntu and other WSL distributions correctly.
- Ubuntu browsing no longer loops through "Opening..." when folder monitoring is unsupported. Folder loading shows a busy indicator, background refreshes preserve selection, and unreadable folders report an error.
- Pinned places resize immediately when folders are added or removed.
- Light wordmarks match the family shadow settings. Only the yellow accent keeps its shadow.
- Context menus match KillerPDF's sharp text, shadows, and fades. Rail right-click menus align 8 pixels from the side and bottom content edges.

1.3.1 improves selection contrast, theme consistency and wordmark readability.
Changed
- Filled buttons, hovered outline buttons, selected picker rows, calendar selections and accent picker pills use gradients outside 98SE, and accent swatches lift on hover.
Fixed
- The standalone CLI builds correctly for .NET Framework 4.8.
- Selected rows in the Registry Editor, Processes and Event Viewer are readable in Light, Ectoplasm and the other themes where the text matched the highlight.
- Shared theme colors, dropdown highlights, footers, title styling and shadows match the family palette, including cream Blood, Greed and Cyanotic wordmarks. Rail flyouts sit 8 pixels from the rail and bottom content edges.
- Light/Yellow uses true yellow with neutral dark text, and only the yellow wordmark accent has a shadow.
- 98SE Red is a true maroon again, so it no longer looks like Magenta.
- Folder tabs show their icon in demo mode.
- The Close tooltip no longer covers the file toolbar.

1.3.0 adds terminal profiles with WSL, file picker pins, a System tools rail flyout, and Ukrainian, Norwegian, and Brazilian Portuguese localization.
Added
- Terminal profiles with a default shell, custom commands, and automatic WSL shortcuts. Browse Linux folders in the sidebar, pin them, and open a terminal there.
- Ctrl+Shift+T opens the current folder in a new browser tab. Terminal actions now have shortcuts shown in their menu, shortcut list, keyboard map, and online guide.
- File picker pins can be added, removed, and reordered. Explorer Quick Access appears in the places rail, and Open and Save remember their last successful folder separately.
- Added a silent uninstall, /uninstall-silent, registered as the quiet uninstall so WinGet and other package managers can remove KillerShell without a prompt.
- Ukrainian localization.
- Norwegian (Bokmål) localization.
- Brazilian Portuguese localization.
- Added yellow and magenta accents to the neutral and 98SE themes.
Changed
- Processes, Performance, Storage, Registry Editor, and Event Viewer share a System tools rail button, with administrator actions on right-click; both menus align with the theme and language flyouts without a black outer frame.
- Improved menu and selection contrast, softened material-theme footers and 98SE footer text, matched the 98SE About bevel to the sidebar, and used subtle gray Delirium dividers.
- Both shortcut views link to the full online guide from an aligned header, with more space beside the close button.
- The language menu now shows its 19 languages in two columns, with a faint divider that fades at both ends.
Fixed
- Linux terminals report their current folder and use the correct clear and folder-change commands. PowerShell profile actions stay scoped to PowerShell.
- On Greed, Blood and Cyanotic the folder block in the terminal prompt is drawn in the theme's own color, so its text is readable instead of light on white.
- Inactive 98SE pane toolbar buttons match the dimmed menubar.
- 98SE rows show a visible hover highlight, and selected bookmarks retain their selection while hovered.
- Ctrl+wheel changes file and folder picker views and icon sizes.
- On Dark, Decay, Greed, Blood and Cyanotic the terminal sits on a clearly darker screen than the window around it.
- On Greed, Blood and Cyanotic, menus and bars sit a clear step darker than the window, and the boxes in About use the content pane color.
- Fixed picker and dialog frame corners and kept the close X white over its red hover background.
- The uninstaller has its own taskbar button, labeled "Uninstall KillerShell", with the app icon.
- Table header corners follow pane borders and live theme changes, including square 98SE corners.
- Main window and dialog title bar icons use size-matched frames.
- With one pane open, the active tab's outline fades into the tab at its foot instead of ending in a hard line.
- Tab icons sit 2px from the tab's left edge instead of behind a wide gap.
- The portable footer button reads PORTABLE, like KillerPDF and KillerScan, and its tooltip offers the install.
- Install and uninstall windows now show the film grain and the app icon in the title bar.

1.2.6 adds Vietnamese localization, family tab geometry, and local MCP file tools.
Added
- KillerMCP can use the installed app to inspect files, processes, services, event logs, registry keys, and drives without changing them.
- Vietnamese localization for the app and website.
Fixed
- On the 98SE theme the Elevated Privileges caption in an admin window's title bar is white instead of disappearing into the title bar.
- Mouse Back and Forward buttons navigate folder history again.
- Tabs use bounded left-aligned widths and continuous pane borders. The 98SE theme now matches Windows 98 pixel for pixel: tab edges and the page under them, the 4px window frame, the 18px caption and its buttons, four-color button bevels, flat toolbar buttons that raise on hover, and double-recessed wells.

1.2.5 keeps the List view responsive in folders with thousands of files.
Fixed
- Opening a folder with thousands of files in List view no longer freezes the app until Windows closes it; the view now builds only the columns on screen.

1.2.4 rebuilds the file list around an Explorer-style compact view with Ctrl+wheel view cycling, moves the pane menubar toggle to the family-standard Alt+M, and adds automated test coverage across the tool suite.
Added
- Details view has sortable Type and Created columns; Type shows the same names Explorer does. Show or hide them from the column header's right-click menu.
- Sorting Details view by a date groups the files under Explorer's headings, from Today to A long time ago. Group by date in the header menu turns it off.
Changed
- Performance Monitor is one fixed dashboard in place of the rearrangeable tile grid: a summary strip, large CPU and RAM panels, a row per disk and network adapter that folds to one line when idle, and a card per GPU.
- Performance graphs are filled and carry a scale; send/receive and read/write are mirrored around a center line. The CPU panel shows a load square per logical processor plus live clock speed, process and thread counts, and up time; RAM shows an in use, cached, and free bar.
- Dates in the file list and details pane use the Windows short date and time format, such as 9/14/2026 10:09 PM.
- Network commands in PowerShell terminals use the same address, MAC, port, timing, and success/failure colors as KillerScan.
- The file list's List view replaces the expandable cards with Explorer's compact layout, showing a 16px icon and name per row that flow into vertical columns.
- Ctrl+wheel over the results cycles between Icons, List and Details at the ends of each mode's size range, in addition to stepping icon sizes within a mode.
- The pane menubar toggle moved from Ctrl+F10 to Alt+M, matching the family convention for hiding the chrome.
- On first launch, the interface follows the Windows display language when it is supported.
- Core tool logic is separated from its interface and covered by local release tests.
Fixed
- Killer scripts such as wursa and amort, and the KillerShell prompt, now load in PowerShell tabs on machines still on the default Restricted execution policy. The policy is relaxed to RemoteSigned for that shell process only; AllSigned and Group Policy settings are left alone.
- About panel states, save dialog titles, details window titles, and terminal start and exit messages follow the interface language instead of staying in English.
- The storage report, install and uninstall dialogs, and file/archive operation error messages now follow the interface language instead of staying in English.
- The enabled details pane retains its height when selection is cleared, keeping the file layout stable.
- Standalone installation dialogs use the default Dark/Blue appearance; in-app prompts follow the active theme.
- On the 98SE theme the keyboard map's keys are white instead of button-face gray.
- Restored the bottom content-pane border across all tabs and scroll positions.
- Folder-picker names now show their complete text in a hover tooltip when a column clips them.
- Administrator windows keep new terminals as tabs and use a brighter theme-matched border.
- On the Sepulchre and Mourning themes the theme picker's radio ring, dot and label no longer vanish into the row's hover highlight; they turn white while hovered.
- Chocolatey package now installs the app instead of leaving the download in the Chocolatey tools folder.

1.2.3 adds much faster elevated storage scans, completes fifteen-language coverage, and improves reliability across browsing, terminals, installation, themes, and killershell.net.
Added
- Storage Analyzer uses a Master File Table fast path for elevated local NTFS scans, with automatic fallback to the parallel directory walker.
- Hungarian, Italian, Russian, and Kazakh localization completes the app and website in fifteen languages.
- Performance Monitor cell headers use the family open-hand and closed-hand grab cursors.
Changed
- killershell.net's Help, Technical, and generated 90-row shortcut reference now have complete fifteen-language coverage.
- The release workflow now rejects incomplete translations, placeholder mismatches, prohibited punctuation, and inconsistent UTF-8 parsing.
Fixed
- Installed copies register as editors for common text and configuration formats, and duplicate installations and self-update metadata are handled correctly.
- The folder tree follows external changes and navigation, while browsing-tab icons follow the current folder.
- Dual panes preserve their proportions across snapping, maximizing, and restoring.
- Terminal commands, startup screens, and prompt palettes remain correct through empty selections, early layout, and temporary session-file failures.
- Localized website markup, context-menu rendering, secondary-button hover states, and theme accent details are corrected.

This release makes portable installs and updates safer, expands Storage Analyzer and ZIP workflows, completes localization and theme coverage, and gives the 98SE interface a substantial polish pass.
Added
- Storage Analyzer scans can now be exported as self-contained HTML reports with the current filters, an SVG treemap, ranked folder and file tables, and a compact file-type color legend.
- ZIP archives now support creating empty folders, dragging complete folder trees out, and canceling any rewrite without changing the original archive.
- The folder tree has an independent Show hidden folders option and now lists every Windows drive, including mapped network drives; reopening the sidebar discovers new drives, and elevated windows can recover hidden mappings.
- Recycling a folder now asks for confirmation. The prompt can be disabled from the About card; individual files still recycle without interruption, and permanent deletion always asks.
- The About card now has Clear all Data, which removes saved preferences and temporary archive extractions without touching user files or the installation.
Changed
- All thirteen app themes are complete app-owned resources and are available in HTML reports; website palettes are generated from those same XAML resources. 98SE web geometry remains deliberately deferred.
- Polish is now fully translated, and all ten non-English interfaces have complete string coverage, including Storage Analyzer, install/update prompts, and the latest file, tree, and performance commands.
- The technical website now localizes its administration and Performance Monitor content, restores native Spanish, French, and Turkish diacritics, and generates its shortcut reference from the app's bindings and English resources.
- Keyboard Shortcuts now stays inside the app window and scrolls when space is tight. It and the About card also share the family overlay spacing and close-button treatment.
- UI polish includes clearer accent-button text without hover shadows, corrected Ectoplasm selections, thumbnail-only image shadows, improved editor and terminal insets, consistent About-card borders, solid input surfaces, and corrected 98SE toolbar bevels. Shadows remain disabled under 98SE.
- Theme and language menus now sit above the footer consistently instead of opening too low against it, and the theme menu expands to fit its localized Fonts and File Associations commands.
- The technical guide now documents KillerShell's Zip Slip protections, and internal cancellation resource keys use the same spelling as their displayed text.
Fixed
- Storage Analyzer opens normally again; initializing its new file-type legend no longer crashes the tab. Its tab uses the same theme-aware hard-drive artwork as the folder tree, its map is textured before and after scanning, and common data, package/game, font, and configuration files now use distinct colors instead of falling into gray Other blocks.
- Portable installs now distinguish fresh installs from per-user and all-users updates, honor the desktop-shortcut choice, verify the installed file before relaunch, and enforce one installed copy. Machine-wide installs and uninstalls correctly elevate, clean up the current account's older copy and registrations, and remove shared files and shortcuts.
- Performance Monitor tiles now form independent, gap-free columns with half-height graphs, a compact 2x2 hardware summary, varied metric colors, and one authoritative readout per value. Multi-series values live beside their legend keys, repeated field rows are gone, and full device names wrap on their own line. GPU memory shares one two-series plot. The 98SE tab has a full-width sunken frame that connects the card dividers and separates the active tab from the black client area.
- Scrolling file and Performance views now shadow clipped edges through the scrollbar gutter, while dense tables dissolve their content instead; Event Viewer and Processes/Services keep their header edges clear and fade onl

1.2.1 is a single-fix release, and an urgent one: in 1.2.0 every confirmation dialog closed the app instead of opening. Anyone on 1.2.0 should update.
Fixed
- Confirmation dialogs open instead of closing the app. Deleting files, replacing an entry inside an archive, ending a process and installing the portable copy all ask before they act, and in 1.2.0 the window that does the asking died the instant it was built, taking the app and the open session with it. The actions themselves were never broken - the dialog in front of them could not appear. Its caption row was sized from a theme value that held the right number in the wrong form, which a theme file can express safely and a live theme lookup cannot. It affected every theme, and it went unnoticed through 1.2.0 because it only shows when a confirmation is actually reached.

1.2.0 opens archives like folders and lets you write to a .zip from inside one, adds a Storage Analyzer that draws a whole drive as a treemap, and brings the theme picker to thirteen with a full Windows 98 recreation and its own period icon set - plus a KillerShell icon pack throughout, a shortcuts card that knows the app is eight applets rather than one, and a rebuilt Performance tab. It also fixes the two drag bugs that had been chased since 1.1.4: one could corrupt the process heap and take the app down, the other left the drag icon stranded on the window.
Added
- Archives open like folders. Double-click a .zip, .tar, .tar.gz, .tgz or .gz and you are inside it, browsing with the same rows, sorting, icons and keys as anywhere else; Up climbs back out to the folder holding it. Opening a file inside one extracts a copy and hands it to whatever normally opens it, and dragging a file out drops a copy wherever you let go. No new dependencies were added for any of this, and .rar and .7z still open in whatever you already use for them.
- A .zip can be changed from inside it: drag or paste files and folders in, Delete an entry, F2 to rename one. A folder takes everything under it, and an empty folder dragged in still arrives. Nothing already in the archive is ever quietly overwritten - a name that is already taken stops the write and asks, with keeping both as the default and replacing as a tick box. Every change is made by building a complete new archive beside the original and swapping it in only after it has been reopened and checked, so a crash, a full disk or a cancel leaves the original file exactly as it was. Adding one file to a zip rewrites the whole zip, so the status line carries a percentage rather than going quiet. Tar, tar.gz, tgz and gz stay read-only and say which they are: rebuilding a tar from what this build can read would drop the links, devices and other members it does not model, and a lone gzip has nowhere to put a second file. Moving out of an archive is deliberately not offered - that would be an extract plus a delete-from-archive with no way to make the two one, and Explorer treats zip drag-out as a copy for the same reason.
- A Storage Analyzer tab, on F4 (Ctrl+F4 for an elevated scan that can read folders an ordinary account cannot) and on the sidebar rail. Point it at a folder or a drive, press Scan, and every file becomes a rectangle sized by how much room it takes - the WizTree and WinDirStat way of seeing where a disk went. Double-click a folder to zoom in, and a breadcrumb climbs back out. The scan is a parallel walk that never follows junctions or symlinks, so nothing is counted twice, and folders it is not allowed to open are counted and skipped rather than stopping it. A depth control flattens the map to the folders that matter, a minimum-size control hides the noise, and colouring switches between file type and top-level folder; all three are drawing filters, so they apply instantly and never change the totals. Right-click for open in a new tab, open in Explorer, copy path, or delete - and delete only ever goes to the Recycle Bin. The footer names whatever is under the pointer with its size and share of the map, plus the drive's total and free space.
- Seven new themes, bringing the picker to thirteen: 98SE, Ectoplasm, Decay, Mourning, Sepulchre, Delirium and Malaise. 98SE carries its own accent set, like Dark, Light and Black. All thirteen names are translated into every shipped language, except 98SE, which is a product name.
- A KillerShell icon pack replaces the Windows shell icons throughout. Folders have their own art, and the special ones are drawn as themselves rather than as generic folders: Home, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music, Videos, Favorites, Program Files and Windows, plus drives and This PC. Every tab kind has an icon too - shell, admin shell, a closed shell, text editor, Task Manager, Event Viewer, Performance and Registry Editor.
- The 98SE theme draws a period ic

1.1.4 fixes a crash when dragging files to external applications like Teams and Telegram, plus a ghost icon that persisted on the desktop after dragging to external apps.
Fixed
- Dragging a file to Teams, Telegram, or other external apps could crash KillerShell with an AccessViolationException - NativeDataObject did not check for NULL returns from GlobalAlloc and GlobalLock, so when either failed the code would attempt to access invalid memory. Error checking and exception handling added for all Win32 global-memory operations.
- NativeDataObject.GetData could throw unhandled exceptions when called from a different thread (which happens when dragging to external apps), crashing the entire drag operation - now wrapped in a try-catch to return an empty medium on error, matching the same defensive behavior for in-process calls.
- The HDROP structure building could overflow with very large file paths or many files - overflow checks added to prevent negative size calculations that could cause GlobalAlloc to fail.
- Dragging a file to an external app left a ghost icon (the drag-image layered window) permanently visible on the desktop until the app closed - IDragSourceHelper manages the drag-image window lifecycle and must stay alive for the entire DoDragDrop call. The helper was being released immediately after initializing the drag image, before the drag even started, which orphaned the window and prevented ole32 from cleaning it up. The helper is now kept alive through the entire drag and only disposed after DoDragDrop returns.