Changelog

What's new

Every improvement to Poemlight, logged in the open. The app updates itself — just reopen it and you're on the latest version.

dp-v7215 Sep 2026

Share buttons that say what they do

• 🎬 The main share button now says Share Video — because that's what it sends
• 🖼️ A new Share Image button sends the poem card on its own; on desktop it saves the picture instead

media15 Sep 2026

Lighter, quicker shares

• 📊 Shared videos are now around 40% smaller on average — they prepare and send faster, even on mobile data
• 🎬 Very long poems now share as a beautifully framed 90-second excerpt with a gentle fade — hear the full reading in the app
• 📱 Everything now sends comfortably within WhatsApp’s video size limit

dp-v7011 Sep 2026

Sharing, fully Poemlight

• ✨ Share cards now carry the Poemlight name — the old “The Daily Poem” wording is gone
• 🔗 Cards and share text now point to poemlight.com
• 🎬 Shared videos are named “Poemlight — Title (Poet)”, so the name travels with the file in chats
• 🎞️ Shared videos will soon close with a short Poemlight frame — rolling out over the coming days

dp-v6910 Sep 2026

Visit counts, fixed

• 🔢 Our anonymous counters now record visits correctly — yesterday's update logged activity but not visit totals
• Nothing else changed — same app, same privacy (no accounts, no cookies, no personal data)

dp-v6810 Sep 2026

Private by design, better informed

• 📊 We now count a little anonymous usage — which platform you listen on (iPhone, Android or web) and which poems get played — so we know what to improve next
• 🔒 No accounts, no cookies, no personal data — nothing that could identify you, and it never records anything you type
• 🎧 Playback, navigation and sharing work exactly as before — if the counter can't reach us, it gives up in silence

dp-v674 Sep 2026

Every reading, rebuilt from the true source

• 🎙️ The whole library has been rebuilt end-to-end from the original lossless studio recordings — the cleanest possible path from source to your ears
• 🎯 Word-sync re-checked line by line, with a handful of imperfect alignments quietly repaired
• 🎧 Every one of the 318 readings verified at one comfortable listening volume

dp-v6631 Aug 2026

Single-encode audio, hiss gone

• 🔇 Every reading is now rebuilt as one clean high-quality encode from the original recordings — the layered re-processing behind the faint hiss at higher volumes is gone
• 🎧 Same intros, same word-sync, all matched at one comfortable listening volume

dp-v6530 Aug 2026

The last 18, levelled

• ⚖️ The final 18 readings that pure volume-boosting couldn't quite level are now matched with gentle, precise loudness handling — no more quiet outliers
• 🎧 Every reading in the library now plays at the same comfortable volume, from the cleanest surviving sources

dp-v6430 Aug 2026

Cleaner audio

• 🔊 Every reading re-mastered from the earliest surviving recordings — one clean encoding pass at 192 kb/s instead of three stacked re-encodes at 128
• ✨ This strips away accumulated processing loss; voices, intros and word-sync stay exactly as they were
• 🎬 Share videos are being re-baked from the new audio and roll out to the share site separately

dp-v6329 Aug 2026

Cleaner sharing

• 📤 Sharing now sends just one thing — the poem card video with the reading baked in
• 🖼️ No separate card image alongside any more; the card is part of the video

dp-v6229 Aug 2026

A dedicated home for share videos

• 🎬 Share-card videos now stream from their own media home — the app stays light, sharing stays smooth
• 🛠️ Quiet engineering release: this clears the congestion that had been slowing our updates — publishes are back to their usual swift selves
• 🖼️ Image sharing carries on exactly as before

dp-v6029 Aug 2026

Share the card that speaks

• 🎬 Sharing a poem now sends a card video with the reading inside — the card and the voice arrive as one, in either reader's voice
• 🔊 Share audio comes through at 192k AAC — crisp, even over WhatsApp
• 🖼️ On browsers that can't share video, the card image still goes out on its own

dp-v5928 Aug 2026

Share the reading

• 🎙️ Share a poem card and the spoken reading travels with it — a playable voice note right in WhatsApp or iMessage, no app needed
• 🗣️ Each shared recording opens with "Title, by Poet", so it introduces itself to whoever receives it
• 🖼️ On browsers that can't share audio, the card image still goes out on its own, as before

dp-v5828 Aug 2026

A quieter Today page

• 🔥 The streak flame is gone — we'd rather the poem greet you than a number
• 🎙️ The reader toggle (Dan / Rosalind) now sits inline beneath the poem title, centred — no more button floating in the corner of the page
• 📖 Nothing else has moved; the poem is still the point

dp-v5728 Aug 2026

Every poem, one volume

• 🔊 The loudness match now covers the whole library — all 159 poems, both readers, at one matched, comfortable level
• 🎚️ No more volume jumps when switching poem or reader; the two voices had drifted apart by a clearly audible margin
• 🕰️ Read-along highlighting re-synced to the new audio, so the words still land exactly on time

dp-v5627 Aug 2026

Both readers, one volume

• 🔊 The two readers now sound equally loud — switching voices no longer changes the volume
• 🎚️ They had drifted a good few loudness steps apart, clearly audible whenever you switched reader; both now sit at a matched, comfortable level
• 📚 Applies to the pilot poems first; the rest of the library follows along with the spoken intros

dp-v5527 Aug 2026

The poem announces itself

• 🗣️ Six poems now open with the reader gently speaking the title and poet before the poem begins
• ⏱️ A short beat of silence, then straight into the verse — the highlighted line still follows along perfectly, re-synced to the new opening
• 📚 Hope, A Decade, A Birthday, Gunga Din, Ode to the West Wind and An Horatian Ode to start; the full library follows

dp-v5427 Aug 2026

Text that keeps its size

• 📏 The poem text no longer randomly shrinks when you move between pages on iPhone — Safari’s automatic resizing was to blame
• ↔️ Nothing can nudge the page wider than your screen anymore, so no stray sideways wobble either

dp-v5327 Aug 2026

A better fit on small screens

• 📱 The row of tabs along the bottom now fits far more comfortably on a phone — swipe sideways for the rest instead of losing the Queue
• 📐 The header sits a little further from the status bar, with the date and buttons neatly centred on one line
• 📜 The last line of a poem now clears the player bar, including the time row beneath it

dp-v4827 Aug 2026

No more dash at first play

• ▶️ The poem title and poet now appear in the player bar the moment you start listening — no fade from a placeholder dash
• 🎞️ The gentle crossfade still carries you from poem to poem once a title is showing

dp-v4727 Aug 2026

Comfortable on native screens

• 📐 On the iPhone app, the top bar and player bar now sit clear of the notch and home indicator
• 📜 The player bar shows the poem title and poet on two tidy lines — no more “Hope — …” truncation
• 🍏 The fix arrives on iPhone with the next App Store build; the web app is pixel-for-pixel unchanged

dp-v4627 Aug 2026

A new face for your home screen

• ✨ New app icon — Glowing Verse: a warm gold glow between the lines of a poem on deep charcoal
• 📱 The dark icon now appears everywhere the app lives — home screen, install prompts and app launchers
• 🌙 Android round icons no longer flash a pale ring as they open; the charcoal carries right to the edges

dp-v4525 Aug 2026

Motion polish, part two

• ⏱️ The sleep-timer menu now rises in softly as a popover instead of sliding up as a sheet
• 🪶 Collections and favourites cards glide in with a gentle stagger when you open the tab
• 🎵 The player title crossfades as one poem hands over to the next
• 🚶 Page transitions fade up once — staying put no longer replays the animation

dp-v4425 Aug 2026

Motion polish, part one

• ▶️ Play and pause now crossfade into each other instead of snapping
• ❤️ The favourite heart gives a little pop when you save a poem
• Reduced-motion setting respected throughout — animations collapse to instant

dp-v4324 Aug 2026

Follow along in the Sleep Collection

• 🌙 The gentle line highlight now follows the words in Sleep Collection sessions too — same soft glow, dark layout
• 🏷️ Version badge on the About page ("Poemlight · build") so you can always confirm you're current

dp-v4124 Aug 2026

Always know which version you're on

• 🏷️ A small build badge now shows the app version, so you can always confirm you're on the latest
• When an update installs while you're reading, a one-tap ↻ prompt appears — refresh and you're current, no confusion

dp-v4024 Aug 2026

Highlight works from the very first play

• 🔧 The read-along highlight no longer sits invisible until you pause and replay — it's there from the first press of play
• Switching voices mid-playback keeps the highlighting intact too

dp-v3924 Aug 2026

Dialect poems read along perfectly

• 🔧 The read-along highlight now keeps pace on 10 dialect-heavy classics — Gunga Din, To a Mouse, The Walrus and the Carpenter, The Highwayman and more
• Regional spellings and dashes no longer trip the timing — the words stay locked to the voice
• All 10 poems freshly narrated in both voices; hard-refresh once to hear them

dp-v3824 Aug 2026

Read-along sync, everywhere

• ✨ Every poem now follows the words exactly as they're spoken — the last 113 older poems got true word-level timing, in both voices
• No more drifting highlight on long favourites like Annabel Lee
• Hard-refresh once so the new audio can settle in

dp-v3723 Aug 2026

Native app foundations arrive

• 📱 Poemlight now has real iOS and Android app projects — TestFlight and Google Play testing are next
• Version 1.0.0, portrait, cream splash screen — built for calm from the first frame
• The web app you're using is unchanged; no update needed

dp-v3622 Aug 2026

Poemlight

• 🕯️ We have a name: Poemlight — poetry plus candlelight
• New title, home-screen name, top bar, share cards and share text across the app
• Same poems, same voices, same behaviour — nothing else changed

dp-v3522 Aug 2026

Native foundations

• 📱 No visible change — this release quietly lays the groundwork to bring the app to the App Store and Google Play
• One app, two homes: a native install will stream audio and read-along from the live site, so it stays light on your phone
• The offline cache and install banner stay web-only — everything you use today behaves exactly as before

dp-v3422 Aug 2026

Favourites

• ❤️ Favourite a poem from the poem page as well as the player — the two hearts always stay in sync
• Remove a favourite straight from the list, in place — no confirmation step
• Favourites sort newest-first, so what you just loved is at the top
• "Queue all" turns your favourites into a listening queue in one tap

dp-v3322 Aug 2026

Collections, redesigned

• Collections are now alphabetical — the Sleep Collection stays pinned first
• Every collection has its own icon: reflection 💭, winter ❄️, hope 🌅, memory 🕰️, christmas 🎄, science 🔭, night 🌌 and 28 more

dp-v3222 Aug 2026

The Sleep Collection

• 🌙 Seventeen calm poems in one deliberate sequence — shortest first, longest last
• Sleep timer that fades the reading gently to silence
• Dark, sleep-first layout; your place in the sequence is remembered

dp-v3121 Aug 2026

Faster tabs

• Calendar and Search now reopen instantly — no rebuild, no wait

dp-v3021 Aug 2026

Fixes

• The Share icon in the top bar now opens the share card as it should

dp-v24–v2914–21 Aug 2026

The foundation fortnight

• Word-for-word read-along highlighting in both voices
• A voice matched to each poet; your own choice always wins
• Reorder the queue, shareable poem cards, line-level search, per-poem links
• Reliable playback on iPhone (the silent-dead-air bug is gone)
• The catalogue grew to 159 poems — every one recorded in both voices

The log begins here. Earlier releases predate this page.