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Blockhead v0.45.0 alpha
🕑 Added 2025-08-06 17:23:29 +0000 UTCUpdate Notes
Here is a video where I demonstrate the new things: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOr3WYR8mlo
Note: Old project files will be incompatible with this version, sorry!
Feature: History panel lets you jump back and forth to and from any point in history.
History is not currently saved to project files, so it will be lost when Blockhead is closed.
By default, the history length is infinite, and it is not cleared when closing a project, meaning you can jump back in time to a project that you previously closed.
If you are concerned about memory usage, you can change these two behaviors in settings.
Undo'ing to a previous point in history and then performing some other action will push the new action to the end of the history, and then jump there. The rest of the history remains intact, meaning no work is ever lost. This is contrary to the more classical style of undo that is common in most applications where the "undone" branch of the history would be discarded.
Feature: "Bounce in-place" operation added (default: Ctrl+Shift+B) which will bounce the selected block instances, and then automatically delete them and put the resulting block in their place. In the case where multiple block instances are selected, this operation is only available if:
All block instances are on the same lane
There are no unselected block instances in amongst the sequence of selected block instances.
Feature: Reversible bouncing.
Upon performing a bounce operation, all of the information required to produce the resulting bounced sample is saved alongside the sample data and can be brought back by right-clicking on the channel button (top-right of the sampler block) and selecting "Restore Source Blocks" from the context menu.
Feature: "Comfort View" concept was added. The point of this is to be able to setup a "comfortable overview" configuration of the workspace which is easy to revert back to. This is intended to be used alongside the "Focus" shortcut (default: F) to quickly navigate around the workspace.
Use the "Set comfort view" shortcut (default: Ctrl+Alt+D), to set the comfort view. This saves the following information as the "comfort view" for the current workspace:
The current zoom level
The height of each lane
Whether or not each lane is expanded
Whether or not each track is minimized
Use the "Recall comfort view" shortcut (default: D) to restore the previously saved configuration.
Alternatively you can use the new button to the left of the workspace menu at the bottom-left of the UI:
Left-click the button to recall the comfort view
Right-click the button and select "Set Current View As Comfort View" to set the comfort view
Feature: Custom font support.
You can use your own fonts for the UI by creating a "fonts" directory alongside the Blockhead executable and putting fonts in there. They will then be selectable in the UI settings page.
Supported font formats are: ".TTF", ".TTC", ".OTF", ".OTC", ".WOFF", ".WOFF2".
On macOS, you will need to edit the app bundle and create the "fonts" directory inside the "Frameworks" folder instead.
Update: Project files can now be opened from the command-line or by dragging them onto the Blockhead executable, or by associating *.blkhd files with Blockhead in the OS.
Update: Sample data can now be dropped from the input buffer directly into the Carnival scene.
Update: Carnival scene is now saved to the project file.
Update: Carnival "stereo width" setting is now treated as part of the project state.
Update: "Default to fractional tempo guides" was removed from UI settings (is now a per-project setting available on the project settings panel.)
Update: New keyboard shortcut to slice the hovered block at the cursor position without automatically shrinking the left-hand block (Default: ALT+S)
Update: New checkboxes added to the project settings panel for configuring more default settings for newly created blocks.
Update: New keyboard shortcuts available in settings (unassigned by default):
"Hovered block: Toggle fractional tempo"
"Hovered block: Toggle snapping"
"Toggle default smooth transitions for new blocks"
"Toggle default snapping for new blocks"
Update: Changes to the behavior of copying a macro which can be very difficult to wrap your head around but the end result should work more like what would be expected now I think. There is not really any right answer about how clones should be handled by a macro copy operation. The following explanation is probably inscrutable but it's the best I can do...
Previous Behaviour:
If a macro contains a group of block instances referring to the same block (i.e. block clones) then upon copying the macro, the block instances in the resulting macro would effectively be made "unique", e.g. they would no longer belong to any block clone set.
New Behaviour:
In the same situation, Blockhead will now try to preserve block clone relationships within the macro by creating a new block for every unique block inside the macro and mapping the copied blocks to the copied block instances. If a block contains references both inside and outside the copied macro then that relationship will still be lost.
Bugfix: Very difficult/awkward to ALT+drag the first warp marker on a block.
Bugfix: Harmonics mod buttons get duplicated somehow.
Bugfix: Error if block is sliced while mod editor is open.
Bugfix: Manipulators do not slice correctly.
Bugfix: Macro workspaces don't take the name of their parent macro block.
Bugfix: The visual choke shading effect for gated block sections doesn't update properly.
Bugfix: "Element index out of range" when hovering over certain blink parameter sliders in certain situations.
Bugfix: Manipulator offset/override envelopes get swapped when loading project from file.
Bugfix: Carnival "Stereo Width" slider has no effect.
Bugfix: Tooltips sometimes get stuck on the screen.
Bugfix: Bottoms of context menus are cut off with certain screen scaling settings.
Bugfix: Many other bugs which I did not make a note of during development.
Known Issues:
CLAP plugin state will not work at all with the history (parameters will not revert to their historic state when moving around in history). This will probably not work for a while because I've lost interest (for now) in anything related to 3rd-party plugin support as it has proven to be such a huge development time-sink for very little gain, and this problem in particular is non-trivial to fix.
Links
Manual (WIP): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y6je_g2oNnxClL1eXV20dcQpoyZEkek5LTxQPyEFT0w
Known Issues: https://trello.com/b/MT1A3Zob/blockhead-issues
Discord: Blockhead (discord.com)
Development Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@colugo5172/videos
Comments
Murat G.
On MacOS 15.5, pressing PageUp (Fn + Up) consistently crashes this version.
Michael West
I'm very happy to report that it's at least executing again in Ubuntu! Thank you! I was about to switch to Mint over it... I'm still going to switch but now I can put it off for longer I have so many other things I need to do first! Now for some testing! I'm not even sure if clap is on Linux yet but I though I had a couple plugins running in it before but it's been a minute I might be very confused. PS now I have to get caught up on all the changes and learn how to do things again, I can't wait!
