VoiceStudio/docs/update-channels.md

Update channels (Stable / Preview)

VoiceStudio checks for updates shortly after launch and every six hours while it stays open. You choose which builds it offers you with the update channel in Settings → Updates → Update channel.

Channel	What you get	Who it's for
Stable (default)	The latest tagged vX.Y.Z release.	Everyone. This is the default on every install and every launch.
Preview	The latest main build (a rolling preview prerelease). Newer features, less testing. Falls back to a stable release if one is ahead.	Users who want to try fixes/features before they're tagged, and report issues.

Switching is instant — the next automatic or manual check uses your chosen channel. Downloads show transferred size, total size, speed, percentage and ETA, and can continue while synthesis, transcription or dubbing work runs. VoiceStudio only enables Restart to update after the package has downloaded and passed the updater's signature/checksum verification, and blocks that restart until active work has finished and current drafts are flushed.

There are no accounts or updater telemetry. Stable checks fetch only the Stable manifest. Preview checks compare the small Stable and Preview manifests, then use whichever has the newer version; package download begins when the user asks. Both channels use a different release location:

• Stable → releases/latest/download/
• Preview → releases/download/preview/

The Electron feed publishes a platform/architecture-specific manifest with a SHA-512 package checksum; the Tauri feed publishes its signed latest.json. Each desktop shell rejects a package that fails its integrity check.

Your data during updates

Your voices, projects, history, and settings live in a SQLite database (omnivoice.db) outside the app bundle, so replacing the app never touches them. On the first launch of an updated build, if the new version needs a database schema upgrade, VoiceStudio:

1. Backs up the database first — a consistent snapshot is written next to it as omnivoice.db.backup-<version>-<n> before any migration runs. The newest 3 backups are kept; older ones are pruned automatically. (Databases over 500 MB skip the snapshot, with a log line saying so.)
2. Stops instead of guessing — if a migration fails midway, the app does not start on a half-migrated database and does not silently restore anything. It shows an error naming the backup path so you (or a support thread) decide: retry, report the issue, or roll back by replacing omnivoice.db with the backup.

Settings → Updates shows the timestamp of the latest backup, the release notes of any available update, and a What's new reader for the shipped changelog — all local, no extra network calls.

The Python environment (.venv) is also updated non-destructively: dependency drift after an app update is reconciled in place with uv sync, and a failed sync keeps the previous environment working. The venv is only ever rebuilt when its interpreter is confirmed broken (structural check + a direct probe) or when you explicitly use Clean & Retry.

For maintainers — how previews are built

Preview builds come from main, two ways:

• Nightly (automatic). A scheduled job (07:00 UTC) rebuilds the rolling preview prerelease from main — but only when main actually moved in the last day, so idle days cost nothing. Preview is never more than ~24h behind main.
• On demand. Actions → Desktop Release → Run workflow on main, set publish_preview = true. Useful to refresh immediately without waiting for the nightly. Previews build from main only (hard rule, owner-set 2026-07-16) — the preview-gate refuses any other branch; to preview a fix, merge it to main first.

Either way it builds the matrix and publishes/updates a single rolling preview prerelease — always flagged prerelease, and carrying the same platform set as stable (both verified in CI after each preview publish) — with its own signed latest.json. The tagged latest stable release is never affected. Preview users get the new build on their next check; stable users see nothing.

To stop offering previews, delete the preview release/tag on GitHub — the Preview channel then falls back to stable.