Compass Release Notes
Compass 1.0.6 (August 30, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Aspect Presets per Chart Type: Aspect presets now belong to a chart type, so the Mundane, Natal and Transit charts each keep their own presets and their own default. A chart window's aspect preset menu offers only that chart type's presets, and a newly opened chart takes its angles from that chart type's default preset — so a Natal chart can open on a wider aspect set than a Transit chart. Presets saved in earlier versions are carried into all three chart types the first time this version runs.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Unsaved Changes Prompt When Closing With The Window Chrome: Closing the Locations editor and the Natal Records editor with the title-bar close button or Alt+F4 discarded unsaved edits without asking. All four ways of closing the editor — File ▸ Exit, the Close button, the title-bar close button and Alt+F4 — now raise the same Unsaved Changes prompt, and Cancel keeps the window open with the edits intact.
• CSV Import No Longer Discards The First Line: Importing a Locations or Natal Records CSV whose first line was neither the exported column header nor a complete data row discarded that line and then reported the import as successful. Such a line is now reported so it can be corrected, and a file whose values are all quoted — as a spreadsheet writes when told to quote every text field — now imports every row, including the first.
Compass 1.0.5 (August 17, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Drag a Body to Its Transit: On Mundane and Transit charts, hold Shift and drag a transiting body around the wheel to jump the chart to the precise moment that body transits the degree you drop it on. A translucent copy of the body's glyph, position dot, and coordinates label follows the pointer around the body band, and the drop snaps to the closest sign cusp, house cusp, chart angle, or other body (natal bodies included) within 1.5°. Drag counter-clockwise — the direction bodies travel through the zodiac — for the next transit, or clockwise for the previous one; press Escape during a drag to cancel it.
• Drag a Body to Its Conjunction: On Mundane and Transit charts, hold Ctrl and drag a transiting body onto another transiting body to jump the chart to the precise moment the two are conjunct. The same translucent copy follows the pointer, sticking to a target body within 1.5° and showing its name; drag counter-clockwise for the next conjunction or clockwise for the previous one. Releasing away from any body leaves the chart unchanged, and Escape cancels the drag.
Compass 1.0.4 (August 14, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Per-Window Chart Information Display: Each chart window now carries a Display Chart Info. checkbox that shows or hides the block of location, moment, and calculation-frame details drawn in the center of that window's wheel, where the option previously switched every open chart at once. The Display Chart Info. option on the Chart Settings window's Defaults tab now sets whether new chart windows open with the block showing; from there each window's checkbox is independent. The checkbox sits at the right end of a new strip of display settings beneath the wheel, where the Coord. Format and Display Lat./Decl. settings now live as well, leaving the settings panel beside the wheel to the settings that recalculate the chart.
• Latitude/Declination Display: Each chart window now carries a Display Lat./Decl. checkbox, on the display strip beneath its wheel, that prints each body's latitude — its declination on an equatorial chart — on the body's own ray in a dedicated band just inside the zodiac band, so the coordinates never cross the zodiac glyphs, house numbers, or house cusp coordinates. The Display Lat./Decl. option on the Chart Settings window's Defaults tab sets whether new chart windows open with the band showing; from there each window's checkbox is independent. The value follows the chart's Coordinate Format, as signed degrees and minutes (+17°43') alongside sign coordinates or as signed decimal degrees (+12.792°) alongside cycle angles, labels fan apart automatically when bodies cluster, and the entity menu's Copy Position text carries the same value while the display is on.
• Faster Chart Redraws: Chart windows re-lay-out substantially faster during time stepping, window resizing, and settings edits. The chart now redraws only the parts a change actually touches — an aspect settings edit redraws just the aspect lines, a chart-information toggle just its center block — and repeated text measurements, degree-notch geometry, and line styles are reused between redraws, roughly doubling the time-stepping rate.
• Default Calculation Frame: The Chart Settings window's Defaults tab now carries Zodiac, Coordinate Origin, and Reference Plane options, at the head of its first column, that set the frame every new Mundane, Natal, and Transit chart opens in. A practice working sidereally, heliocentrically, or in right ascension and declination no longer has to change three dropdowns on every chart. Each window's own dropdowns still work exactly as before, so an individual chart can be re-framed without disturbing the default, and changing the default leaves charts that are already open untouched.
• Per-Window Coordinate Format: Each chart window now carries a Coord. Format dropdown, leading the display strip beneath its wheel, choosing between Sign Coordinates (15°Leo37') and Cycle Angles (135.616°) for that window alone. Two charts can now be read side by side in different formats — one in signs, one in cycle angles — where the choice was previously application-wide. The Coordinate Format option on the Chart Settings window's Defaults tab now sets what new chart windows open with rather than re-labelling every open one, and the Defaults tab's settings have been rearranged into two columns to suit.
• Display Tab Renamed: The Chart Settings window's first tab, previously called Display, is now called Defaults. Its settings had grown well past appearance — the zodiac, coordinate origin, reference plane, and house system a chart is calculated in all live there — and every one of them sets what the next chart window opens with rather than changing a chart already on screen. The new name says so, which is why each option reads simply Zodiac or House System rather than repeating the word Default on every row.
• Plane-Specific Parallel Orbs: The Aspect Settings window's Parallels tab now carries separate Ecliptic Orb and Equatorial Orb settings for both the parallel and contraparallel aspects, and every chart automatically applies the orb matching its reference plane — declinations range past ±23° while ecliptic latitudes cluster within a few degrees of zero, so one tolerance could never suit both. The ecliptic orbs default to 0.1° and the equatorial orbs to 1.0°, switching a chart's reference plane re-matches its parallels under the new plane's orb immediately, and a chart opened from an Aquila parallels or contraparallels event applies the orb for the plane the study ran under. Each aspect's chord color remains shared across the planes, and previously saved orb settings carry forward unchanged, seeding both planes with the value in use before the split.
• Checkbox Styling: Checkboxes now carry the same styling as the dropdowns and text boxes beside them, keeping one background and border whether they are ticked or not, so the tick alone shows whether a setting is on. A checkbox that has the keyboard focus now draws the same accent-colored border every other field draws, where before it gave no sign of holding the focus, and the accent color is no longer used to fill a ticked box. Checkboxes also take up the same height as those fields now, so a checkbox row on the Chart Settings window's Defaults tab lines up with the dropdown row beside it.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Unsaved Locations Lost After a Failed Save: Closing the Locations editor with unsaved changes and choosing to save no longer discards those changes when the save cannot be completed. The editor now reports the error and stays open with the edits intact so the save can be retried, matching the Natal Records editor.
• Pasting Into Date and Time Fields: Pasting into a date or time field with the keyboard — Ctrl+V on Windows, Cmd+V on macOS — now replaces the value as expected. Previously the keystroke did nothing whenever the field already held a complete date or time, and the value could only be replaced by right-clicking the field and choosing Paste.
• Clipped Dropdown on the Transit Chart's Ephemeris Tab: The bottom edge of the last dropdown on the Transit chart window's Ephemeris tab — now Paral. Aspects — is no longer cut off. On a display running at a fractional scale such as 125%, the dropdown's lower border and rounded corners were trimmed away; the control now draws in full at every display scaling.
Compass 1.0.3 (August 5, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• About Dialog Icon: The About dialog now shows the application's full-colour icon image in place of the previous single-colour symbol.
• Meridian House System: A twelfth house system, Meridian (Axial Rotation), can now be chosen on any chart and set as the default. It divides the celestial equator into twelve exact 30° arcs, so on an equatorial-reference-plane chart its cusps fall exactly 30° apart; on an ecliptic chart they are unequal. Its first cusp is the East Point rather than the Ascendant.
• Timekeeping System: The application's timekeeping system has been brought up to date.
• Cycle Angle Precision: Positions shown as cycle angles now read to three decimal places instead of five, on the body and house cusp labels alike and in the text the Copy Position and Copy Description commands place on the clipboard. The extra decimals are dropped rather than rounded, so a body is never shown at a position it has not yet reached. The shorter labels also let the house cusp coordinates render at a larger size on many chart sizes.
Compass 1.0.2 (July 31, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Uranian Bodies: The eight Uranian (Hamburg-school) hypothetical planets — Cupido, Hades, Zeus, Kronos, Apollon, Admetos, Vulkanus, and Poseidon — are now selectable in every chart's body lists as a new Uranians group, which always appears last. Each has its own chart glyph and default color.
• Hold to Scroll Through Time: Holding down a chart window's forward or back time-step button now scrolls the chart continuously through time, just as holding the + or - key does. A single click still steps exactly one time unit.
• Keyboard Aspect Reordering: Aspect settings can now be reordered from the keyboard — ALT+UP and ALT+DOWN (OPTION+UP and OPTION+DOWN on macOS) move the selected setting one position in its resolution-precedence order. Dragging a setting with the mouse continues to work as before.
• Chart Information Display: Charts can now print their key information in the center of the wheel — the location and moment (with UTC offset), the natal person, birthplace, and birth moment where applicable, and the zodiac, coordinate origin, reference plane, and house system in use. The text sits on a semi-transparent rounded panel, framed like the chart window's lists, so the aspect lines behind it stay visible, sizes itself to the available space, and always describes exactly what the wheel is showing. Enable it with the new Display Chart Information checkbox on the Chart Settings window's Display tab.
• Automatic No-Line Aspects: The "Nil (no line)" checkbox has been removed from the Aspect Settings windows. Charts now decide on their own when an aspect line would be pointless: any aspect angle within 1° of zero separation — such as the 0° conjunction, or a cycle angle like 359.5° — draws no line, because its two bodies sit at nearly the same wheel position. Every aspect setting now simply carries a color, and existing settings are updated automatically.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Default Chart Orientation: The Mundane, Natal, and Transit orientation defaults on the Chart Settings window's Display tab now always apply to new charts. Previously, changing the orientation inside a chart window quietly overwrote that chart type's default, so the next chart of that type opened in the last orientation used rather than the one configured. The orientation dropdown in a chart window is now purely a per-window choice, like the Paral. Aspects dropdown beside it.
• Chart Information Line Spacing on macOS: The chart information panel no longer stacks its lines too tightly on macOS. The panel draws in each platform's own interface font, and the macOS font leaves no space between one line and the next, so the text read as cramped; it now carries the same line spacing the panel has always had on Windows. Charts on Windows are unchanged.
Compass 1.0.1 (July 26, 2026)
The following functionality has been added or enhanced:
• Control Labels: Control labels were re-styled with a slightly smaller font size, so they sit more subtly beside the values they describe.
• Natal Records UTC Offset: Exported natal records now include a UTC Offset column after the natal date, recording the clock offset in effect at the moment of birth. For a birth time that occurred twice — during the repeated hour when clocks are set back at the end of daylight saving — the offset identifies which occurrence is meant, so importing the file restores the exact birth moment instead of assuming the daylight-saving occurrence.
• Location Import and Export: The Locations editor now has a menu bar matching the Natal Records editor, including a Data menu for importing and exporting the location collection as a CSV file with Name, Latitude, Longitude, and Height columns.
The following bugs were fixed:
• Retrograde Bodies on Hand-Off Charts: When a chart is opened from an event in Aquila, retrograde bodies are now marked as retrograde in their position labels, including after stepping backward in time into a retrograde period. Previously the retrograde marker was missing on charts opened this way, even though it appeared correctly on charts opened directly in Compass.
• Held Time-Step Animation: Holding down the + or - key to advance the chart through time now repaints the wheel continuously as the moment moves, so you can watch the planets travel. Previously the wheel stayed still until the key was released, even though the date was already racing ahead.
• Time-Step Keys in the Date and Time Fields: The + and - keys now step the chart moment even when the date or time field, or a closed dropdown, has the focus. Previously those fields absorbed the keys and did nothing with them, so the chart could only be stepped after moving the focus elsewhere. A date or time typed into a field but not yet entered is now applied before the step, so the step moves the moment you typed.
• Entering a Typed Time: Typing a time into a time field and pressing Enter now redraws the chart for that time, matching what pressing Enter in a date field has always done. Previously the typed time sat in the field until the focus moved elsewhere, so the chart appeared to ignore it.
Compass 1.0.0 (July 21, 2026)
Initial release. Compass is a professional astrological charting application for casting and reading traditional wheel charts.
The following functionality is available in this release:
• Wheel Charts: Cast Mundane, Natal, and Transit charts as traditional wheels, each in its own window.
• Chart Configuration: Set the frame, bodies, and aspects for a chart in the configuration panel beside its wheel.
• Chart Time Navigation: Step a chart forward and backward through time to see how the sky changes.
• Chart Settings: Choose the appearance and display defaults that new charts start from.
• Aspect Settings: Decide, for each chart type, which aspects the wheel recognizes.
• Reference Data: Maintain shared Locations and Natal Records for reuse across charts.
• Aquila Integration: Jump from an event in Aquila straight to its matching chart in Compass.
• Update Notifications: When a new version of Compass is available for download, a toolbar button with a download glyph appears next to the theme toggle button in the top-right region of the application window. Clicking the button opens the download page for Compass in your default web browser.