Release Notes
Every change, in the order it shipped.
CONTENTS
?? October 2026
New Features (8)
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01Product Logo in the Licence Email
A new {ProductLogo} placeholder allows the product logo to be displayed at the top of licence emails.
The logo is embedded directly into the email rather than linked from a website, allowing it to display immediately without requiring the recipient to enable external images. A smaller copy of the logo is generated automatically to keep email sizes small.
If the product does not have a logo configured, or the recipient's email application blocks images, the product name is displayed instead.
New products include {ProductLogo} in the default email template. For existing products, click Reset to Default on the Template tab or insert {ProductLogo} using the placeholder list.
Bug Fixes & Improvements (26)
Licence Management (10)
Unlicenced: NoLicenced: Yes
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01An expired trial no longer makes the database read-only
MintEncoder always opens, and everything stays viewable. Only new data is blocked until a Subscription licence is installed.
20 October 2026
New Features (8)
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01Correct and Re-issue Licences
Licence Details has a new button that opens Licence Manager pre-filled from an existing licence. Correct the mistake, generate the new licence, and the original licence is marked Replaced (or Revoked, if you choose to revoke its key). Both licences are linked in their notes and in the Audit Log.
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02Backup Recovery Includes Licence Data
A backup can now be restored on any computer with the backup password. Signing keys are still restored from the Recovery Key.
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03Edit Licence Details
The customer's email address, Transaction ID and notes can now be edited. Every change is recorded in the Audit Log with its old and new value.
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04Restrict Access with Windows Security Groups
Setup creates a 'MintEncoder Users' group and adds the account that installs MintEncoder. Only members of this group (and administrators) can use it.
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05Licence Keys Included in Certificate Emails
Licence keys now appear directly in certificate emails, making them easier for customers to copy and paste. To place the licence key in a specific location, add {LicenceKey} to your email template.
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06Administrator Password Protection
When the Administrator Lock is on, Product Manager asks for the administrator password before opening.
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07Consistent Licence Numbers Throughout MintEncoder
On the certificate, in the email, in the Licence Log, in the CSV export and in the Customer Data Deletion tool.
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08Plain-English Email Error Messages
When a licence email can't be sent, MintEncoder now says what went wrong and what to do (for example: check the spelling of the email address), with the mail server's own message shown underneath.
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09Company details
Settings has a new Company tab for your company name, website, support email and logo. They're set once and used for every product.
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10New licence certificate layout
The product logo and title now sit at the top of the certificate. The footer reads "Delivered by", then your company logo, website and support email, centred. You can change the wording and set the logo width; the height follows.
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11Brand Name is now optional
Leave a product's Brand Name blank and your company name is used instead, in emails and as the email sender name.
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12New email placeholders
{CompanyName}, {CompanyWebsite} and {CompanySupportEmail}.
Bug Fixes & Improvements (26)
Licence Management (10)
Unlicenced: NoLicenced: Yes
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01An expired trial no longer makes the database read-only
MintEncoder always opens, and everything stays viewable. Only new data is blocked until a Subscription licence is installed.
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02New licence types are no longer marked as trials by default
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03The Pro licence type must now be named exactly "Pro"
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04Activation
Now requires the EULA to be accepted and refuses an expired licence key.
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05After a trial ends
Email Settings, Licence Types, Release History, Key Manager, Licence Details and Settings are view-only.
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06Installing a Subscription licence after a trial with more products than the subscription allows
provides a dialog box for you to reduce the product count to match the subscription limit.
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07Renew Subscription and Purchase Additional Capacity
Now send the signed licence key, so mintencoder.com works out the price from the licence itself.
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08"Licensing" and "Support" mailboxes are now called Primary and Fallback everywhere
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09Product Code, Prefix and Licensing Model are now fixed once in use
The Product Code can’t be changed once a product is saved, and the Prefix and Licensing Model can’t be changed once licences have been issued for it. To use a different prefix or licensing model, create a new product.
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10Subscription tab shows the licence’s real status
Status now shows Active, Trial Ended, Expired or Revoked, with the status and date in red when the licence is no longer active.
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10A licence email no longer goes out with no sender name when the product's Brand Name is blank.
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11Licence check-in while open
The licence check-in now runs every 6 hours while MintEncoder is open, as well as at launch. A revoked or expired licence, or 30 days without a successful check-in, now takes effect automatically without requiring MintEncoder to be restarted. Messages are only shown when something changes, and an available update is only announced once per version.
Data & Recovery (5)
Unlicenced: NoLicenced: Yes
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01Restore now checks the backup before replacing the current database
And puts the current database back if anything goes wrong.
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02Administrator recovery codes now work only once
And only on the computer and email address they were requested for.
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03Customer Data Deletion
Now also removes the stored licence key and deletes the certificate PDFs.
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04Licence Details shows the status in red
When a licence is not active, and the expiry date in red once it has passed.
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05Archiving a signing key now also archives it in the signing engine
The active key can't be archived until another key is activated.
Audit & Reporting (2)
Unlicenced: NoLicenced: Yes
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01Release History deletions are now recorded in the Audit Log
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02Audit Log
Double-clicking a filtered row opens the correct entry, search now also matches Licence No., and CSV export handles commas and quotes correctly.
Email & Notifications (4)
Unlicenced: NoLicenced: Yes
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01Customer details in licence emails are inserted as plain text
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02Email Settings no longer leaves half-saved values behind when a save fails
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03Email Settings and Release History
Explain how to install the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime if it is missing.
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04Heartbeats are only sent from the Release build
Security & Reliability (3)
Unlicenced: NoLicenced: Yes
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01Install New Licence can no longer be started twice by a double-click
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02Update and download links only ever open mintencoder.com
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03Updated internal and debug checks
Data Entry & User Experience (2)
Unlicenced: NoLicenced: Yes
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01Licence keys copied from a PDF certificate no longer lose a "-" character
The key is printed in fixed lines that never end in "-".
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02Pasted licence keys are cleaned up automatically
Line breaks, spaces and look-alike dashes.
1.2.7
30 September 2026
Remediation Implemented
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Auto Minting of Trial Licences.
The daily Trial key now always publishes at the configured time, regardless of when the last key was published. On start-up, a missed time is still caught up, but only if nothing has been published since that day's scheduled time.
1.2.6
29 September 2026
Remediation Implemented
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Licence Expiry Banner
The banner now show when the licence is due to expire within 7 days, instead of 30 days.
1.2.5
21 September 2026
New Features
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Added licence revocation as a Pro plan feature.
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Added a heartbeat for the Pro plan to interact with the Plugin function.
Heartbeat feature to Pro plan to interact with the Admin/Website comms link.
Added status traffic light to Dashboard for Admin/Website comms link. -
Added in-app subscription renewal for loyalty discount.
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Added data removal feature for GDPR compliance.
Remediation Implemented
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Trial Licence publishing schedue
Will tirgger at scheuled time or when the app is opened if the timeslot has passed.
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Trial License Minting
Auto minting of Trial Licenses now pulls version data from Latest Stable Version.
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System check at install time for C++ runtime files.
Install checks for C++ Runtime files, and installs silently if missing.
1.1.0
09 September 2026 — Initial Public Release
Features
Welcome to MintEncoder 1.1.0
MintEncoder 1.1.0 is the first official release of a licensing platform built for one job: giving software publishers full control over how their products get licensed, without handing control of their licensing infrastructure to a third-party cloud service.
Everything in MintEncoder runs locally. There’s no account to create, no server to maintain, and no dependency on MintEncoder’s own uptime to issue a licence to a customer. You can mint and deliver a signed licence key with your laptop completely offline.
Manage every product you license, in one place
Product Manager gives every product its own identity: branding, a unique prefix that’s checked on every activation, and a choice between Product Capacity licensing (cap how many of something your product creates) or Domain Locked licensing (tie a licence to a specific customer domain).
Every product keeps its own version and release history, so Licence Manager always knows the current version without you retyping it.
Licensing that's actually yours
Every licence is signed with an Ed25519 key pair that never leaves your machine. Key Manager gives you full control over that key: generate it, rotate it when you need to, and roll back to an older key if you ever need to, all without invalidating licences already issued under a previous one.
Licence Manager mints Trial, Subscription, or Perpetual licences in seconds, entirely offline, complete with a PDF certificate and an optional email draft ready to send. Licence Log keeps a complete, searchable record of everything you’ve ever issued, exportable whenever you need it for support or compliance.
Built for the long term
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Automated backups
Up to two locations of your choosing, on a schedule you control
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Recovery Key export,
Move MintEncoder to a new machine or recover from a failure without losing your signing keys or licence history
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Audit Log
Full audit logging of every significant action, searchable and exportable
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Administrator Lock
Protecting the settings that determine whether your business can keep issuing licences, including backups, recovery, and signing keys, behind a password, with email-confirmed recovery so you can never be locked out for good
MintEncoder 1.1.0 establishes the foundation that every future release will build upon. We’re already investing in stronger licence enforcement, additional automation, and workflows that make software licensing easier to manage without sacrificing ownership or security.
Thank you for being here at the beginning of the journey.
Accepted Risks
Every product involves tradeoffs between features, timeline, and risk. Rather than leave these undocumented, we disclose the ones we’ve knowingly accepted below – what they are, why we accepted them, and what (if anything) you should do about it.
When you restore a MintEncoder backup, the app extracts the files inside that backup zip to a temporary folder and reads them back in. It does not independently verify that every file inside the zip is destined to land only within that temporary folder.
In practice, this means restore is designed for backup files that came from MintEncoder itself – either a backup you made on this machine, or one you deliberately exported for disaster recovery onto a replacement machine. It is not designed to safely process an arbitrary zip file from an untrusted source.
What this means for you: only restore backup files you created yourself, or that came from someone you trust, the same way you would with any other file you download and run. Do not restore a “backup” someone unexpectedly sends you.
We have chosen not to add extra validation here, since doing so would not change the underlying requirement (trust the source of your own backups) and the realistic risk is low – exploiting this would require someone to convince you to restore a file they crafted for that purpose.
Backup zips are AES-256 encrypted, but that protects each file’s contents, not the archive’s file listing. Opening a backup zip in Windows Explorer, 7-Zip, or any other zip tool – on any machine, without the password – will show you the folder and file names inside (Data, Signer\keystore.dat, Licences\<LicenceId>.pdf, and so on). The password is only asked for when you actually try to extract or open one of those files.
This is a property of the ZIP format itself, not a gap in how MintEncoder encrypts backups – the standard format has no widely-supported way to encrypt the directory listing separately from file contents, and this is true of essentially every AES-encrypted .zip, regardless of what created it.
What this means for you: anyone with the zip file can see what’s inside it and roughly how much data it contains, and licence PDF filenames do reveal licence identifiers – but not their contents, not the database, and not the signing keystore, all of which stay fully encrypted. Treat a backup zip the same way you’d treat any file containing business data: keep it somewhere you control, the same as the password itself.
We’ve chosen not to switch to a different archive format (like 7z, which can encrypt file names) purely for this – it would add a dependency and a less universally-supported file type to solve a low-severity exposure (a list of names), not the actual data.
Some applications may not display correctly when used within a Remote Desktop (RDP) session, particularly where display scaling (DPI) settings differ between the local and remote devices.
Symptoms can include:
- Misaligned or overlapping text and controls
- Incorrect window sizing
- Missing buttons or menu items
- Distorted or poorly scaled user interfaces
If you experience these issues:
- Verify the display resolution and scaling settings on both the local and remote devices.
- Ensure the RDP session is configured to use a supported resolution.
- Close and reopen the affected application after making any display or scaling changes.
- Avoid changing between windowed and full-screen RDP modes while the application is running, where possible.
Many applications determine their display layout when they first launch and may not automatically adjust to changes in screen resolution or DPI scaling during an active session. Maintaining consistent display settings can help prevent UI rendering problems.