■ Fixed screenshot to “React on TikTok” flow

■ Share to TikTok! Take a screenshot, react, win a prize?
■ Long press the app icon for a gift ;)
■ A very frustrating red meta challenge got some visual love and now gets easier each time you “die”
■ Fixed a related red meta challenge not noticing you completed it sometimes (sorry!)
■ Smoother wormhole transitions
■ Replaced the old loading spinner with something nicer
■ Fixed a handful of crashes
■ Various store and purchase polish

■ Stuck on the tutorial? Now you can skip and come back to it :)

■ Hot fix for a crash affecting completionists! (Players who have completed every challenge)

3.0!

Blackbox turned ten this week! A crazy milestone I never could have imagined when I first hit submit a decade ago. The game has gotten so much nicer in the years since 2.0, so while this release only contains some of that work it still feels like the right time for the big number. So much more to come throughout the year ;)

The New
■ Liquid Glass in delightful places
■ Smoother, curvier light transitions
■ The wormhole for leaving challenges is much smoother and now politely dismisses itself if you leave it open too long
■ Tutorial is a bit more forgiving now (for some)
■ Social buttons beg to be tapped a bit more now

The Fixes
■ Fixed the hint store button sometimes disappearing when hint credits are rewarded
■ Fixed hint purchasing buttons not showing up after running out of hint credits
■ Fixed a purple challenge not hearing you the first time you opened it
■ Fixed a orange challenge skipping frequencies in its volume steps
■ Fixed camera preview freezing in a couple of scan challenges
■ Fixed a pink challenge stubbornly snapping its lights to the wrong spots on first open
■ Improved accuracy handling for a blue challenge that cares about where you are
■ Fixed push button animation flickering when leaving challenges
■ Better VoiceOver support across several challenges
■ Squashed a handful of crashes
■ Lots of behind-the-scenes polish and performance work

■ Added Traditional Chinese localization! 係時候跳出框框諗吓喇
■ Fixed a purple challenge that wasn't listening very well
■ Improved an orange challenge that some altitude sickness
■ Fixed some animation issues with the push notification button
■ Squashed a few crashes

■ Now asking important questions at even better times

New challenges are actively in the works, but for now…

■ Squashed a bunch of audio crashes
■ New 3D glass tilt effect on Barriers
■ A certain dark-red meta challenge no longer crashes at the end of the month
■ A dizzying red challenge behaves better if you leave it part-way through solving
■ A certain sticky challenge now has better visual and audio feedback
■ A 6 Light lavender challenge now uses a lot less of your battery
■ Fixed some AirPod audio routing issues
■ Fixed an infinite hint-credit glitch between shared devices
■ Fixed an issue that could cause players to lose progress after reinstalling

مرحبا! Arabic is here! (and full right-to-left support with it)

■ Lights now flash with a subtle HDR effect when they turn on
■ App launches are noticeably faster
■ Fixed an orange challenge that sometimes stubbornly didn’t accept the last signal
■ Fixed an edge-case with the two-part red challenge near the top
■ Fixed QR challenges staying paused after closing the hints screen
■ Fixed credits heart icon not filling when you read all the credits :)
■ Squashed a handful of crashes
■ Arabic & right-to-left improvements: hint text displays correctly, buttons no longer get cut off, credits scroll the right direction

■ Squashed several audio-related crashes (Core Audio, you keep me humble)
■ Reduced CPU usage while VoiceOver is active from "space heater" to "reasonable"
■ Fixed app rotation misbehaving on iOS 26
■ Tutorial is now a bit more forgiving on iPads
■ Smoother barrier animations
■ Credits names scroll more consistently across devices
■ iPad improvements: better text scaling, nicer store layout, fixed layout on iPad Mini, fixed clipped launch image on those new giant iPads
■ Updated many localizations to be more complete!

■ Fixed a crash for players playing with the grid
■ Fixed wormhole transitions back to the grid (once again buttery smooth)
■ Fixed lots of little delays while moving about the game
■ Attempted to fix another audio crash (when will it end?)

■ Smooth and fun new grid ripple animations (tap, hold, and drag around!)
■ Faster app launch
■ Fixed occasional stutter when opening puzzles and tapping the grid
■ Fixed sound effects sometimes not playing more than once
■ Fixed some crashes

■ Fixed a misbehaving challenge next to the notifications icon (for good this time!)
■ Fixed a bug where the screenshot UI wouldn’t dismiss on some devices running iOS 26
■ Improved how I ask you for money to support my work (shoutout to Alex and Yo-Wei from Hyperfixed and Proxy who kicked my butt into gear to finish this redesign)

■ Fixed a misbehaving challenge next to the notifications icon (for good this time!)
■ Fixed a bug where the screenshot UI wouldn’t dismiss on some devices running iOS 26
■ Improved how I ask you for money to support my work (shoutout to Alex and Yo-Wei from Hyperfixed and Proxy who kicked my butt into gear to finish this redesign)

Big little fixes! (or what I like to call “always polishing my little rock”)

■ Fixed an issue where sharing Blackbox didn’t register.
■ Fixed a lot of visual jank when opening the store
■ Potentially fixed a very impossible to track down audio crash (fingers crossed)
■ Fixed delayed audio in the 3-pink-light challenge (one of my favorite soundscapes!)
■ Fixed some broken accessibility labels
■ Hopefully improved ease of the blue magnifying-glass meta challenge

■ Fixed shiny new glass icons on iPad
■ Fixed bug where closed merch store was partially visible on iPad still (RIP)
■ Fixed dynamic island based animations on newer devices
■ Fixed a crash that resulted when sharing to Instagram Stories from non-OLED devices
■ Add cowboy shaking warning to more challenges

Hello shiny translucent newness

■ Glass panels and buttons galore
■ Rebuilt and polished icons ready for your home screen

■ Fixed a misbehaving challenge next to the notifications icon

■ Fixed some misaligned buttons

That’s all for now :)

■ Fixed a quirk that occasionally made purchasing the game harder (which was not a puzzle)

■ Fixed a Swift bug that occasionally made purchasing the game harder (which was not a puzzle)

This release fixes a few things that broke in a recent refactor (thank you to Bennett for flagging these!)

■ Fixed hints not being navigable by Voice Over
■ Fixed Notification settings changes not saving if toggled via Voice Over
■ Added new rotor for navigating lights via their challenge numbers
■ Simplified Voice Over descriptions of lights and light groups on the grid

■ Quick fix to the top two green challenge! Should be more reliable and easier to see complete now once you uh… do the uh… thing…

■ Rebuilt the two green challenge in the top-right (challenge type 30). It’s solved a bit differently now and should be clearer after recent iOS changes…

■ Fixed a bug with the one orange meta challenge in the bottom-left (challenge type 49). If you’ve had trouble with that one before please give it another try!

■ Rebuilt the alert cards shown in the game (thanks for the assist Pim!). A solid 2/3rds of Blackbox’s code is Swift now! Hooray for me!

■ Fixed an issue with VoiceOver rotors on the home grid

■ Fixed a bug with app icon translations

Fixes! Some big, some small, all made with love to keep your frustration friction-free

■ Fixed a blue meta challenge that had become *nearly* impossible to solve due to an iOS 18 update
■ Fixed the appearance of the four orange challenge on the last two generations of devices
■ Rebuilt all panel interfaces for smoother animations and interactions
■ Fixed some accessibility interfaces like rotors on the home grid
■ Lots of other visual tweaks and fixes

Hot-hot-hot-fix

■ Did you know that some computers are case-sensitive and other ones are not? Anyway it’s totally unrelated to why two puzzles no longer crash!

Hello green, blue, pink icon :)
You can now tint Blackbox’s icon to whatever color your heart fancies

Now, you can not only see what results other players got in the game hub, you can also review all the moves they made! It makes it so much more interesting.