What's new

• Home is about manuals. The start page says how many manuals the library has, shows Record a task, the manuals you opened last, what needs attention, this week's completions and read receipts, and your folders and labels (they left the sidebar). After an update, a What's new card says in three lines what changed, once.
• Onboarding by role (Office plan). A role is a job in your team: Front desk, Delivery drivers. Its plan is what someone new reads and does first, in order: a document is read and confirmed, a manual is done step by step with Follow along, each with a due date. Send it once; anyone added to the role later gets the plan too. The new hire's Home shows the plan with what is overdue first, a Progress tab shows everyone, and six Learn Sopycat tutorials teach the app itself. Names come from a people list the library keeps, so they are picked, never guessed, and nobody needs an account.
• The minute after Stop. A manual whose recording was just written opens with a bar across the top: how many steps, what to check first, the picture that needs a look.
• The first recording. Until this computer has made one, the Record page guides it: one small task, what the bar does, what happens at Stop.
• Pause while recording. Pause on the bar, or Ctrl+F7, for a phone call, a slow page or a password: nothing done while paused becomes a step, and the pause is not in the video. The bar got the app's newer look.
• The tutorial video, yours to shape. The ring and number show only around each click (0.35 s before to 0.9 s after) instead of lingering until the next step, and when a click is a drag the ring follows what is dragged. Captions: every step's number and title, inside the MP4 and as .srt and .vtt beside a saved copy. Trim a step's clip, leave a step out of the video, play a step from its card with Watch, go back to the card from the chapter playing, and say a step again from the microphone when the words were wrong or missing. The screen is captured at 30 frames a second now. Follow along can save the video too.
• Find and replace in every step (Ctrl+H): titles and instructions at once, for the day a program renames a button. Pictures, links and formatting stay as they are.
• Choices in manuals. A step's title can ask a question; each answer sends the reader to the step it goes to, in the PDF, the Word file, the web page and Follow along.
• Document control. A manual carries a version, who approved it and when, and a change note; a private-details sweep lists what a manual still shows; Tidy the steps straightens names and numbers, and one Undo takes a tidy back.
• Steps Recorder files. A .mht from Windows Steps Recorder becomes a Sopycat manual, pictures and all.
• PDF edits that flow like a document. In Edit text, a line that grows past its column wraps, what is below moves down, and what no longer fits goes to a new page. Find and replace works in PDFs and Word files. Bookmarks and links can be added and followed.
• Redaction you can trust. A redaction takes whole words and leaves the page editable; Find and redact looks beyond the page; Remove hidden information lists what the file carries out of sight (and 3.0.2's copy of the original text, which a redacted file kept out of sight, is gone for good). Every PDF saved with a password opens in every reader again.
• A shorter line closes up. In Edit text, words deleted from a line no longer leave a gap: the rest of its row (a phone number and email after a bullet, the rest of a sentence in bold) moves in after it with the spacing and links it had, and a line emptied completely lets the row start where it started. Words moved along a row also keep every letter when the file carries two copies of a font.
• Edits stay in view across the tabs. A mark made on Mark up shows on Edit text, the words typed on Edit text show on Mark up, and so on for pictures and fields, until Save; each tab's name says how many changes it holds, and Read says they are on the editing tabs.
• Make a PDF fillable. A flat or scanned form opened on Fill in offers Make it fillable: Sopycat finds its write-on lines (solid, dotted or dashed), the cells of a table with a label in each, drawn boxes and checkboxes on every page, names each by the printed words beside, above or under it, and makes Signature and Date boxes from their labels. You untick what is not a field, add the rest and save; the form then opens in any PDF reader as a form.
• Accessible PDFs. Manuals save as tagged PDFs with picture descriptions; Check accessibility says what a PDF is missing; edits keep the tags. Archive copies (PDF/A-2b) for records kept for years.
• Word files. Tracked changes and comments, with Accept and Reject; table rows and columns; pictures resized by their corner; the body edited as one page; a document opens in a fraction of the time.
• Sharing without Sopycat. Keep a PDF in Saved files up to date after every edit, for the shared folder. A web page saved from a manual takes the tutorial video along, with a button for each chapter. A folder saves as one PDF: a contents page whose entries jump to each manual, and a page number on every page.
• The library. Manuals and Documents open newest first; F2 changes a card's name in place; the save window opens where that kind of file last went; Recent in the sidebar is always open.
• A cleaner look. A neutral canvas, cards without hairlines, titles in the text colour, violet only for the main action, states shown as a shape and a word, step numbers as rounded squares, Settings grouped, and Size & Contrast in Settings: the interface size, a higher-contrast mode and reduced motion. Every target is at least 24 pixels and no text is smaller than 12.
• If you redacted a PDF with 3.0.2, open it in 3.0.3 and choose More › Remove hidden information: 3.0.2 left the redacted words inside the file, out of sight, and this takes them out.
• Steadier. Sopycat always shows its window at start; nothing is redone at every launch; a slow computer gets through a 100-step manual (a suite now runs with the processor slowed four times over); two people saving runs at once lose nothing; typing in any dialog keeps its focus.

• Home. Sopycat opens on a Home page: record a task, search everything, the documents you opened last as a list with their pictures and menus, the tools people come for (edit a PDF, fill in a form, sign, redact, edit a picture, convert, combine, batch jobs), your library counted by file type, what needs attention, this week's completions and read receipts, and files dropped anywhere on it join the library. Once you have a few manuals, the explainer card makes way for Recent and Record a task sits in the header.
• Documents by file type. The Documents page files everything under PDFs, Pictures, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Word and Text, with a row to see one type at a time, or group by folder instead.
• Show in folder and Copy file on every document, so a file is one click from Explorer, an email or a chat.
• Steps. Drag a step to another place by the grip beside its number; the numbers on the pictures follow, and every move has Undo. A + between any two steps adds one right there (the ⋯ menu adds before or after a step too), with a new choice, Take a screenshot now. Duplicate this step makes a copy with its own picture. Several pictures pasted or dropped onto a + become one step each. Shift+click selects several steps to move or remove together, and Alt+↑ and Alt+↓ move a step from the keyboard. A step can carry a note saying why it matters, which goes into every export and into Follow along.
• Word documents, edited in place. A Word file opens on its own page, with its margins, fonts, headings, lists, tables, pictures, header and footer, and every paragraph is typed in where it stands. Saving changes only the characters you typed; everything else in the file, from the styles to the footer, comes back out exactly as it went in.
• Re-record one step. A step's menu records just that step again; what is recorded takes its place and the steps around it stay as they were.
• The tutorial video follows the manual. A step recorded again plays from its new recording, steps added from another recording play from theirs, a step moved plays where it now is, and a step taken out takes its stretch of film with it. The video is made again by itself a few seconds after the last change, and its chapters and Follow along clips follow.
• Spreadsheets. A chart on a sheet of its own has a tab beside the worksheets and is changed like any chart. Pictures placed on a sheet show where they sit, and can be moved, resized or taken out. Workbooks other programs wrote (openpyxl and the like) open with their notes, tables, pictures and charts.
• Keyboard. Ctrl+Shift+R records or stops, Ctrl+N starts a manual by hand, Ctrl+O adds a document, from anywhere.
• Usage Stats in Settings: how much this computer has used Sopycat, counted in a file beside the settings and never sent anywhere.
• Little things. Everything clickable shows the hand; every icon-only button says what it is under the mouse; a file whose preparation failed says why, with Try again, Convert it and Open in its app; empty pages offer the next step; a Word file's card shows its first page; a library of hundreds scrolls without laying out what is off the screen; the record buttons lost their blinking dot, and the sidebar no longer carries one (Home, Manuals and Ctrl+Shift+R start a recording).
• Your documents by type, on disk. A Documents folder at the top of the library holds the latest version of every document under PDFs, Word, Pictures, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Text and Other, named after the document, linked to the library's own file. Open them from Explorer or any program; a file saved over there comes back as a new version. Settings › Library Location turns it off.
• Live slides. The slide you edit is live: words typed in the list or right on the slide (double-click a box) show on it as you type, in the deck's own fonts, sizes, colors and bullets, and its thumbnail follows. Click a box, picture or shape to select it, drag it to move it, drag a handle to resize it or the round handle to turn it; edges and centers snap to the slide and to each other, the arrow keys nudge, and Undo and Redo take moves back. Each shape is drawn by the Office pack on its own, so it moves at once and looks exactly as drawn. A box that shrinks its words to fit does so as you type, and the save writes the size as PowerPoint does. The slide's menu adds, copies, moves and removes slides, and Add a text box and Add a picture put new ones on, all written into the deck itself.
• Picture editor. Circles, lines, freehand drawing, numbered markers and a signature, with a thickness for strokes and a size for words: the same tools as a PDF's Mark up.
• Clearer to see what you edit. In the light theme, the surfaces you type on stand off the background, every field and text box has an edge that is easy to see, and the box or paragraph you are typing in is outlined in violet.
• Getting started moved from Home to the sidebar, under More: the three things to try first, ticked off as you do them, and the tour.
• Fonts. Sopycat brings a library of about 30 free font families (Geist, Inter, Roboto, Open Sans, Montserrat, Poppins and more) and same-width stand-ins for Calibri, Cambria, Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia and Segoe UI, so decks and documents are drawn in the fonts they were made with on any PC, Word pages in the app included. Fonts go only into Sopycat's own Office pack, never into Windows.
• Pictures. Undo all takes back every change since a picture was opened. A picture's card in the library now shows the edited version, the right way up, where it used to show the picture as it was brought in, and a phone photo on its side.
• Decks. A deck that carries its own fonts is drawn in them. A deck opens and saves at once while its slide pictures draw in the background; a save changes only the characters you changed; a line's bold, italic, size and color can be set; a note says when a deck uses a font this computer does not have.
• Faster. The Office pack is warmed up after launch, so the first conversion of a session takes seconds, not twenty. In a library of thousands, a save no longer reads the whole library again (listing it went from about a second to a few hundredths), and the Documents folder follows a change in milliseconds. Typing in a long manual stays smooth, and drawing on a large photo follows the pointer.
• Plans. Reading confirmations, training records and regulated-office mode need an Office key during the free trial too, and say so where they appear: Office plan in the menus, Office beside Records. Manuals saved during the trial carry a small Made with Sopycat mark in the bottom right corner; once a key is entered, nothing saved after has it.
• Search finds single letters in names ("Form B"). Color corrections and minor edits.

• Manuals and Documents each have their own place in the sidebar, in place of the Library page. Sopycat opens on Manuals.
• Convert files now also combines several files into one PDF, in the order you choose, so Make a PDF is no longer a separate tool.
• Labels show only the ones you make.
• Other minor edits.

Sopycat 3.0 keeps everything on your computer. No AI writes your manuals and nothing is sent to an AI service, private typing never reaches a manual, and saving a manual takes one button.

• No AI writing. Every manual is written on your computer from what Windows reports about each click and what you typed, for example "Click Save". The options to write with a downloaded model or with your own Anthropic key are gone, along with Settings › Writing Style. A saved Anthropic key is deleted from your computer the first time 3.0 starts.
• Private typing is left out. Passwords, card, social-security and phone numbers, email addresses, long account numbers, and anything typed into a box named for private details never reach the manual. The step says "Enter the Card number" instead, and the pictures from that recording are checked and blurred, the box included.
• View as PDF. See a manual exactly as its PDF will look, in a window of its own, then print it or save it. Nothing is saved unless you choose to.
• One Save as button. Save a manual as a PDF, a Word document, a web page, a text file or its tutorial video from the same place, at the top of the manual.
• Saved files. What you save lands in a Saved files folder inside your library: manuals in Saved files › Manuals, and copies of documents, from a document's ⋯ › Save a copy, in Saved files › Documents. Saved files in the sidebar lists both, opens them in Sopycat, and lets you drag one into an email. Saving the same thing again replaces its file.
• A tidier library folder. Sopycat's own files (each manual and document, Recently deleted, the records and the audit log) now sit in a hidden folder called Library data, so the library folder shows only what you saved. A library made with an earlier version is moved over the first time 3.0 opens it. A library that other computers share is left as it is until you press Tidy the folder, after every computer has 3.0. Backups still restore into any version.
• A simpler sidebar. Library, Records and Saved files, with Recently deleted, Backup and restore and the Help center under More. The Library's Everything tab is now called All.
• Word files fit the page. A manual saved as Word now has Letter pages with 1-inch margins, so the pictures no longer run past the right margin.
• A complete audit log. In regulated-office mode, every file saved out of the library is logged, Word, text and video included. Signatures are logged as signatures, with regulated-office mode on or off.
• An anonymous computer ID. The key check now sends an ID such as "Sopycat PC 7F3A21" instead of your computer's name and Windows user name. Settings › Plan and License shows it, so we can still free the right computer if you ask.
• Works behind an office proxy. The key check and the downloads for speech to text and the Office pack now go through the proxy Windows is set to use, as many office networks require.
• A recording bar that fits. The bar is only as wide as what it shows, grows to show the whole name of the last step, and no longer says "no marks".

• When you edit a PDF, its pages scroll one after another, as in a PDF reader, and you can work on any of them where it is. The tools on the left stay where they are, with more room.
• Color corrections, spacing and other minor edits.

Spreadsheets in Sopycat now do the things offices use Excel for most, and every workbook can be edited, whatever it has in it.

• Charts. A workbook's charts show on the sheet and change as soon as the numbers under them do. Make a column, bar, line, area, pie, doughnut or scatter chart from the cells you select; drag it to move it, drag its corner to resize it, and change its kind, title, legend and stacking. Charts are saved as real Excel charts.
• Pivot tables. Sum up a table by its rows and columns with a sum, count, average, maximum or minimum. Pivot tables a workbook came with can be refreshed, changed or removed, and new ones are saved as real Excel pivot tables.
• Every workbook can be edited. Saving now changes only what you edited in the file and leaves everything else exactly as it was, so workbooks with macros, slicers, sparklines, form controls or links to other workbooks no longer open read-only. Macros are kept but never run in Sopycat.
• Newer Excel functions such as XLOOKUP, IFS, SWITCH, TEXTJOIN, MAXIFS and MINIFS are worked out in Sopycat and saved so Excel reads them as its own.
• More room for documents. Spreadsheets, PDFs, Word files, decks, pictures and text files use the whole width of the window.
• Step numbers. The number on a step's picture, in the tutorial video and on screen now sits exactly in the middle of its circle. Manuals you already made are redrawn once, by themselves.
• Follow along moves from one step to the next without the film going blank in between, on a lighter background.

Sopycat now opens the documents an office works with as what they are, and lets you change them without leaving the app.

• Spreadsheets. Excel workbooks and CSV files open as real spreadsheets, with their sheets, colours, borders, number formats, merged cells and frozen rows. Type into cells and formulas are worked out again straight away, on every sheet. Bold, colours, alignment, number formats, borders and merged cells; add and remove rows and columns (formulas and sums move with them); sort, freeze, find and replace, fill down, copy and paste to and from Excel, and add, rename or delete sheets. Saving writes a new version in the file's own format: an .xlsx stays an .xlsx, a CSV stays a CSV with every value exactly as written.
• PowerPoint. Decks open slide by slide, and the words on each slide can be changed, bullet by bullet. Only the words you change are rewritten, so the design, pictures, fonts and animations stay exactly as they were.
• Pictures. A new picture editor turns, flips and crops pictures, draws boxes, arrows and highlights, adds words, and pixelates names and numbers you don't want seen. A JPG stays a JPG.
• Older formats. .doc, .rtf and .odt files now open in the Word editor; .xls, .xlsb and .ods as spreadsheets; .ppt and .odp as decks; HEIC, TIFF, BMP and AVIF pictures as PNG. The file you added is always kept beside the one you edit. JSON, XML, log and YAML files open in the text editor.
• Make a PDF copy of any document from its ⋯ menu. A spreadsheet becomes one page per sheet, as wide as the sheet, instead of being cut across pages.
• Documents added with an earlier version as PDFs can be opened as the spreadsheet, deck, Word file or picture they really are, with one button.
• Spreadsheets, decks, Word and text files now ask Save, Discard or Cancel when you leave them with unsaved changes.
• Search finds words inside spreadsheets and decks too.

• Settings opens as a window over the page you were on, with its pages listed down the left (Plan and License, Backup and Restore, Screen Recording and the rest). Each page has only its own settings, and the × or Escape takes you back where you were.
• The gear at the top of the sidebar opens Settings, and the command palette (Ctrl+K) goes straight to any setting.
• PDF tools and Labels in the sidebar sit under their own line, and PDF tools can be folded away like Folders. Sopycat remembers which you folded.

• Color corrections and minor visual edits.

• A Recent section at the top of the sidebar lists the documents you opened or changed last, and Recent and Folders can be folded away to keep the sidebar tidy.
• Color corrections, spacing and other minor edits.

• Sopycat can now be bought. The free trial lasts 14 days with every feature, and needs no account, no card, and nothing about you is sent.
• When the trial ends, Sopycat becomes read-only. Everything still opens, and you can search, pin, label and file into folders. Recording, editing, importing and exporting wait for a key. Nothing is deleted.
• A new first section in Settings, Your plan and key, is where you paste your key and choose Activate. Release this computer frees the key for another computer, and Manage your plan opens your orders to cancel, change your card or find a receipt.
• Your key keeps working after you rename the PC.
• Reading confirmations, the Records page and regulated-office mode come with the Office plan after the trial. Training records (Follow along completions and reading confirmations) are kept on the Office plan; on Individual, Follow along still works but nothing is recorded.
• A new sidebar: Manuals and Records at the top, the PDF tools (Edit a PDF, Make a PDF, Convert files, Batch jobs) grouped together, and Everything, Manuals and Documents tabs at the top of the Library.
• Tutorial videos have a chapter for each step.
• Review-date reminders: when a manual's review date comes, Windows reminds its owner while Sopycat is open.
• Problem reports you email yourself: Save and email, in Settings › Support, saves a report and opens an email to us. You attach the file and send it.
• Imported files and attachments are handled more safely.

• An updated Sopycat icon, color corrections and minor edits.

• Better text spacing in some PDFs, and minor edits.

• An updated sample manual and minor edits.

• An updated icon and typeface, color corrections and minor edits.

Tested against a real procedure in Chrome: getting from the YouTube home page to the advanced settings and copying an ID.

• Buttons and links on a page that has only just loaded are named correctly: Sopycat asks about the spot your pointer rests on just before you click.
• A click is never named after a neighboring button, and a label half hidden by the pointer is read from a moment before the pointer got there.
• Each step's picture is the moment you clicked, with the pointer on the button.
• The outline round each click is violet, and the step number sits on it, centered on its top edge. Neither ever covers what you clicked. Existing manuals are repainted in the new look.

Sopycat: SOP as in standard operating procedure, and a copycat that watches a task once and writes it down. The first mark was a magnifying glass with a cat's ears, reading the lines of a document.

• A violet look throughout, and a dark theme that is almost black with a trace of violet. It now opens dark from the first moment, and switching fades softly.
• The box round each click in a step's picture covers the whole control: all of a table row, a checkbox with its words, the whole button.
• Blurs on a step's picture now also cover that step in the tutorial video and in Follow along.
• With automatic blurring on, pictures are now blurred before an online writer sees them.
• A manual inside a folder shows Move to folder in its menu again.

• Steps are named from what Windows reports about the control you clicked: a button's caption, a tab's name, a field's label, a table row's first cells.
• Every name read from the screen is checked against a dictionary, so a smudge of pixels never becomes a step title.
• Opening a list or menu and picking from it is now one step: Choose Canada in Country.
• The recording bar shows the name of each click as you make it.
• Buttons never spill out of their panels, the smallest window keeps the Library's buttons on one row, and Escape closes every dialog.

• PDF edits on every tab wait together and one Save writes them all. Switching tabs keeps them.
• Marks on a PDF each have an ×, pictures and signatures turn a quarter at a time, and text boxes can be dragged after you place them.
• Blurred areas on a step's picture can be moved and resized.
• New tools: Edit a PDF and Convert files. Word, Markdown and text files open straight into their editors.
• Folders: rename from the folder page, one button to close them all, and a click on a folder opens it.
• A full quality pass: 73 problems found across every feature, 69 fixed in 2.2.2.

• A narrated recording also becomes a tutorial video, with a ring on each click and a caption per step.
• Record more steps into an existing manual, add steps from a video file, or make a manual by hand from screenshots.
• Follow along: click the film to pause and play it.