# Changelog

Updated 23 September 2026 · https://headwaterapp.com/changelog

User-visible changes, newest first. Internal work is left out.

## 2026-09-25

- Four guides that answer the questions people actually ask, rather than describing Headwater: [how to keep up with YouTube without watching everything](https://headwaterapp.com/keep-up-with-youtube), [following channels by RSS](https://headwaterapp.com/youtube-rss-feeds), [summarizing a video without installing anything](https://headwaterapp.com/youtube-summary-without-extension), and [doing all of it without a Google account](https://headwaterapp.com/youtube-without-google-account). Each names the tools that are not Headwater, including the free ones.

## 2026-09-24

- [Why the summary is the point](https://headwaterapp.com/best-youtube-summarizer): seven tests any YouTube summary should pass, run on a real video. The single-link summarizer on the home page produces the same summary the digest does, and the copy now says so.
- A page defining the category Headwater belongs to: [What is a YouTube channel summarizer?](https://headwaterapp.com/youtube-channel-summarizer)
- Crawler verification. Requests claiming to be an AI crawler are checked against the vendor's published IP ranges before they count.

## 2026-09-23

- Public pages for readers who arrive without a browser: [About](https://headwaterapp.com/about), [FAQ](https://headwaterapp.com/faq), a [comparison with on-demand summarizers](https://headwaterapp.com/compare), a [comparison with other YouTube digest emails](https://headwaterapp.com/compare-digests), and this changelog. Privacy and Terms moved to the same plain-HTML layer.
- Public summary pages now render in full without JavaScript, so a shared link reads completely anywhere.
- Tagline: "Read the argument, watch what's worth it." It used to say "the gist," which undersold what a summary contains.
- The landing page and public summary pages are now readable by crawlers that do not run JavaScript, including the fetchers behind AI answer engines. A robots.txt and sitemap were added.

## 2026-09-21

- Landing page redesign. The product sits at the fold, followed by a single live demo and the questions people ask before signing up.

## 2026-09-11

- Email addresses that hard-bounce or file a spam complaint are suppressed automatically. No further digests or nudges are sent to them.

## 2026-07-15

- Headwater Edition firmware 1.2 for the Xteink X3 and X4, with a share image and links back to the app.

## 2026-07-13

- The [Headwater Edition page](https://headwaterapp.com/headwater-edition) launched: one file to flash, and the reader fetches the daily issue with one button.

## 2026-07

- Positioning and copy rewritten from "read instead of watching" to "read the gist, watch what's worth it". Summaries are a guide to what deserves your time, written in Headwater's own words, with short attributed quotes and a link to every video.

## 2026-06-29

- E-reader sync became self-serve. Generate your OPDS feed URL from Account, add it to a reader that supports OPDS, and each day's issue arrives as an EPUB. A rolling two-week window of issues plus any collections pushed with Send to device.