Phi 2.16.0

Phi Browser 2.16 is a housekeeping release, in the best sense. The sidebar learns to clear and fold itself, tabs can be closed in bulk or with a double-click, web content can run edge to edge if that's how you like it, and Nebula's stories now arrive as letters. Much of it came from your GitHub issues and feedback. Settings is getting longer because of you.

Clear All Tabs does what it says, with manners. Choose it from the File menu or press Command-Shift-K, and every background tab in the Space closes while the page you're reading, both halves of a Split View, any open Peek, and your pinned and bookmarked tabs stay put. The same button appears on the sidebar's divider when you hover. Closed too much? Command-Z brings the whole batch back, groups and splits included. Right-clicking a tab now also offers to close everything to one side of it, and Settings > Advanced has a new option to close a tab by double-clicking it, off by default. We've seen how some of you double-click.

You're about to share your screen, and the sidebar is a neat list of every internal tool, dashboard and half-finished doc you own. Your bookmarks in each Space now live under a folder named after the Space. Click it and all of them fold away together, pinned tabs untouched. Click again when the call is over.

If you'd rather have web content fill the window, Settings > General > Appearance has a new Edge-to-edge content switch that removes the margins around the page. The default keeps the frame; several of you asked for the choice on GitHub, so now it's yours. The color picker for Spaces also grew up: solid and gradient presets, a way to save a color you've mixed yourself, and a restore button for experiments you regret.

Nebula, in Memory, now delivers its stories as a stack of letters. Unread ones come first, a badge counts them, and you page through with the arrows, the keyboard or a swipe. Each letter lists the memories it drew on, and the Phi Chat mark at the bottom opens a new conversation with the story attached, so you can ask what exactly it meant by "a productive Tuesday". You can also share a story as an image.

In sidebar chat, answers drawn from Memory now link the pages those memories came from, hovering a cited source shows a preview, and replies come with follow-up options you can tap instead of typing the obvious next question.

Email Protection, new in 2.15, was too eager, and we heard about it. A message now gets a faint grey button when all is well, a colored badge when something looks risky, and a banner only when Phi is sure. You can mark a sender as trusted, and if you open a link from a message Phi suspects, a strip on the page says so. As before, the text of the message goes to the fast decision model, not the attachments; only their file names count. Separately, Chrome has started keeping bookmarks in encrypted files; Phi's importer now reads those too, and macOS may ask you once to allow keychain access while it does.

Elsewhere, full-screen video behaves: no more getting stuck on the way in or out, and the cursor hides and the controls return when they should. Kiosk windows open on the display you're using, double-clicking the title bar zooms the window again on macOS 27.2, and sync setup now makes sure you've saved your recovery code and explains what happens if you lose it. There are also fixes for the Omnibox with an auto-hiding sidebar, bookmark folders, Peek from pinned tabs and onboarding by keyboard, plus a cleaner picture-in-picture player. And for Phi Sentinel on Telegram, voice messages are now transcribed and answered instead of stopping the conversation.

None of this is a headline feature, and that's rather the point. You spend most of the day in the tab bar and the sidebar, and a browser earns its keep by making the hundredth tab as easy to deal with as the first. 2.16 is a few dozen small decisions in that direction, many of them yours.