What's new

The important changes, newest first.

November 3, 2026

Pop-out player, roomier transcript, new addressNewTap a playing video for a quick set of controls: play or pause, captions right on the video, pop out (it keeps playing when you switch apps or lock your iPhone), and full screen, which opens your phone's own player. A pop-out button also sits next to the transcript button. On phones, drag the transcript up and the video shrinks into a corner so the lines get the screen; pull down or tap the video to bring it back. The main button now just says Grab, and the site also lives at grab.ashaimake.bond.

X videos start right awayFasterOn iPhone and Safari, X videos now play from X's streaming version, so they start in about a second instead of waiting for the whole file to get going, at whatever top quality the post has. Download still gives you the full file. While a video loads, the play button now shows a spinner instead of a pause sign, and X posts are titled with their own words instead of a long number.

Faster videos from TikTok, Dailymotion and moreFasterLinks from video sites other than YouTube now go to two servers at once, and whichever answers first wins. You no longer wait about 30 seconds while the backup server wakes up, and if one server can't get a video, the other still can.

Watch your Shortcut saves with captionsNewWhen the Shortcut saves a video, it starts making the captions right away. Open HiRes Grab and the video waits under "Recent from your Shortcut". Tap it and it plays with captions, and translation if you want it. To set it up, tap "Get the HiRes Grab Shortcut" on the site. That copies your private code, and you paste it once when the Shortcut installs. Running the Shortcut with nothing shared opens the list. To see it on a computer, use "Link another browser".

Space pictures at full sizeNewShare a NASA, Hubble or Webb post and the app finds the picture it came from in the ESA/Hubble, ESA/Webb and NASA image archives, and checks it really is the same picture. You get the full original, and when the post was cropped, the same framing at full size too. NASA's Sombrero galaxy post: 2880 × 1440 in the post, 14318 × 7171 from the original.

Spotify songs and albumsNewSpotify song, album, playlist and artist links now give the cover at full size (2000 × 2000 for albums), and songs also get Spotify's 30-second preview. Spotify only lets its own app play full songs.

Captions on carousel videosFixIn a post with several videos, asking for captions on the 2nd, 3rd or 4th video used to give you the 1st video's captions again. Each video now gets its own.

Captions for silent videosNewIf a video has no sound but shows text on screen, like a nature clip with title cards, Captions now reads that text and turns it into timed subtitles. They're marked as on-screen text. If there's no text either, it says so.

3D models from web pagesNewPages with a 3D scene now show their 3D model files (.glb, .gltf, .usdz) next to the images. You can spin each one right in the card and download it. The scene's lighting map (.hdr/.exr) and GPU textures (.ktx2) come too, and the 3D preview uses the page's own lighting so the model looks the way it does on the site. The lighting card is a 360° view of the room: drag to look around, with a mirror ball for reflections and a grey ball for the soft light. The scene's motion is code on the page, so it doesn't come with the files.

3D keys (experiment)FunThe piano card on Keys & usage has a new "3D keys" button. It shows a 3D keyboard under the original one. Its keys tip down and light up with the same notes, and it drifts slowly as you move your mouse over it. The original keyboard is unchanged.

Pick a day to hearFunThe piano card on Keys & usage now has a small calendar. Tap any day from the past five weeks and it plays that day, one hour per beat, with its own verse. Busier days are shaded darker.

Clear answer for videos with no soundFixWhen a video has no sound track, or one that's completely silent, captions now say so straight away instead of trying to transcribe it. Videos with music but no talking get their own message too.

Hear your usageFunThe Keys & usage page has a new card at the bottom. Press Play and the last 48 hours plays on a piano, one hour per beat. Busy hours climb the keys, rate limits hit a sour low note, and a marker moves along the chart. A short verse sums up the two days. Everything else on the page is unchanged.

Download sizes for YouTubeNewYouTube downloads are assembled while they stream, so your browser can't show how big they'll be. The Max and Plays everywhere buttons now show an approximate size (usually within 1%), and apps using the API get the same estimate to show progress.

Instagram works againFixInstagram started asking many servers to sign in before showing a post, so grabs failed with a "please wait a few minutes" message. HiRes Grab now falls back to Instagram's public embed page, which still has the full-size photos (up to 3072×4096) and videos for every slide of a carousel.

November 2, 2026

Videos that play on every iPhoneFixWhen YouTube's sharpest copy is AV1 or VP9, which older iPhones and the Photos app can't play, you now get two buttons: Max for the sharpest file, and Plays everywhere for an H.264 copy that works on any phone. The button your device can play is highlighted, and Max stays available so you can save it for another device or for editing.

The museum's own originalNewPaste a post that shows a painting and HiRes Grab works out which artwork it is and which museum holds it, then fetches that museum's own full-size file, often 30 to 40 times bigger than the post. The 🏛 button checks any image. "Full size" stitches the museum's tiles into the complete image, such as 7564×9432 for Café Terrace at Night. Each file comes with its source, credit and licence.

November 1, 2026

Captions that outlive the jobAPIFinished captions are now also saved to separate cloud storage with a permanent id, kept for a year, and they keep working even when our processing server is off. Apps can ask to keep the exact audio or video file too, for up to 30 days, with links that support seeking and can be refreshed. Each app sees only its own files and can shorten, extend or delete them.

Same details for every siteAPIEvery grab now includes a tidy info card in one shape for every site: who posted it, the caption, views and likes, the date, tags, length and thumbnail. Anything a site doesn't share shows as empty, never as zero. YouTube info now comes through even when YouTube blocks the server.

Ask a video a questionNew/v1/analyze watches a video, listens to audio or looks at photos and answers in the exact data shape you ask for, such as recipe steps, products shown, or scenes with times. Describe it in words and it designs the shape for you to reuse. YouTube videos are never downloaded for this.

Clean page textAPI/v1/page turns any article or page into clean Markdown with its title, author, date and links, without menus and ads.

Tidier "Whole book" switchFixThe checkbox now sits inside its own button next to the voice and accent choices, instead of drifting below them.

Captions for the exact file you meanNewApps can now send the page and the exact audio or video file. A podcast's own transcript is used only when its timings really fit that file. If ads were inserted differently, we transcribe the file instead. Each result says where its lines came from and how they were timed. Resending a request never starts the work twice, and jobs survive a server restart.

Who said what, by voiceNew/v1/speakers tells speakers apart by how they sound, using a free voice model on our own server, so the audio never leaves it. Send just the moments you're unsure about and it reads only those seconds: 20 clips from an hour-long podcast took 9 seconds. It can also label a whole file (an hour in about a minute).

Listen to whole web booksNewTick "Whole book" before "Read it to me". It keeps going through the Next pages, or reads every chapter linked from a contents page (up to 60), and each chapter shows up in the chapter picker. It follows the site's robots.txt rules and waits between pages.

Whole playlists in one goNew/v1/batch runs captions, info, analysis or downloads over up to 50 links at once. You can also give it a YouTube playlist, a channel or a podcast and it picks up the items itself. Two whole podcast episodes were transcribed in under a minute.

Sweep a whole site for mediaNew/v1/sweep collects every full-size image and video from a gallery, portfolio or auction catalogue, up to 100 pages. It follows the site's robots.txt rules, waits at least a second between pages, and can pack everything into one zip.

Clearer errorsAPIErrors now say exactly what to change, whether trying again will help, and link to a list of every error at /v1/errors.

October 31, 2026

A second private route for captionsCaptionsWhen YouTube blocks the home proxy too, captions are now fetched through Cloudflare WARP first. It is free and nobody outside sees what we fetch. The public archive is only used after that.

Backup transcripts when YouTube blocks usCaptionsIf YouTube blocks both our server and the proxy, captions now come from a public transcript archive. It is sent only the video ID, with no key and nothing about who asked. Apps can switch this off, or ask for existing captions only with no AI.

Plug-in for AI agentsAPIAI agents can now use HiRes Grab as an MCP tool at /mcp. They can find the API on their own through /llms.txt and /openapi.json.

Shared provider registryAPIOther apps that use the same model keys can see at /v1/providers which model runs where, its live state and Vertex spend. They can also borrow the one Vertex slot and report rate limits, so every app backs off together. Keys are never shown.

Keys & usage pageNewA private page at /status (download passcode) shows each key's state, rate-limit errors over the last hour, day and week, a 48-hour chart, and Vertex tokens and cost. It refreshes every 30 seconds.

Faster subtitle translationChangeSubtitles are now translated by Gemini 3.8 Flash on Vertex AI first, usually in a second or two per batch. The gateways and free Gemini step in only if it's busy.

Articles written by Gemini 4 ArgonArticlesTranscript articles and translated articles are now written by Gemini 4 Argon on Vertex AI, one model for the whole article. The previous chain stays as a fallback.

Tighter server securityFixThe video server has a new private access key, and yt-dlp is updated to the latest security release.

October 26, 2026

YouTube links open fasterFixA YouTube link now goes straight to the player instead of checking for a download first. The download check only runs when you tap Download.

Transcripts when YouTube blocks the serverFixIf YouTube blocks the normal connection, finding captions retries over the home connection. Watching and playing still use the normal one.

Download needs a passcode; watching doesn'tChangeWatching YouTube and reading the transcript use the normal connection. Only tapping Download uses the home connection, and it asks for a passcode once per device.

Steadier subtitle translationChangeSubtitles are now translated by agy first, then Gemini. Groq is kept just for making captions.

YouTube downloads are back, up to 4KFixYouTube now goes through a US home connection, so it stops blocking the server. Downloads work again at full resolution.

Long translations finish instead of restartingFixWhen the translator gets busy, a long transcript no longer jumps back to 0%. It keeps what's done, retries the rest, and the translated article links (like Japanese .md and .html) appear when it finishes.

YouTube videos play even when downloads are blockedFixIf YouTube blocks the server, you still get the video card: tap Play to watch it with its transcript and chapters. Only Download waits, and it tells you to try again later.

Watch and transcript without downloadingAPIA new watch endpoint gives a video's title, a private (no-cookie) YouTube player link, its transcript with timestamps and its chapters, even when YouTube won't let the server download the video. Downloading is now a separate, optional step that says clearly when to try again.

Clearer message when YouTube blocks captionsFixWhen YouTube blocks the server, captions switch to Gemini instead of wrongly saying the video has no audio.

October 25, 2026

Articles are written by one model, in plain languageArticlesEach article now keeps one consistent voice from start to finish. Text reads like a careful human edit: clear sentences, with facts, names and quotes kept exactly, and the tone follows the source (a lecture stays measured, an interview stays lively).

British narration is the defaultRead aloudRead it to me now uses a London (RP) accent with the Charon voice by default. American is still in the menu.

Articles open right awayArticlesThe article page shows the raw transcript in a few seconds, then swaps in each polished section as it's ready, without moving your place.

No more invented speaker dashesFixParagraphs no longer start with "—" unless someone new is really speaking.

YouTube sign-in restoredFixYouTube downloads work again, up to 4K.

Chapters, seekable files and translated articlesAPIArticles follow the video's chapters with timestamps, downloads can be resumed and seeked, and articles can be translated with their layout kept.

Transcripts as readable articlesArticlesAny transcript can be opened as a magazine-style article (HTML or Markdown) with a contents list.

October 24, 2026

Read it to meRead aloudHave any article, PDF, EPUB, Word file or text read aloud in a natural voice, with synced sentences, chapters, a listening queue and playback that keeps going on the lock screen.

October 23, 2026

Podcasts and audioDownloadsApple Podcasts, Spotify episodes, RSS feeds, SoundCloud and more. On iPhone, an episode saves to Photos as a video with its cover art.

Captions and translationAPICaptions for any video, from the site or transcribed, translated into seven languages.

October 22, 2026

HiRes Grab launchesDownloadsPaste or share a link and get the original full-resolution images and videos, on the web and from the iPhone Shortcut. YouTube downloads go up to 4K/8K on the web.