v1.5 Privacy, polish, launch prep
August – September 2026
The pre-launch sprint. Everything a user can see got quieter and tidier; everything they can't see got much more careful with their data.
Privacy
- Vehicle number plates are no longer stored in plain text. Plates flow through OCR and DVSA lookup during ingest, then get replaced with a keyed hash before anything hits disk. MOT history, mileage, defect comments — all still there. The yellow plate badge has been removed from cards; the substantive detail (MOT summary and history) stays.
- Listing descriptions are no longer persisted. Keyword matching happens at ingest and the raw description is discarded — nothing that leaks into a listing body (seller phone numbers, addresses) is ever written to our database.
- Third-party image URLs are now stored only on the alerts you actually see, not on every listing we ever scraped. Roughly two orders of magnitude less third-party content sitting at rest.
Alerts feed
- Compact one-row toolbar with icon-only actions (filter, save all, bin all) — replaces the older text-labelled pills that were crowding the header on narrow iPhones.
- Filter icon shows a small red dot when any filter is active.
- Tighter spacing on the feed itself — first card no longer crashes into the toolbar, last card no longer sits under the tab bar.
Searches
- Cleaner search cards: text pills per source (Facebook, Gumtree, AutoTrader, Vinted, eBay) instead of a column of marketplace logos, and no more duplicate keyword row.
- Every card now shows a Full Speed indicator with a live "Active" dot — a small live-reassurance signal that the search is polling.
- New search flow talks about what we do ("we'll fill in keywords, sources, and filters") rather than how we do it.
Behind the scenes
- Bot check on sign-up and password-reset endpoints, off by default, on when the operator sets the keys.
- Ability to soft-disable an account without deleting any of its data — useful for wrapping up beta accounts before public launch, one SQL statement to re-enable.
v1.4 Hot-linking & image cache retirement
August 2026
A structural privacy change: no third-party image bytes are stored on our infrastructure any more. Cards hot-link the source marketplace's CDN directly, and the app handles the CDN quirks (like Facebook's ~4.5-day URL expiry) gracefully.
No more image cache
- The old image cache is retired entirely — no cached third-party marketplace images (faces, plates, house interiors) sitting on our servers.
- Cards render straight from the source CDN. Emails use a graceful text-only fallback for images that have expired since delivery.
Facebook image expiry
- Facebook signs its image URLs with a short (~4.5-day) expiry. Older alert cards now render as text-first bookmark cards when the image has aged out — title, price, source, location.
- New Refetch image link button on Facebook cards where the image has expired. One tap re-fetches the fresh URL from the listing. If the listing itself has been removed, the button switches to a sticky "Listing no longer on Facebook" state.
Saved feed regrouping
- The Saved page now groups items by the search they came from ("Ford Fiesta under £3k — 5 saved") rather than one long undifferentiated list.
v1.3 eBay is back
August 2026
eBay returns as a first-class marketplace source, wired through the official Browse API, with per-source polling that keeps the app comfortably inside the API's free-tier limits.
eBay reintegration
- Live listings from eBay UK alongside Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree, AutoTrader and Vinted in one unified feed.
- eBay-only searches poll on a slower default cadence (30 min) that stays within API limits; mixed-source searches keep the fast cadence.
- Outgoing eBay links carry eBay Partner Network parameters — a small affiliate credit for us, no change to what the user pays or sees.
v1.2.0 Redesign
21 August 2026
A fresh coat of paint. Same fast alerts, warmer to look at.
A new look
- New brand colours, type and iconography across the whole app.
- Refreshed sign-in, sign-up and password-reset screens with a full-bleed brand hero.
- Cleaner Alerts feed, onboarding and settings screens.
- Retuned dark mode.
Alert emails
- Rebuilt to match the new look — clearer listing photos, cleaner layout, easier to scan on mobile.
v1.0.0 Public beta
5 June 2026
The first public build of List Mantis. Thanks for being early.
Set up searches
- Monitor Facebook Marketplace, eBay (coming soon), Gumtree, AutoTrader and Vinted in a single feed.
- Filter by keywords, location (UK postcode + radius), and price range.
- Free-items-only mode for freebies and charity finds.
Vehicle search
- Filter by make, model, year, mileage, fuel type and transmission.
- See MOT history and mileage from public DVSA records on the alert card.
Alerts and notifications
- Push notifications the moment a matching listing appears.
- Email alerts as a backup or daily summary.
- One Alerts feed for every source, on iOS and the web.
Manage your feed
- Save listings to revisit later.
- Archive alerts to keep your feed tidy.
- Adjust your default location, radius and notification settings at any time.
Spotted something off, or have an idea? Drop a line at hello@listmantis.com — every note we get shapes what we ship next.