Self-Hosted Desktop Delivery And Companion Branding Update

The last update focused on platform reliability, print, and delivery hardening.

Since then, the work has pushed that delivery story much further.

This phase was about making Companion easier to ship, easier to trust, and more visually coherent across the places people actually use it.

Companion desktop delivery now runs much more directly through Apex-controlled infrastructure

One of the biggest changes in this round was moving Companion’s desktop build and release path onto owned infrastructure where it mattered most.

Linux still remains on hosted build infrastructure, which is the right fit for that lane right now.

But macOS and Windows desktop builds now run through Apex’s own self-hosted runners.

That may sound like an internal operational detail, but it is strategically important.

It means the platform now has more direct control over:

• desktop build cadence
• release readiness
• build environment stability
• and the real-world time it takes to produce Mac and Windows artifacts

The work to get there was not only a matter of pointing workflows at a different machine.

It required validating the runners, tuning away the slow cache-save behavior that had been distorting self-hosted timings, fixing Windows environment issues, and tightening the publishing path so desktop artifacts could still move cleanly through the normal release pipeline.

The result is that Companion’s desktop delivery is now less dependent on generic hosted infrastructure and more directly under Apex’s control.

The Apple release path is working again on the self-hosted Mac

Another major step in this same phase was stabilizing the Apple release workflow on the self-hosted Mac build machine.

That turned out to be a real systems problem rather than one single bug. The path had to get through:

• App Store Connect agreement state
• release publishing trust and infrastructure repairs
• temporary signing-keychain cleanup
• login-keychain behavior on a service account
• provisioning profile selection
• manual signing and archive settings
• and the last-mile TestFlight upload and notes-update flow

That work mattered because Apex now has a much more credible Apple release lane from infrastructure it controls directly.

By the end of this round, the self-hosted Mac was successfully handling both:

• macOS TestFlight delivery
• iOS TestFlight delivery

That is an operational milestone, not just a CI fix. It means Companion is now closer to being something Apex can ship repeatedly from its own release environment instead of treating Apple delivery as a fragile special case.

Companion now looks more intentional across platforms too

This phase was not only about infrastructure.

Companion also got a cleaner and more unified Infinity-branded presentation across platforms.

The Infinity symbol is now doing more of the visual work it should have been doing already:

• splash screens use the shared Infinity image
• app icons use the same Infinity mark across platforms
• the home screen uses that image as the background
• the top bar now carries a more subtle premium Companion wordmark treatment
• and macOS now presents the app title with proper spacing and capitalization instead of the old underscore-heavy internal name

That is not just cosmetic cleanup.

It matters because products start feeling more real when the identity is consistent across launch, install, navigation, and desktop presentation. A platform trying to feel premium cannot afford to look improvised at those first points of contact.

Why this matters

The deeper story here is product control.

Apex Infinity is no longer only adding features inside Companion.

It is improving control over how Companion is built, released, uploaded, and visually recognized across:

• Windows
• macOS
• iOS
• Android
• Linux
• and the surrounding release infrastructure that ties them together

That is a meaningful threshold.

The visible result is better branding and smoother release behavior.

The more important result is that Apex Infinity is becoming more capable of shipping Companion as a real multi-platform product, not just developing it.