Since day one, Canister’s superpower has been making working with LTO — specifically LTFS — as easy as possible. Plug in a drive, select your to be archived files, and let it run.

That simplicity isn’t an accident or a limitation, it was the point.

But over time, you started to ask:

• “Can I queue up multiple sources and walk away?”
• “Can I use both my LTO drives at the same time, for different jobs?”

And just like that, we had a challenge.

Simplicity is a feature

At a glance, adding queuing and independent drive support sounds easy… until you try doing it without breaking what makes an app great and loved.

We've all seen it: a tool gets more “powerful,” and suddenly you need a training course to use it. Menus multiply. Interfaces buckle. What once felt like a pocket knife now looks like a space shuttle cockpit.

We didn’t want any of that. Canister had to stay… Canister.

Exploration Mode

Lifting the guardrails on Canister’s “one transfer at a time” approach gives you the freedom to roam. With that in mind, we prototyped a lot of possibilities — and landed on a simple solution that keeps things flexible, but focused.

From an engineering perspective, this meant reworking parts of the underlying architecture. Systems responsible for Indexing, Cataloging, Transfer Management, and Error Handling all had to evolve. That takes time and it requires care. We're talking archiving here, so every detail matters.

The Big Reveal

Today we’re proud to bring you Canister 25.1, with both Queuing and Independent Transfers.

The steps for setting up a transfer are just as you're used to — only now, you can repeat them as many times as you like.

Canister works through the queue automatically, ideal for those end-of-day moments when you just need to get one more thing onto tape before morning.

And if you’ve got multiple drives? Even better. You can send different sources to each device, or archive to one while retrieving from the other.

It’s a major upgrade in flexibility — without the need for a rocket ship.

Beta Crew

Over the past few months, we’ve worked with a wonderful group of beta testers to refine these new features.

You found the critters, stress-tested the system, and helped shape the final release. Big thanks to each and every one of you 🙏

Available Now

If you already use Canister, just update in-app to 25.1.

If you don’t… well, now’s a pretty good time to start.

— The Canister Team