Tendvane no longer asks for administrator rights when it starts

Since the first beta, Tendvane opened with the same question every time: Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device? It needed a yes before it had done anything at all, because the whole program ran with administrator rights from the first second. Version 0.8 ends that.

What changes

Tendvane now starts and runs as a normal program, with exactly the rights you have. Opening it, running the scans of your apps, network, browser, permissions, updates and disks, reading reports, marking findings as "I use this", changing the language or the theme: none of that shows a prompt any more.

The prompt comes back only when you start something that genuinely needs administrator rights: installing a driver, changing a system-wide setting, creating a restore point, removing a program, or the full check-up (Windows keeps BitLocker status, restore points and saved Wi-Fi passwords behind administrator). Windows then asks once. A small helper, which is simply a second copy of Tendvane started with the permission you just gave, does that work and closes when you close Tendvane. Say No and only that one action is skipped; everything else keeps working.

Why we did it

Three reasons. First, it is how a well-behaved Windows program is supposed to work: ask for power when you use it, not in advance. Second, a program that demands administrator rights at launch, is new, and has no publisher reputation yet looks exactly like the pattern antivirus heuristics are trained to distrust; it is part of why some PCs saw Defender flag the download last month. Third, it opens the door to distributing Tendvane through the Microsoft Store later, which does not accept programs that elevate at start.

What you will notice

• No prompt when Tendvane opens. The first admin action of a session shows one; later ones in the same session do not.
• Tendvane's own data (check-up history, the change log, logs) moves from ProgramData to your user profile, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Tendvane. Your history is carried over automatically the first time.
• The installer still asks once, like any installer. The portable build simply runs.
• Scheduled check-ups are unchanged: they already ran with the rights they need.

If something that used to work now asks for permission where you did not expect it, please tell us; the list of actions that go through the helper is ours to tune. Download 0.8 from the download page; Tendvane also offers the update itself.