Changelog

​

v0.5.5

​

New

• Capture screenshots while dictating (Pro, macOS and Windows). Cmd+click (Ctrl+click on Windows) during a hands-free or Tap-mode dictation captures a screenshot cropped to whatever you pointed at, with that area ringed and the rest dimmed. The shots are inserted after your transcript, so a prompt can show what it is describing. Off by default; turn it on in Settings → Experimental.

​

Improved

• Meeting notes and transcriptions stop being evicted. Both lists were capped at 100, and every write past that quietly deleted the oldest entry. That cap is gone for both, so neither list drops anything unless you delete it. Dictation history still keeps your most recent 100.
• A switch for the drag-to-insert banner (macOS). Settings → General now has a toggle for the banner shown when a dictation ends with nothing editable focused. Turn it off and Vowen always pastes, the pre-0.5.3 behaviour.

​

Fixed

• Fixed tone custom instructions coming back half-applied. A tone asking for a translation or a different register was read before the rule that keeps output in the language you spoke, and lost to it. Custom instructions are now the last thing the model reads and take priority over it.
• Fixed smart capitalization overriding a tone’s own casing rules. A tone asking for all lowercase had its first letter capitalized straight back; a tone now owns the casing for that dictation, while spacing and terminal punctuation still apply.
• Fixed the drag-to-insert banner appearing in Google Docs, Typora and other canvas-rendered editors on macOS. They report the document rather than the caret inside it, which read as nothing being focused. Those now paste.

​

v0.5.4

​

New

• A dictionary that learns from your corrections (Pro). Fix a word Vowen got wrong and it offers to remember it. New names after one sighting, recurring mishearings after two. See Dictionary.
• Names spelled the way they appear on screen (Beta, macOS). With AI enhancement on, Vowen reads names and product terms out of the window you are dictating into, so they land spelled correctly. No screenshots, no extra model call.
• Ask AI can rewrite the note (Pro). Ask for a tighter summary or a better title and Ask AI applies it, with an undo. The transcript stays read-only. See Ask AI.
• Ask AI in meetings without live transcription (Pro). Live Ask no longer needs a streaming engine. Vowen transcribes only the part of the meeting it has not seen yet.
• Claude Code and Codex as summary writers. If the claude or codex CLI is installed and signed in, it appears as a provider for meeting summaries. No API key to paste. See Summaries.
• Find and replace in summaries. Cmd/Ctrl+F searches the summary editor and Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+F opens replace. Replace All is a single undo step.
• Jump between note tabs. Cmd+1, 2 and 3 go straight to Summary, Transcript or Ask AI, keyed to the physical key so the chords still land on AZERTY.
• Dictations stay out of clipboard history. Clipboard managers no longer collect every dictation you paste. There is a switch in Developer settings if you want them recorded.
• A get-started checklist. A pill in the corner of settings tracks the six things worth setting up first, and retires itself once you finish.

​

Improved

• Enhancement that keeps up with you. Thinking is now floored per model family, measured 6.9x faster on Gemini 3, OpenRouter routes for latency, and the prompt is 18% shorter.
• Voice Shortcuts, rebuilt. The voice shortcuts page is now built around what a voice shortcut does: trigger phrase, then action, with real logos and browser and profile pickers in line. See Voice Shortcuts.
• Connectors, Permissions and Sync, rebuilt. Connectors says what each one can do before you connect it, Permissions says what is missing and how to fix it, and Sync says what it last did.
• Pages that say what they are for. The meeting-notes and transcribe pages now lead with the apps and file types they work with.
• The Pro screens. Free and Pro share one card design across Account settings and the upgrade modal, and activating a licence gets a proper thank-you screen.
• Closing a modal leaves you where you were. Dismissing a modal opened from a notes subpage no longer drops you back onto the subpage you had left.

​

Fixed

• Fixed ElevenLabs losing an entire dictation when the server refused a commit, and a late partial pasting the dictation twice.
• Fixed the last few words going missing on stop. AssemblyAI, ElevenLabs and the Gemini live models now wait for the flush to be answered.
• Fixed the first word being lowercased in Outlook, Teams and Gmail on Windows.
• Fixed full stops being eaten whenever anything sat to the right of the caret, including Send and Reply buttons.
• Fixed dictations that trail off ending in a dash instead of a full stop.
• Fixed the meeting banner chevron pointing the wrong way and closing the template menu on click.

​

v0.5.3

​

Fixed

• Fixed a race condition that could leave keyboard shortcuts unregistered.

​

v0.5.2

​

New

• The Meeting Panel. Press Cmd/Ctrl+\ during a meeting for a floating panel over whatever app you are in. Jot context on any plan; on Pro, ask questions and follow the live transcript. It never appears in your own screen share. See Meeting Panel.
• Public share links (Pro). Publish a meeting note as a link anyone can open. The summary and transcript go; audio, screenshots, your private notes and Ask AI conversations stay behind. Revocable. See Sharing.
• A library of ready-made templates (Pro). Forty-four summary formats, browsable and searchable, editable once added. See Templates.
• Citations in your summaries (Pro). Every bullet carries the timestamp it came from. Click one to jump to that moment in the transcript and cue the audio there. See Summaries.
• Ask AI gets its own tab (Pro). Notes now have a dedicated Ask AI tab with saved conversations in the sidebar, grouped by recency, renameable, and persistent across restarts. See Ask AI.
• Rank your microphones. Microphone choice is an ordered list rather than a single pick. Vowen opens the highest-ranked one actually plugged in.
• A separate mic order for meetings. Meetings can follow their own ranking, or keep inheriting your global order.
• More than one custom speech server (Pro). Add as many OpenAI-compatible speech endpoints as you want, each with its own name, URL, model and key. See Models.
• Teach the dictionary how you get misheard. Any dictionary word can carry the ways it gets misheard, corrected automatically in your dictations. See Dictionary.
• Echo cancellation for meeting notes (macOS). The other side of the call is no longer recorded twice on speakers. Needs macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon.
• Tones and new notes from the idle pill. A tone switcher and a New Note button with a template picker, drawn natively in the notch when using the notch indicator.
• Tags that come with the template. Give a template tags and every note it produces is tagged from the moment recording starts.
• Mic-only templates. A per-template switch for capturing system audio, so in-person meetings and voice journals do not record your speakers.
• Choose the browser and profile. A voice shortcut that opens URLs can say which browser and which profile within it.
• Find, back and forward. Cmd/Ctrl+F or / focuses search on the notes, transcribe, history, dictionary, threads and expansions pages. Cmd+Left/Cmd+Right step back and forward browser-style.

​

Improved

• Vocabulary that reaches the provider. Your dictionary now goes through each provider’s own biasing parameter instead of one generic prompt, and reaches meeting notes and file transcription. It also used to be truncated alphabetically; it now keeps what you added most recently.
• A much smaller download. Bundled SDKs, duplicated dependencies and unused Chromium locales cleared out. On Apple silicon the app is now around 373 MB, down from about 600 MB. The on-device GigaAM Russian engine was retired with it; Russian still transcribes on cloud models and multilingual Whisper.
• Music that stops the instant you record (Pro, macOS). Muting background audio now lands in milliseconds. Headphones plugged in mid-recording no longer un-silence your Mac.
• Pausing falls back to muting (Pro). When an app refuses a pause, Vowen checks the output device and mutes instead of quietly doing nothing.
• The meeting indicator, rebuilt. Responsive level meter, audio-reactive glow, live status label, and a stop button that reads as stop. The detected-meeting banner carries the app’s logo and a split Start button.
• Long recordings on Gemini. Recordings past about twenty minutes no longer die on an opaque socket error. They are compressed, and past roughly half an hour uploaded through Gemini’s Files API, then deleted once the transcript returns.
• A live transcript that reads like one. Words in flight settle in place instead of re-flowing, and speech split across two emissions no longer arrives fragmented.
• Waveforms with actual shape. Meeting waveforms no longer flatten the remote side into a one-pixel line. Existing recordings recompute on first open.
• Search your notes settings. The meeting-notes settings modal gets a search box that surfaces matching rows across all five tabs at once.
• Shift-click to select a range. On the notes and transcribe lists, following whatever filter and sort you have applied.
• Escape means escape. Esc closes the top-most thing and only that, asks before discarding unsaved editor changes, and clears list selections.
• One scroller per page. Dictionary, Threads, Expansions, Models and Voice Shortcuts keep their banner and search bar pinned while only the content scrolls.
• Tones inside installed web apps (macOS). Website rules now match inside PWAs, and installed web apps appear in the app picker.

​

Fixed

• Fixed a freeze seconds after launch on macOS.
• Fixed every shortcut going dead at once when macOS switched off the key tap under load. It now recovers on its own within seconds.
• Fixed a bare “D” starting dictation and a bare “P” starting Command Mode from stuck modifier flags.
• Fixed text expansion quietly switching itself off mid-session.
• Fixed the last word going missing on Deepgram, ElevenLabs, Mistral and others. Trailing-silence trimming was being applied to cloud models by accident.
• Fixed undoing a cancellation leaving the indicator stuck, resuming in the wrong mode, and dropping your tone and language.
• Fixed starting a recording from the idle pill making your keyboard shortcut a no-op.
• Fixed system-audio capture attaching and delivering silence on FaceTime and Phone calls (macOS).
• Fixed auto-started meetings resolving settings before they finished loading, silently dropping Identify Speakers, model, language and template.
• Fixed picking an unconnected summary provider silently falling back to a different one.
• Fixed the recording indicator opening expanded at the start of every meeting, and being clipped when a banner was dismissed.
• Fixed a local diarization bundle being downloaded for cloud-model meetings that never touch it.
• Fixed Vowen detecting its own microphone use as a meeting.
• Fixed the indicator, its card and the meeting panel rendering about 11% too large in the installed app.

​

v0.5.1

​

New

• Tones, rebuilt. Every tone carries its own speech model, spoken language, AI model and writing instructions, so switching tone switches your whole setup. See Tones.
• Per-tone shortcuts. Bind a key to any tone and dictate with it from anywhere. Clashes are caught the moment you record them.
• Website rules for tones. A tone can match on the site you are on, not just the app, and a site rule wins over an app rule.
• Nemotron speech models (macOS). Two new on-device NVIDIA models, English and multilingual (25+ languages), transcribing in real time and punctuating as they go. See Models.
• Smart spacing and capitalization. Dictated text reads as part of the sentence it lands in. Always on, entirely on-device.
• 1,000+ connectors via Composio (Pro). Connect Gmail, Drive, Docs, LinkedIn and a thousand more through your own Composio account. See Connectors.
• Watch folders for meeting notes (Pro). A watch folder can produce meeting notes instead of plain transcriptions, summarized with the template you pick. See Watch folders.
• Signed webhooks (Pro). Add a signing secret and every webhook carries an X-Vowen-Signature HMAC, a timestamp and a delivery ID. See Webhooks.
• Nowhere to paste? Drag it in. Dictating with no text field focused now shows the text in a banner you can copy or drag into any app.
• Hold to cancel. Hold the stop button on the recording indicator to throw a take away.
• Find, replace and merge in transcripts. Replace one match or all, merge a line into the one above while reassigning the speaker, and split at the caret.
• More mouse buttons. M6, M7 and M8 can now be bound to any shortcut.

​

Improved

• OpenAI’s newest transcription models. Dictation and file transcription run on gpt-live-transcribe and gpt-transcribe.
• Cmd+K searches your content. The command palette now searches your dictations, meeting notes and transcriptions by content. See Command palette.
• Multi-turn commands in the voice log. A command-mode conversation with several refinement turns shows as one pageable entry.
• Summaries that retry themselves. A failed summary retries automatically, and says why if it still cannot finish.
• Faster diarization for notes (Windows). The diarization engine is prewarmed, so speaker labels appear without the first-run stall.
• Bluetooth mics get time to connect. AirPods and other Bluetooth headsets are no longer declared dead after 700ms.
• App icons that are actually right. Icons are warmed on app switch and persisted to disk.
• Your clipboard comes back by default. Clipboard restore after a paste is now on out of the box.
• Screensaver counts as walking away (macOS). A screensaver without a lock now stops a long-running recording.
• Replacements respect word boundaries. “cat” no longer rewrites the middle of “catalog”.
• Local engine recovery. The local speech daemon restarts cleanly after a crash, and system-audio capture retries on its own.
• Refreshed lists and pages. Consistent tag sizing, scroll fades, a reworked transcribe modal and file picker, and clearer AI-enhanced and command-mode badges.
• Live preview that keeps up (Pro). The real-time preview in meeting notes no longer fights your scroll position, and says why it is off when your model cannot stream.

​

Fixed

• Fixed the recording indicator’s invisible bounds eating clicks meant for the app underneath.
• Fixed shortcuts not firing from on-screen and accessibility keyboards (macOS).
• Fixed the keyboard-layout probe consuming pending dead keys on Windows, so accents vanished.
• Fixed meeting detection leaving orphaned mic-listener processes behind, degrading audio system-wide (macOS).
• Fixed DeepSeek returning empty AI enhancements because thinking mode swallowed the output.
• Fixed custom vocabulary sent to Groq leaking into the transcript as a prompt echo.
• Fixed regenerating a transcript with a different model overwriting your global transcription defaults.
• Fixed meeting note titles reverting or failing to save while being edited.
• Fixed softly-spoken final words still being clipped by the trailing-silence gate.
• Fixed tooltips being cut off in the idle pill and the connectors list not scrolling.
• Fixed some clipboard contents not surviving a dictation intact (Windows).
• Fixed leftover focus juggling that made Vowen activate other apps or hide behind them (macOS).

​

v0.5.0

​

New

• The Vowen CLI. Transcribe files, browse and search your notes, and manage tags, vocabulary and expansions from the command line. Install it with one click from settings. See CLI.
• Claude Code and Opencode integration. Run vowen mcp and any MCP-compatible agent can read your transcripts and notes and transcribe audio on demand. See MCP server.
• Watch folders (Pro). Point Vowen at a folder and every audio or video file dropped in is transcribed automatically, with per-folder tags and rules. See Watch folders.
• Native system audio for meeting notes (macOS). Meeting notes capture the other side of the call through a native engine instead of a screen-share stream. Far more reliable with Bluetooth headsets.
• Pause your music while you record (Pro). Pauses whatever is playing the moment you start recording, and resumes it when you stop.
• Choose which apps count as meetings (Pro). Toggle each meeting app individually, and set a rule for everything else. See Recording.
• Start notes with the right template. “Start taking notes” is now a split button: start with your default, or pick a different one on the spot.
• Summary language control. Choose the language your summaries are written in, globally or per template, or leave it on auto-detect.
• Default settings for file transcriptions. A gear on the Transcribe page sets model, language, timestamps and automatic export for every file. See Manual transcription.
• Merge speaker segments. Collapse back-to-back segments from the same speaker into a single block. See Diarization.
• Pick realtime or batch per provider. Choose between streaming and batch for OpenAI, plus new verbatim and audio-event options for ElevenLabs.
• Auto-translate from the tray (Pro). Flip translate-to-English on or off without opening settings.

​

Improved

• Long recordings on OpenAI. Dictations and files past OpenAI’s 25-minute limit are chunked automatically.
• Cooler, lighter long meetings. Hidden animations are throttled and the discarded screen-capture stream capped, cutting CPU and GPU load over long sessions.
• Sync that deletes exactly what you deleted (Pro). A restructured sync engine tracks deletions explicitly, keeps every note in its own file, and syncs your expansion fill-in variables. See Cloud sync.
• Consistent exports everywhere. The list pages offer the same export options as the detail pages, including SubRip and WebVTT in bulk exports.
• Settings search shows the real thing. Searching settings renders the actual sections filtered to matching rows, so you can flip a switch from the results.
• Modern British spellings. UK English conversion no longer produces archaic spellings like “instal”.
• Clearer no-speech errors. A recording with no detectable speech says exactly that instead of a generic error.
• Refreshed AI model lineup. Updated to the latest provider releases; Straico retired following its shutdown.
• Polished notch indicator (macOS). Refined styling, and it no longer gets in the way of command-mode banners.

​

Fixed

• Fixed the extra key on ISO keyboards not being bindable as a hotkey.
• Fixed the accent popup and emoji picker going dead system-wide while Vowen sat idle (macOS).
• Fixed the filler-word filter stripping “um” from German dictations, where it is a real word.
• Fixed trailing-silence removal clipping softly-spoken final words.
• Fixed local Whisper inserting stray spaces in the middle of long words.
• Fixed connection failures on networks with broken IPv6 routing by falling back to IPv4.
• Fixed holding Option during region capture switching focus away from your app (macOS).
• Fixed meeting-note screenshots always grabbing the primary monitor instead of the display you are on.
• Restored the missing logos on connector cards.

​

v0.4.10

​

New

• Command palette. Press Cmd/Ctrl+K to jump to any page, setting or action from one launcher. See Command palette.
• Vowen in 18 languages. The entire interface is now localized. Pick yours during onboarding or in settings.
• Fill-in fields in expansions. Add {{placeholders}} to an expansion and Vowen pops up a form to complete them, with dropdown options and a reusable variable library. See Text expander.
• Hold or tap. Each recording shortcut can work as hold-to-talk or tap-to-toggle, set per shortcut. See Shortcuts.
• Speaker diarization on Windows (Pro). Meeting notes and transcriptions on Windows can label who said what, on-device. See Diarization.
• Configurable cancel shortcut. The key that cancels a recording is now a real shortcut. Rebind it or disable it if Esc clashes with your editor.
• Meeting notes from the tray. Start, pause, resume and stop meeting notes without opening the main window.
• Keep Obsidian in sync (Pro). A note re-syncs to your vault whenever you edit it. See Obsidian.
• “Navigate to” in voice shortcuts. A built-in step that opens any website by voice. Voice Shortcut URLs no longer need https:// spelled out.
• Resource-efficient mode for Parakeet (Windows). Keeps Parakeet unloaded until you record, trading startup speed for lower idle memory.

​

Improved

• Much faster Parakeet on Windows. Parakeet runs as a warm background service instead of reloading the model on every dictation.
• Quick thread dictations skip the AI step. A thread trigger on its own pastes your snippet directly. See Threads.
• Connector logins, rebuilt (Pro). The whole OAuth sign-in happens inside Vowen, with tokens stored encrypted.
• Sound when a file finishes transcribing. So you can switch away while a long file processes.
• Easier dictionary and thread management. A quick-entry field for dictionary words, plus bulk import for both.
• Polished tags, filters and settings. Smoother tag picking, a clear-filters button, and list scroll positions that survive navigation.
• Meeting pill hidden from screen shares. The meeting-notes indicator is excluded from screen capture.
• Silent recordings are kept, not lost. A silent recording over a minute long is saved to history with a retry option instead of discarded.

​

Fixed

• Fixed long dictations that decoded to empty text under heavy load producing nothing. They now retry automatically.
• Fixed dictation dying mid-recording after a mic or input-source change (macOS). It now recovers on its own.
• Fixed recordings stuck on “Listening” when macOS disabled the keyboard listener under load.
• Fixed the meeting indicator vanishing, drifting off-screen, or ignoring clicks on Windows.
• Fixed meeting notes capturing only the default speaker instead of every active output, including virtual devices (Windows).
• Fixed custom APIs serving local reasoning models failing the connection test while still thinking.
• Fixed microphone selection on Windows quietly falling back to the system default.
• Fixed “Start taking notes” being silently dropped when the settings window was closed.
• Fixed the hide-dock-icon setting being ignored when Vowen starts at login (macOS).
• Fixed regenerating a summary overwriting a title you edited by hand.
• Fixed local models that reply with an empty message alongside tool calls pasting raw JSON in Command Mode.
• Fixed changing the transcription language for meeting notes not applying to the next recording.

​

v0.4.9

​

New

• Notch recording indicator (macOS). A recording indicator that fans out from the menu bar while you dictate, on every Mac rather than only notched models. See Recording indicator.
• Re-transcribe a finished recording. Re-run any completed dictation through your current model from its history entry.
• Stop hands-free with a tap of Fn (macOS). When your transcribe hotkey is Fn, a single tap stops an active hands-free recording.
• Custom scripts in voice shortcuts (Pro, Windows). Run your own PowerShell, cmd or batch scripts from a voice shortcut. See Voice Shortcuts.
• German interface. Vowen’s interface is now available in German.

​

Improved

• Resilient model downloads. Large downloads resume and reconnect after a dropped connection. See Model download.
• Cleaner endings on transcripts. Trailing silence is trimmed before transcribing, cutting the stray words some models add at the end.
• Your full vocabulary, every time. Removed the 50-word limit on custom vocabulary.
• Meeting-note templates sync (Pro). Custom templates now sync across your devices.
• Tags in webhook payloads (Pro). Deliveries include the tags on a note or transcription, so automations can route on them.
• Microsoft Store apps in voice shortcuts (Windows). App-specific voice shortcuts can target UWP apps, not just desktop programs.
• Double-click Home for Overview. A single click still keeps whatever tab you had open.

​

Fixed

• Fixed the recorder starting but capturing no audio with a frozen level bar until restart (macOS).
• Fixed Fn hotkeys also sending the other key in the combo to whatever app you were typing in (macOS).
• Fixed binding and matching hotkeys that use special characters across keyboard layouts.
• Fixed speaker labels showing as placeholders in Obsidian notes and webhook payloads.
• Fixed voice activity detection for Parakeet streaming on Windows.

​

v0.4.8

​

New

• System audio for meeting notes (Windows). Meeting notes capture the other side of the call straight from system audio, natively, with no virtual audio device. Falls back to screen-share audio automatically.
• My Notes tab. Context you type while a meeting records gets its own tab on the finished note. Edit it after the fact, then regenerate the summary from it. See Meeting notes.
• Slash commands in the editor. Type / in a note summary for headings, lists, quotes and more from a block menu.
• Images in note summaries. Embed images by URL, file picker, drag-and-drop or paste. Local images are copied alongside the note.
• Batch file transcription. Queue several audio or video files and transcribe them in one pass. See Manual transcription.
• Multi-select across transcriptions and history. Select multiple items and export or delete them together.
• Bulk export of selected items (Pro). Export a chosen set of notes and transcriptions at once as Markdown, plain text or PDF, bundled into one archive.
• Export transcripts as subtitles. Export any timed transcript as SubRip (.srt) or WebVTT (.vtt).
• Editable transcription titles. Rename any manual transcription.

​

Improved

• Faster, more reliable recording. Warm starts, device caching and a low-latency capture buffer cut the lag before your first word, and very short clips are padded so quick phrases are not dropped.
• Crash recovery on Windows. Vowen detects and recovers on its own, including a blank window or dead hotkeys after waking from sleep.
• Redesigned language selection. A dedicated picker with clearer organization. See Languages.
• Refreshed settings and memory pages. A more consistent, less cluttered layout.
• Parallel import of meeting notes. Large imports finish much faster.
• Default models shown in notes settings. So it is clear what each recording will use.
• Snappier recording indicator. Reduced transition time so it appears and updates more instantly.

​

Fixed

• Fixed the last word of a dictation being clipped.
• Fixed several transcription bugs affecting the Deepgram, Mistral and xAI providers.
• Fixed JSON object responses not being preserved when routing AI calls through OpenRouter.
• Fixed live transcription previews from separate recordings bleeding into each other.
• Fixed the drag handler on the meeting-notes recording indicator.
• Fixed drag-and-drop when importing notes.
• Fixed the recording indicator jumping back to its old position when a banner was dismissed.
• Fixed the “meeting detected” banner appearing when the prompt was turned off.
• Fixed very short or empty recordings surfacing a transcription error on Parakeet.

​

v0.4.7

​

New

• Transcript-only templates. Turn off AI summaries for any meeting-notes template. Recordings save just the transcript, and you can still create a summary by hand later. See Templates.
• Pick a template from the meeting banner. Choose which summary template to use for a detected meeting, just for that recording, without changing your default.
• Choose what syncs to Obsidian (Pro). Decide whether each note pushes its summary, its transcript, or both. See Obsidian.

​

Improved

• Soniox Speech-to-Text v5. Soniox now runs on the v5 models for both real-time dictation and file transcription. See Models.
• Default microphone in the menu. The tray menu has an explicit “Default microphone / Same as system” option.

​

Fixed

• Fixed heavy CPU load silently disabling Vowen’s keyboard listener until restart (macOS). It now recovers on its own.
• Fixed scrubbing through imported audio and video in a different format jumping back to the start.

​

v0.4.6

​

New

• Auto-stop meeting notes when the meeting ends (Pro, macOS). Vowen notices when your meeting app releases the mic and offers to wrap up, with a 15-second grace period and a one-click cancel. See Recording.
• Region capture for Command Mode (Pro). Drag to select any region of your screen and hand it to Command Mode as visual context. See Command Mode.
• Expansion suggestions dropdown (Pro). Start typing a : shortcut and a live dropdown of matching expansions appears. See Text expander.
• Cartesia Ink 2 transcription. Available as a cloud model for dictation, meeting notes and file transcription. English-only. See Models.
• Tag your expansions. Organize expansions with tags and filter by them.
• Tag manual transcriptions. Apply tags to files you transcribe manually and filter by them.
• Filter meeting notes by person. Attendees show on each note card, and you can filter by who was in the room.
• Filter history by voice vs Command Mode. Narrow history to only dictations or only command results.
• Mention dates when importing notes. Reference a date as you import and Vowen files the note under the right day.
• Per-app voice shortcut folders. Point a voice shortcut at a specific folder for each app.
• Sync to Obsidian button (Pro). Push a meeting note into your vault with one click.
• Background auto-sync (Pro). Vowen keeps notes, transcripts and settings in sync in the background, pulling changes on launch, on focus, and moments after an edit. See Cloud sync.

​

Improved

• More reliable cross-device sync (Pro). A rebuilt engine merges concurrent edits from multiple devices cleanly, with atomic writes.
• Faster meeting notes with on-demand Parakeet (macOS). When Parakeet is not your default, Vowen spins up a lightweight instance for notes rather than keeping a model running.
• Rich text by default for expansions. Bold, italic and links work out of the box on new expansions.
• Sharper recording indicator across displays. It adapts to different resolutions and DPI scaling when you move between monitors.
• Smoother audio waveforms. Playback is lighter even on long recordings.
• Full-length diarization with Mistral. The latest model lifts the audio-length cap, so diarization runs on complete recordings without chunking.
• Clear errors if a model fails to download. Onboarding surfaces a message instead of silently stalling.
• Queued mute/unmute events. Rapid toggles land reliably and in order.

​

Fixed

• Fixed a crash when force-quitting Vowen, and made sure resources are released properly on exit.
• Fixed meeting-end detection cutting your notes short while you dictate or run a command (macOS).
• Fixed the tray menu listing only a subset of your configured models.
• Fixed the recording indicator’s click area pulling focus to Vowen when positioned at the top of the screen.
• Fixed active-app detection and cache invalidation stealing focus on Windows.
• Fixed the native text writer dropping very short phrases and mishandling new lines (macOS).
• Fixed streaming Mistral transcriptions cutting off the end of what you said.

​

v0.4.5

​

New

• Idle pill. An optional minimized bar tucks Vowen against the screen edge when idle. Hover to expand and start a recording. See Recording indicator.
• Screenshots as meeting context. Attach screenshots to a meeting note so the AI can read your screen for richer summaries. See Recording.
• Rich-text threads. Threads support bold, italic and links, plus plain text, Markdown and HTML output formats. See Threads.
• Search threads, dictionary and expansions. Filter each list with built-in search.
• Paste last dictated text. A shortcut re-pastes your most recent dictation anywhere.
• Speaker label suggestions. Naming speakers in a note suggests names you have used before. See Diarization.
• Optional timestamps. Turn off per-segment timestamps when transcribing a file for clean continuous text.
• Copy part of a Command Mode result. Select and copy a sub-section instead of the whole thing.

​

Improved

• Streamlined export options. A redesigned export flow for notes and transcriptions, with a unified modal.
• Expansions no longer limited by built-ins. Your custom expansions are not capped based on the built-in ones.
• Cleaner date separators in notes. Easier scanning of the notes list.
• Updated Cerebras model lineup. Deprecated models removed.
• Choose your OneDrive account (Pro). Pick Personal or Business when signed into more than one. See Cloud sync.
• Accurate names in AI enhancement. The enhancement prompt gets people’s names right more reliably.

​

Fixed

• Fixed a temperature issue affecting OpenAI models connecting through OpenRouter.
• Fixed webhooks not sending an application/json content-type header.
• Fixed transcription error states lingering on screen instead of clearing.
• Fixed lingering key state after the system resumes from sleep, preventing stuck modifiers.
• Improved local Whisper server recovery by removing an option that interfered with automatic restarts.
• Fixed a flash-attention path that crashed local Whisper on the latest NVIDIA GPUs (RTX 50-series).
• Fixed Parakeet and Whisper failing to run on pre-2012 CPUs.

​

v0.4.4

​

New

• Ask questions live during meetings (Pro). Ask Vowen anything mid-meeting and get streaming answers grounded in the live transcript, without leaving the call. Available while real-time transcription is active. See Ask AI live during a meeting.
• Follow-up questions in Command Mode. Refine a command-mode result by holding the shortcut again and speaking a follow-up, instead of starting over. See Command Mode.
• Search within transcripts. Press Cmd/Ctrl+F inside any transcript to find text, with match counts and next/previous navigation. See Manual Transcription.
• Audio playback & scrub controls. Play back transcription audio with a waveform, skip buttons, and click-to-seek, synced to the transcript. See Playing back the audio.
• Speaker diarization with Groq (Pro, macOS). Groq Whisper transcriptions now support on-device, Pyannote-powered speaker diarization. See Diarization.
• Gemini speech models. Google’s Gemini is now available as a cloud transcription option, for both streaming and long-file transcription. See Models.
• OpenAI real-time streaming. gpt-4o-transcribe can now power live transcription preview, not just file transcription. See Models.
• Group notes by tags. Tag your meeting notes and filter the list by tag, with a search box and sort options. See Organizing notes.
• Merge speaker labels (Pro). Collapse two diarized speakers into one across a transcript in a single action. See Merging speakers.
• Add context mid-meeting. Type quick context into the recording indicator while recording, and it feeds into the AI summary. See Add context mid-meeting.
• Webhook delivery logs (Pro). Inspect the last 25 webhook deliveries (status, trigger, payload, and response) from the webhook settings. See Webhooks.
• Hide the recording indicator. A new setting lets you suppress the floating recording indicator entirely. See Recording indicator.
• App-native timer. Command Mode timers now show as a draggable, always-on-top countdown pill that works across spaces.
• Cancel follow-ups midway. Stop a running command-mode follow-up mid-flight with Esc instead of waiting for it to finish.

​

Improved

• Auto-switch models on failure. Command Mode and custom utilities now fall back to another configured provider when one fails or hits a rate limit.
• Much lower Command Mode token usage. Default command-mode calls now use under 1.5k tokens, down from 8k. Faster, cheaper, and less rate-limit pressure.
• Smarter Command Mode banner. The result banner renders Markdown, and links open in your default browser. See Reviewing and refining the result.
• More reliable Parakeet streaming. Voice activity detection now drives Parakeet streaming for cleaner segments, plus long-audio chunking on Windows. See Models.
• Auto-translate for Parakeet (Pro). Auto-translate-to-English now works with on-device Parakeet transcriptions. See Languages.
• Finer transcript segment controls. More precise splitting, deleting, and line-level speaker reassignment in the transcript editor. See Editing a transcript.
• Meeting notes settings, reorganized. Settings now live in a tabbed modal with Settings, Templates, and Integrations tabs. See Meeting notes.
• Slack & Discord webhook formatting. Paste a Slack or Discord webhook URL and summaries are posted as rich Block Kit or embeds automatically. See Webhooks.
• Obsidian sync improvements (Pro). Notes now save into a per-note folder inside a configurable vault folder, with template and transcript carried through as frontmatter and a separate transcript file. See Obsidian.
• Pausing notes pauses everything. Pausing a note now pauses the recording indicator and timer too, so the UI stays in sync.
• Faster mic unmute. Your microphone unmutes the instant recording stops, instead of waiting for processing to finish.
• Friendlier summary empty state. A clear message appears when a recording had no speech to summarize, instead of a blank panel.
• Updated DeepSeek models. Refreshed the DeepSeek lineup (V4 Flash and V4 Pro) for AI enhancement and Command Mode.
• Halo on the recording indicator. A subtle glow makes it easier to tell at a glance when Vowen is live.

​

Fixed

• Fixed timestamps in Groq transcriptions, including long chunked files.
• Fixed an overlapping live-streaming bug with Parakeet that could duplicate or fragment segments.
• Fixed timing and auto-scroll of live transcription segments.
• Fixed broken Slack webhook payloads when delivered via POST.
• Fixed external speaker sources not being muted reliably before recording.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when Esc or Tab were part of globally registered shortcuts.
• Fixed the recording / command-mode banner getting clipped when its container resized.
• Fixed the follow-up banner dismissing itself on an empty speech segment.
• Fixed Vowen’s own simulated copy/paste key events being mistaken for real key releases (macOS).
• Fixed meeting detection lingering after Vowen quits (macOS).

​

v0.4.3

​

New

• Audio waveform on meeting notes. A scrubbable waveform, with the transcript scrolling and highlighting in sync as audio plays. See Meeting notes.
• Real-time transcription preview for meeting notes (Pro). See transcription appear live as a note records. Experimental at this release.
• Speaker diarization with Whisper (Pro, macOS). Whisper models use Pyannote to label speakers. See Diarization.
• Parakeet Japanese and CTC-Mandarin. Two new on-device model options. See Models.
• Reassign speaker labels (Pro). Rename and merge speakers across a note or transcript in one edit.
• Double-tap hotkey transitions. Trigger start and stop by double-tapping supported keys. See Shortcuts.
• On-demand webhook from note details (Pro). Fire a configured webhook from a note’s detail page. See Webhooks.
• Export all notes as ZIP (Pro). One-click bulk export of every meeting note.
• Movable meeting-notes recording indicator. Drag it wherever it fits best.

​

Improved

• Audio waveforms for manual transcriptions. The same waveform UI now appears outside meeting notes.
• Real speaker names in note summaries. Summaries reference actual speakers instead of “Speaker 1” placeholders.
• Sticky navbar on detail pages. The top navigation stays in view while scrolling.
• Expansions and custom utilities in import/export (Pro). Both are now included when you back up or restore. See Import data.
• More hotkey keys supported. An expanded set of bindable keys for shortcuts and double-tap triggers.
• Updated AI model lineup. Refreshed with the latest provider releases.

​

Fixed

• Fixed context bias not applying to Mistral transcriptions.
• Fixed an edge case where double-tap could trigger unintentionally.
• Fixed meeting notes and transcription detail pages loading with the wrong default state.
• Fixed an error when importing notes.
• Fixed the meeting-notes recording indicator not reasserting its position across screen changes.

​

v0.4.0 to v0.4.2

​

New

• Audio waveform in meeting notes. Meeting notes now show an audio waveform with a moving transcript that scrolls as audio plays. Waveforms also appear for manual transcriptions. See Meeting notes.
• Reassign speaker labels. Edit and reassign speaker labels directly from a transcript or notes session. See Diarization.
• Parakeet diarization. Speaker diarization is now available with the Parakeet model. See Diarization.
• Japanese and Mandarin support. Added Parakeet Japanese and CTC Mandarin for on-device transcription. See Languages and Models.
• Rich text editor. A new WYSIWYG editor with advanced rich text features for notes and expansions. See Text expander.
• Import/export expansions and utilities. Move your text expansions and custom utilities between devices via import/export.
• Movable recording indicator. Drag the meeting notes recording indicator to wherever it fits best on your screen.
• Cursor peek on Windows. Cursor peek is now available on Windows, matching the macOS experience.
• Double-tap shortcut transitions. Trigger actions with a double-tap on supported keys. See Shortcuts.
• More F-keys and modifier keys. Expanded the set of keys you can bind to shortcuts and expansions. See Shortcuts.
• Revamped onboarding. A redesigned onboarding flow that walks new users through setup and introduces Pro features.
• Share insights card. Generate a shareable card highlighting your transcription stats.

​

Improved

• Speaker names in summaries. Notes summaries now reference actual speaker names instead of generic placeholders like “Speaker 1.” See Summaries.
• Sticky navigation. The top navbar in transcription and notes detail pages stays in view as you scroll.
• Tones respect auto-translate. Tones now honor your auto-translate-to-English setting.
• Confirmation before deactivation. Vowen now asks for confirmation before deactivating a device from your licence.
• Faster, cheaper AI calls. Reduced default prompt size and enabled prompt caching, lowering cost and rate-limit pressure for AI features.
• Focus on gated features. Clicking a Pro-gated feature now brings Vowen to the foreground so the upgrade prompt is visible.
• Cleaner short transcriptions. Trailing full stops are now stripped from short single-sentence transcriptions.
• More reliable recording indicator. The meeting notes recording indicator reasserts its position more reliably across screen changes.
• Updated AI model lineup. Refreshed the list of available AI enhancement models. See Models.

​

Fixed

• Fixed default state issues on the notes and transcription detail pages.
• Fixed importing notes failing in some cases.
• Fixed overlapping modals in the upgrade and Pro flows.
• Fixed reasoning effort not being applied for OpenAI models.
• Fixed payment validation clearing local licence state when the validation endpoint was temporarily unavailable.
• Fixed macOS accessibility permissions not re-prompting after being revoked.
• Fixed Windows build issues affecting SVG assets.

​

This week

​

New

• Obsidian integration. Send your transcripts and meeting notes straight into your Obsidian vault. See Obsidian integration.
• Cloud sync across devices. Sync transcriptions and notes across your devices using iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive. See Cloud sync.
• Chat with notes and transcriptions. Ask questions about any past note or transcript and get answers grounded in that content. See Chat.
• Meeting detection. Vowen now detects when you join a meeting and prompts you to start recording. Available on both macOS and Windows.
• Voice Shortcuts: webhooks & scripts. Trigger webhooks or run scripts at the end of a voice shortcut. See Voice Shortcuts and Webhooks.
• Custom utilities. Build your own utilities on top of transcription output, with sensible templates to get started.
• More custom API providers. Bring additional OpenAI-compatible providers into Vowen for AI enhancement.
• Manual transcription queue. Queue multiple files for manual transcription and get notified as each one finishes. See Manual transcription.
• Auto translate to English. A new option to translate transcriptions into English automatically. See Languages.
• UK English support. Added UK English as a supported transcription language.
• gpt-4o-transcribe. Added support for OpenAI’s gpt-4o-transcribe model. See Models.
• Rich text in expansions. Text expansions now support rich text and multiple output formats. See Text expander.
• Cancel mid-transcription. Cancel an in-progress command-mode or regular transcription before it finishes.
• Switch models from the banner. Change your default transcription model directly from the in-app banner.
• Auto-add corrections to dictionary (beta, macOS). Edits you make to transcripts can be automatically suggested as dictionary entries. See Dictionary.

​

Improved

• Meeting notes experience. Removed the recording indicator during a notes session, added skeleton loaders, and you can now run regular transcriptions while a notes session is in progress. See Meeting notes.
• Menu tray indicator. The menu tray now shows a clear indicator while a meeting notes session is recording.
• Smarter recording start. Vowen briefly mutes system audio before recording so the first words of a video or call aren’t accidentally captured.
• Parakeet on macOS. Parakeet now runs as a background daemon with a shorter warmup interval, so the first transcription starts faster. See Models.
• Faster sync. Switched syncing to SSE for noticeably faster updates across devices, with an automatic fallback to HTTP.
• Keyboard layout-aware shortcuts. Shortcut UI now reflects your actual keyboard layout, and expansions work correctly across all layouts. See Shortcuts.
• Resume after sleep. Meeting detection now resumes correctly after sleep, wake, and AC power events.
• Standardized expansions UI. Refreshed the expansions screens for a consistent look and feel.
• Microphone connecting state. A loading indicator now appears while the microphone is connecting.
• 3-device activation. Pro licences now clearly support activation on up to 3 devices.
• Focus on Start meeting. Clicking “Start meeting” now brings Vowen into focus.
• Obsidian titles. Notes synced to Obsidian no longer prepend the date in the title.

​

Fixed

• Fixed Tones not working on Windows. See Tones.
• Fixed speaker labels missing from PDF exports.
• Fixed expansions not firing on certain keyboard layouts on Windows.
• Fixed modals closing unexpectedly when a text-selection drag ended over the overlay.
• Fixed an issue where meeting detection could swallow the Esc key.
• Fixed the recording banner appearing when recording from inside Vowen itself.
• Fixed the toolbar on custom API screens.
• Clamped enhanced silence-detection sensitivity to a maximum of 5 to prevent overly aggressive cutoffs.