macOS guide

Vowen runs on macOS and Windows, and most of the app is identical on both. Everything below is different, or only available, on a Mac.

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Supported hardware

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Recording indicator styles

macOS is the only platform where you can choose how the recording indicator is drawn. Settings > Recording > Indicator style offers two options:

• Pill: the floating pill. Available everywhere, and the default
• Notch: the indicator lives in the MacBook notch instead of floating over your work

The notch indicator hangs from the notch while you record instead of floating over your work. It carries the same live audio bars, the same buttons, and the same states as the pill. See recording indicator for the rest of the indicator’s behavior.

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Meeting notes on macOS

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System audio capture

Meeting notes need to hear the far end of the call, not just your microphone. On macOS 13 and later, Vowen records whatever your Mac is playing alongside your microphone, so both sides of the call end up in the transcript. This works on Bluetooth headphones. When a meeting app opens your microphone, AirPods and similar headsets switch into call mode, and the far-end audio keeps recording through that switch. Calls taken on AirPods used to come back with your voice only; they no longer do. If capture cannot start for some reason, Vowen falls back to a second method automatically. Recording still happens either way.

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Echo cancellation

When you are on speakers rather than headphones, the far end comes out of your speakers and back in through your microphone. Meeting notes would then archive those voices twice: once cleanly from the system audio capture, once as a delayed, room-coloured copy on the mic. On macOS, Vowen removes the meeting app’s own audio from your microphone track, so each voice is archived once. It engages automatically when you are on speakers, and re-checks if you plug in or unplug headphones mid-meeting. There is nothing to configure.

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Meeting panel shortcut

While a meeting-notes session is running, press Cmd + \ to open the floating meeting panel and ask questions, take notes, or read the live transcript without switching windows. It only works while a meeting-notes session is running, so it does not occupy Cmd + \ the rest of the time. You can change it under Settings > Shortcuts > Meeting Panel.

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Other macOS-only behavior

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Fn key shortcuts

The Fn key can be used as a shortcut modifier on macOS, and Windows has no equivalent. It is the default for two shortcuts: See shortcuts for how to change them.

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Hide dock icon

Settings > General > Hide Dock Icon turns Vowen into a pure background app, reachable only from the menu bar. Windows has Start minimized to tray instead, which is not quite the same thing.

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Menu bar

Vowen lives in the macOS menu bar. Click it for quick access to settings, model switching, and meeting notes controls. The menu bar icon is a template image, so it adapts automatically to light and dark appearance.

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Website-aware tones, including installed web apps

Tones can be scoped to a website. On macOS, Vowen reads the active browser URL using the Accessibility permission it already holds, so there is no extra “Vowen wants to control Google Chrome” prompt, and it works in Chromium browsers, Safari, and Firefox. Browser-installed web apps count as their browser. A tone you assigned to chat.google.com keeps working when you open that page as an installed app rather than a tab, on both Chromium and Safari web apps.

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Local models

Local models on macOS are built for Apple hardware and run fastest on Apple Silicon. A few of them are macOS-only and have no Windows equivalent.

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Permissions

Settings > Permissions shows the live status of everything Vowen needs, with a button that opens the right System Settings pane. The list re-checks itself whenever you come back to the window, so there is no refresh button to press.

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Extra prompts from the Computer Use connector

The Computer Use connector is macOS-only and reads local app data on demand. It does not ask for anything up front. The first time the AI actually calls one of its tools, macOS prompts for:

• Automation: one prompt per app it scripts (Notes, Calendar, Reminders, Contacts, Finder, your browser)
• Calendars, Reminders, Contacts: the standard privacy prompts for those data types
• Full Disk Access: additionally required to read Safari bookmarks

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App window shortcuts

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Which model to use on a Mac

Parakeet V2 is the default and the right answer for most people: fully local, fastest, and English-only. Parakeet V3 is the multilingual equivalent. Two extra local options exist only on macOS: For maximum accuracy on hard audio, a cloud model is still the better choice. See speech models for the full comparison.

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Have a macOS-specific question? See the macOS FAQ.