What's New in Blazing Transcribe 2.3: AirPods, Clamshell Mode and Faster Starts

If you dictate with AirPods in, you've probably heard it. The moment a Mac app opens the AirPods mic, your music goes flat and muffled, like you've been put on hold. Then it snaps back a second or two after you stop talking.

That isn't a bug in any one app. Bluetooth can't send full-quality audio in both directions at once, so macOS switches your AirPods into a call mode whenever their mic is in use. On macOS 26 that call mode is much better than it used to be (24 kHz stereo on recent AirPods, where older setups dropped to 8–16 kHz mono), but it's still a step down from the 48 kHz your music normally plays at.

The last few Blazing Transcribe updates are mostly about getting around that, plus fixing a couple of things that made the app feel slower than it is.

Your AirPods keep sounding right

When your Mac's input is set to AirPods, Blazing now records from your Mac's built-in mic instead. Your AirPods stay in full-quality mode the whole time you dictate. If you've deliberately picked your AirPods as the mic in Blazing's Audio settings, Blazing respects that.

Version 2.3 adds an experimental switch that does the same thing for every app on your Mac: Keep AirPods sounding right in every app. When your headphones connect and macOS makes them your mic, Blazing moves your Mac's input back to the built-in mic, so Zoom, Shazam or Siri don't trigger call mode either. If you pick your AirPods as the input in System Settings later, it leaves that alone. You'll find it in Settings → Experimental.

Credit where it's due: the idea came from a Hacker News thread about CrystalClear Sound, a small Mac app that does just this.

Clamshell mode works properly

With the lid closed, a MacBook disconnects its built-in mic in hardware, but macOS still lists it as available. So "record from the built-in mic" quietly meant recording silence.

2.3.1 fixes that. With the lid closed, Blazing uses a USB, display or webcam mic if you have one, and your AirPods mic if you don't. It picks again automatically when you open or close the lid.

No music cut-outs between dictations (experimental)

When Blazing does record from your AirPods, the most annoying part isn't call mode itself. It's the cut-out when macOS switches your AirPods back to full quality after every single dictation.

2.3.2 adds an experimental option that keeps the AirPods mic open for a minute after you finish. You get one switch at the end of a burst of dictation instead of one per sentence. Turn it on in Settings → Experimental → No music cut-outs when dictating with AirPods.

Talk before the model has warmed up

Blazing runs the Parakeet speech model on your Mac's Neural Engine. The first time macOS loads the model it compiles it for the Neural Engine and caches the result, which is why a normal launch is ready in under a second. After an app or macOS update, that cache can be thrown away, and the first launch takes 30 to 60 seconds while it recompiles.

Before 2.3, pressing fn during that window did nothing. Now Blazing records anyway, holds your dictation, and types it the moment the model is ready. If you've switched to another app in the meantime, the text goes to your clipboard instead, so Blazing never drags you back to the old window.

Also new since 2.2

• A redesigned app: a new Home screen, Settings, onboarding with a practice run, and a History view that shows what text cleanup changed
• Dictionary chips, and Add to dictionary straight from History
• The mic goes to sleep a minute after your last dictation, so the orange mic dot isn't on all day
• Blazing lives in the menu bar, with no Dock icon by default
• Fixes for a crash on quit, stray punctuation on empty dictations, and a mic retry loop

The full list is on the changelog.

Getting the update

Blazing updates itself. If you're on 2.1.2 or later, 2.3.2 will arrive automatically, or you can grab it now from Settings → General → Check Now.

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