you@macbook ~/blazing-transcribe $ git log --oneline
Changelog
What's new in Blazing Transcribe.
v2.4.1October 2026
Improved
- Simpler menu bar menu — the Pause/Resume microphone item is gone (your mic toggle shortcut still works)
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v2.4.0October 2026
New
- Ready in seconds, even on a cold start — when macOS has to recompile the speech model (first install, or after it clears its cache) Blazing used to need 30–60 seconds; it now starts on your CPU in a few seconds and switches to the Neural Engine in the background
- The menu bar icon shows what Blazing is doing: dimmed while it gets ready, a dot while the mic is on, red while recording
- Fast repeat dictation — after you dictate, the mic stays ready for a minute so the next one starts instantly. Never opens at login and never holds AirPods
- Open Blazing at login is now in Settings
- Old speech models from earlier versions (often several GB) can be moved to the Bin from Settings
Improved
- Your first words aren't clipped: the pill only switches to recording once the mic is actually hearing you
- Letting go of the key no longer makes typing stutter for a moment across your Mac
- Your Mac can idle-sleep again while Blazing runs, and the speech model only stays warm while you're at your Mac
- Text is typed before stats and History are saved, so it lands sooner
- AI text cleanup has a real time limit and frees its memory when you haven't used it for a while
- Smaller download: about 12 MB
- Opening the Blazing window gives it a Dock icon and a place in Cmd-Tab until you close it
Fixed
- Only one copy of Blazing can run at a time
- Double-tapping fn no longer switches you into Always-on by accident (it's an option in Shortcuts now)
- If you're holding Cmd, Ctrl or Option when the text arrives, it's copied instead of typed as shortcuts
- In Always-on, dictating while a web page (not a text box) is focused copies the text instead of triggering page shortcuts like Firefox's find bar
- Switching microphones (e.g. AirPods connecting) no longer loses dictations that were still being transcribed
- A full disk no longer crashes Blazing mid-recording
- Locking your screen turns the mic off
- What you dictate is no longer written to Blazing's log file
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v2.3.2September 2026
New
- Experimental: no music cut-outs when dictating with AirPods — keeps the AirPods mic open for a minute after you finish, so they switch back to full-quality audio once instead of after every dictation
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v2.3.1September 2026
Fixed
- Clamshell mode — with the lid closed, Blazing no longer records silence from the MacBook's (switched-off) built-in mic when you're wearing AirPods
- With the lid closed, a USB, display or webcam mic is used if you have one; otherwise your AirPods mic is used
- The mic is re-picked automatically when you open or close the lid
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v2.3.0September 2026
New
- Dictate while the speech model warms up — after an app or macOS update the first launch can take up to a minute; your first dictation is now held and typed as soon as it's ready (copied to the clipboard if you've moved to another app)
- Experimental: keep AirPods sounding right in every app — when Bluetooth headphones connect, your Mac's input switches back to the built-in mic so Zoom, Shazam and friends don't drop them to call quality
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v2.2.0September 2026
New
- Redesigned app — new Home, Settings hub, onboarding with a practice run, and a History view that shows what text cleanup changed
- Dictionary chips, plus Add to dictionary straight from History
- One morphing recording pill that shows exactly what Blazing is doing
- A single switch to stop Blazing using the fn key
Improved
- AirPods keep sounding right — when your Mac's input is a Bluetooth headset, Blazing records from the built-in mic so your music doesn't drop to call quality
- The mic sleeps a minute after your last dictation by default, so the orange mic dot isn't on all day
- Lives quietly in the menu bar — no window on launch and no Dock icon by default
- Stalled model downloads fail after 2 minutes instead of 30 and retry
Fixed
- Crash on quit — and History is now saved before exiting
- No more stray punctuation typed when a dictation has no words
- An endless mic retry loop when a device misbehaved
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v2.1.2August 2026
Fixed
- Speech model download shows real progress in MB and no longer starts over from zero after a network hiccup
- Choosing AI Cleanup without an API key now offers the local model instead of silently doing nothing
- New Download AI Model menu item with a live progress bar
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v2.0.0July 2026
New
- Blazing Transcribe is now free
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v1.1.0March 2026
New
- Keep Mic Ready toggle — turn off to disable the orange mic indicator between PTT presses (trades ~0.7s startup delay for no persistent mic access)
- Mic test in Audio preferences — speak a phrase and see the transcription right in the settings window
- Animated waveform visualizer — replaces the old level meter in Audio preferences
Improved
- Rebuilt audio engine on CoreAudio HAL — more reliable mic capture with graceful device switching
- Smarter device recovery — unplugging or switching mics mid-session recovers automatically
- Thread-safe transcription engine — stale results from device switches are silently dropped
- Short accidental mic activations (<1s) no longer produce garbage transcriptions
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v1.0.3March 2026
New
- Manual recording mode — hold fn to push-to-talk, or fn+Space to toggle recording on/off
- Double-tap fn to switch modes — quickly toggle between always-on and manual without opening preferences
- Welcome screen redesign — side-by-side mode cards showing how each mode works
- Preferences General tab — interactive mode picker with animated gradient border
- Sticky recording — text always delivers to the app you started recording in, even if you switch apps
- Automatic updates — Sparkle OTA so you never have to re-download manually
- 7-day free trial — try everything with no sign-up required
Improved
- Zero-latency push-to-talk — audio engine stays warm in manual mode, eliminating ~700ms startup delay
- Distinct menu bar icons — waveform for always-on, mic for manual mode
- No audio level flickering in manual mode between recordings
- Live waveform animation in the recording overlay
- Menu bar shows trial status and subscription state at a glance
- License management — activate, validate, and remove license keys from Preferences
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v1.0.2February 2026
New
- TelemetryDeck analytics for anonymous usage insights
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v1.0.1February 2026
Improved
- Model download progress indicator on first launch
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v1.0.0February 2026
Initial Release
- 155x real-time transcription via Apple Neural Engine
- Always-on mode with automatic voice activity detection
- Push-to-talk and toggle recording modes
- Configurable keyboard shortcuts
- Floating overlay with transcription status
- Multi-model support — tiny through large
- 100% on-device, nothing leaves your Mac