Changelog

Recording

• Recordings can now be held in memory instead of always writing to disk, with an automatic fallback that persists audio if the session degrades
• Starting a new live session right after another no longer leaks stale transcript data
• Meeting countdown and autostart for upcoming calendar events

Chat

• Chat search now supports filter-only queries and relative date searches like last week
• Chat panel no longer expands off-screen when there isn't enough room
• Various layout, overflow, and scroll fixes across the chat UI

Calendar

• You can now connect multiple Google Calendar accounts at the same time
• Event descriptions are now selectable text

Settings

• App Settings is now the primary settings view
• Moving your content to a custom location now moves files instead of copying them
• Fixed an issue where some apps were incorrectly excluded from mic detection in Notification Settings

Notes

• Fixed font sizes in note preview cards
• Underline formatting now exports correctly to Markdown
• Removed stray non-breaking spaces from exported session files
• Improved AI-generated meeting section formatting

UI

• Left sidebar layout improvements
• New Meeting button at the end of the header bar
• Listen button blends with the background and has refreshed styling
• AI button now has a visible label
• Undo-delete toast positioning adjusted so it doesn't overlap content

Transcription

• Various live transcription bug when using our PRO proxy are fixed
• Batch transcription is more reliable for local models and multi-channel recordings
• Failed transcript runs now show clearer errors when you retry

Search

• Search now lives in the left sidebar, so you can move between recent activity and search results without leaving the main view

Storage

• You can now choose a custom location for Char content in Settings
• Obsidian vaults are listed as a storage destination, so you can point Char directly at your vault
• When moving your content, Char can copy existing sessions to the new folder before restarting

Chat

• The floating chat window can now resize freely without clipping or layout issues

Folders

• Moving and renaming folders is now more reliable, with file system changes applied before updating app state

Timeline

• The Today timeline places the current-time marker more accurately, including during ongoing events and in your selected timezone

Calendar

• Google Calendar events can now sync into Char alongside Apple Calendar (Beta)
• Calendar sync is more reliable when calendars are added, removed, or toggled in settings

Notes

• Search and replace now works more reliably across notes and transcripts
• Session preview cards now show richer previews, including enhanced notes and Markdown formatting when available

Chat

• Chat now suggests one-click starter prompts like summaries, action items, follow-up emails, key decisions, and main topics

Transcription

• Batch transcription is more reliable, with fixes for provider errors and edge cases that could leave a session stuck
• Re-running a transcript no longer clears the old transcript before the new run actually begins
• Added Parakeet support in Cactus as a new local transcription model option

Folders

• Folders tab now shows a cleaner placeholder state while we prepare a larger update for organizing notes

Calendar

• URLs in calendar event descriptions are now rendered as clickable links

Chat

• Chat now shows which session it has as context via a context indicator
• Chat can now directly edit your notes — ask it to revise, reformat, or expand content in place

Notes

• Code blocks are now properly supported in the editor
• Mentions are now exported as plain text in Markdown

Export

• Added Org mode (.org) as an export format alongside PDF, TXT, and Markdown

AI

• Short tips are now shown while the AI is generating a summary

Other fixes and improvements

• Failed batch transcription no longer resets the in-progress transcription

AI

• Pre-meeting notes are now passed to the AI as a separate section — summaries better reflect what actually changed during the meeting versus what was prepared beforehand
• Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Foundry are now supported as LLM providers (beta)
• Enhance (summarize) now stays active correctly when switching between tabs

Chat

• Chat is now a persistent panel instead of a floating overlay — stays in context as you work

Notes

• Hovering over a session in the sidebar or tab bar now shows a preview card with its title, date, participants, and a text snippet
• Typing @ with no query now shows default suggestions — sessions, people, and organizations — instead of an empty dropdown
• Long mention names are truncated so they don't overflow the editor
• Links now open on hover instead of requiring Cmd+Click

Export

• Export options are consolidated into a single Export button that opens a modal — choose format (PDF, TXT, Markdown) and what to include (summary, transcript)

Audio

• Playback speed is now configurable directly in the transcript view

Integrations

• Connecting integrations can now be triggered directly from the desktop app

Other fixes and improvements

• Detect notifications setting is now properly respected
• List items and task items are guaranteed to start with a paragraph — fixes edge cases in structured note editing

Transcription

• Fixed transcript segmentation producing incorrect splits between speakers
• Smarter mic detection: when mic usage is detected, the notification now lists nearby calendar events so you can jump straight into the right session

Notes

• Link text edits now automatically update the underlying URL — no more stale hrefs after renaming a link
• Links no longer bleed into adjacent typed text when editing near a link boundary
• Pressing Enter on an empty line now clears active inline formatting (bold, italic, underline)
• Link hover tooltip is now correctly positioned for links near the top of the editor

Audio

• Recordings are now saved as MP3 files

Calendar

• Session creation from a calendar event now correctly populates participants from event attendees
• Calendar onboarding now shows a Request Access to Calendar button instead of a dead-end "No calendars found" message

Onboarding

• Redesigned onboarding flow with clearer step states, checkmark completion indicators, and auto-scroll navigation between steps

Auth

• Fixed sign-in flow when the user was already logged into char.com in their browser

Other fixes and improvements

• Fixed red artifact line appearing in the left sidebar timeline
• Fixed account page side borders not extending to full height
• "Resume listening" now appears in the overflow menu when a transcript already exists, instead of "Start listening"
• AI generation is now more resilient when output validation retries exhaust — gracefully yields instead of erroring out
• Refreshed button styles with improved visual depth and hover feedback

Transcription

• Whisper small via Cactus engine is now in beta — run speech-to-text locally on your Mac (English only)
• Smarter language-aware provider selection: the best STT backend is now chosen automatically per language
• Fixed visual glitch when starting a new listening session
• "Resume listening" button label now correctly reflects the paused state
• Fix mic detection being skipped when the app window is focused
• Fix blank speaker label in transcripts when user name is not set

AI

• Your selected default template in settings is now applied automatically to all new AI-generated summaries
• AI-generated summaries now produce section headings in the correct language for non-English users
• AI model selectors filter out deprecated and non-chat models — cleaner model list
• Fix Gemini 2.0 and 2.5 models (Flash, Pro) incorrectly being hidden from the AI model list
• Local provider status (Ollama, LM Studio) shown with visual indicators — model selection disabled when provider is not running
• New Memory tab in AI settings for custom vocabulary

Search

• Transcript search now supports replace, match case, and whole word options with keyboard shortcuts
• Search auto-scrolls to the active result and stays in sync between transcript and editor views

Calendar

• Improved calendar visual hierarchy — cleaner header spacing, typography, and weekend styling
• Calendar onboarding now shows a loading state while fetching calendars
• Improved participant email resolution for Apple Calendar events
• Long event descriptions no longer overflow in metadata chips and popovers

Notes

• Cmd+Click on links in the note editor now opens them in your default browser
• Added "Reveal in Finder" to the session overflow menu

Contacts

• Contact avatars now show colored initials when no profile photo is set

Onboarding

• Streamlined onboarding flow with clear trial status after sign-in
• Removed contacts permission request from onboarding

Other fixes and improvements

• Renamed remaining "Hyprnote" references to "Char" across the UI
• Settings and AI tab bars now wrap correctly on narrow windows
• Fixed hover jump on interactive buttons
• Telemetry opt-out toggle now properly disables usage analytics
• Fix STT provider validation for cloud meta-models — routing now resolved server-side
• Cmd+Q quit now triggers on keydown for more predictable behavior

Notification

• Old MicStarted event and experimental MicProlongedUsage event are merged
• Now accept threshold configuration, which decides how long the mic must be active before triggering

AI

• Add Mistral as a new transcription provider
• Auto-trigger summary generation after transcript upload or batch completion

Search

• Full-text search now powered by Tantivy, faster indexing and more accurate results

Chat (experimental)

• Bring back chat as an experimental feature with major improvements
• Richer session context passed to chat for more relevant responses
• Search tool results now include full session context

Transcription

• Live transcription failure is now "non-fatal", recorder keeps running, entering degraded mode instead of crashing the session
• Show degraded transcription status in the transcript view

Calendar

• Improve calendar event sync reliability across timeline and notifications
• Show event descriptions in session metadata chips

Notes & Timeline

• Multi-select sessions in timeline with bulk delete and undo toast
• Auto-focus title input when no title is set
• Remove live session tab pinning

Other fixes and improvements

• Fix desktop auth refresh edge case tied to window visibility events
• Replace onboarding window with new onboarding within the main window
• Preserve preferred audio input device priority across device reconnects
• Improve audio import experience and error handling for AAC-in-MP4 files
• Fix fullscreen-to-hidden transition causing black screen on macOS
• Fix PDF export escaping for special characters in markdown
• Fix pro model configuration when starting trial from settings
• Restore relaunch after system audio permission grant

Chat

• Replace feedback modal with support chat — report bugs and suggest features via chat instead of the feedback form

Search

• Collapse search bar to icon by default, expand on click
• Advanced search tab with filters (Meeting note, Person, Organization) and date presets (Today, This week, This month)

Keyboard Shortcuts

• Restore Cmd+Shift+Q for Quit Completely, fix app menu quit handler

UI & Experience

• Context menu for creating new notes and tabs (right-click in main area)
• macOS dock right-click menu now shows "New Note" for quick access
• Fix tab bar blur visibility and set tab width to 160px
• Tray settings menu labels match in-app: "Open AI" → "AI Settings", "Open General" → "App Settings"

Settings

• Polish settings UI — simplify labels, timezone selector, week start, and lab settings
• Download button with dynamic channel selection for updates
• Add link to local LLM setup guide in AI settings

AI & Transcription

• Fix model reset when switching STT providers
• Fix delete model command for local STT
• Handle BCP47 language codes in summary template filters

Fixes

• Fix export transcript timestamp offset for multi-transcript sessions
• Fix auth session handling — separate Supabase sessions for desktop to prevent refresh token competition
• Fix store initialization racing with persisters — prevents "Welcome to Char" session from disappearing on startup
• Fix sign-in waiting screen — always show callback URL input inline
• Fix empty sessions and template tab state transitions
• Fix calendar timeline events (ignored, all-day types)

Keyboard Shortcuts

• New Cmd+Q behavior - hold to quit overlay (inspired by Chrome), replacing the previous hide behavior

Notifications

• Fix notification macOS glass border appearance
• Experimental in-meeting-reminder notification - opt-in in lab settings, notifies when another app has been using your microphone for 3+ minutes while Char isn't listening

Calendar

• New calendar view redesign - full calendar interface with week view, event popovers, and improved navigation controls
• Context menu to unignore calendar events directly from the sidebar timeline
• Fix refresh after-meeting rotation

Note Management

• Cmd+Shift+N hotkey to create a new note and start listening in one action
• Fix opening a note now switches to existing tab instead of creating a duplicate
• Fix markdown conversion regression causing note content issues

Mentions & Search

• Implement backlink mentions for notes, people, and companies with type badges and improved styling
• Fix: enable Cmd+O hotkey when search bar is focused on empty tab

UI & Experience

• Fix custom checkbox styling for MDX task lists in prose

Note Management

• Undo delete with 5-second countdown timer - accidentally deleted notes can be restored via the "Restore" button or Cmd+Z, with a dissolving animation showing the remaining time
• Space hotkey for controlling audio player playback
• Recently opened notes now appear in a "Recent" section at the top of the Open Note dialog (Cmd+O) for quick access

Settings

• Manual timezone configuration - override the system timezone specifically for how meeting times appear in the sidebar timeline, with 18 common timezone presets
• AI settings shortcut changed to Cmd+Shift+Comma
• New searchable dropdown component for language and timezone selection

Calendar

• Fix duplication of rescheduled recurring calendar events - previously, rescheduling a recurring event instance would show both old and new occurrences

AI & Transcription

• Auto-enhance now correctly counts words across multiple transcript segments, fixing cases where short segments wouldn't trigger enhancement
• LM Studio context length errors now show a "Learn how to fix this" link pointing to documentation with step-by-step instructions

UI & Experience

• Tooltip with keyboard shortcut hint for sidebar toggle button
• Hide retranscribe button during active listening to reduce visual clutter
• Improved dropdown keyboard navigation with Tab key support and visual selection indicator
• Dropdown selections auto-scroll to keep the selected item visible

Stability & Performance

• Fix memory leaks from actor subscriptions and timer accumulation not being cleaned up
• Fix high CPU usage caused by MutationObserver watching the entire document tree - now uses targeted ResizeObserver
• Fix transcript data migration to preserve speaker hints and support multiple transcripts per session

System

• Tauri 2.10.1
• Major dependency updates: cpal 0.17 (audio, now using upstream instead of patched fork), reqwest 0.13, cidre 0.14 (macOS bindings), tokio-tungstenite 0.28

Navigation

• Open Note command (Cmd+O) with search palette to quickly find and open existing notes
• Pinned tabs now persist across app restarts

Transcript

• Improved empty transcript state with clearer visual feedback

Feedback

• Select issue type (bug report, feature request, question) when submitting feedback

UI & Experience

• Meeting icons (Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex) now load locally for better reliability
• Tray menu "Hide" renamed to "Close All" for clarity

System

• Fixed stale single-instance socket that was preventing app launch on macOS
• Bumped markdown-rs to 1.0, which fixes a panic during markdown conversion containing a Unicode character

Audio & Recording

• Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC) eliminates the need for heuristics-based micOnly mode
• Record microphone and speaker as separate stereo channels for cleaner audio separation
• Recordings saved as .wav instead of .ogg for better compatibility
• Sleep detection automatically stops recording when your laptop lid closes or system sleeps
• Audio visualizer now uses RMS-based amplitude for smoother, more accurate loudness display
• Improved macOS speaker capture with real-time safe buffer reuse
• Device priority selector in audio settings
• Fixed null pointer crash in microphone detection on macOS 26.x

AI & Speech-to-Text

• Added Mistral as a new LLM provider
• Added ElevenLabs as a new speech-to-text provider
• Language support checking warns when your selected STT provider doesn't support your language
• Show local model in Finder and delete downloaded models from AI settings
• Improved automatic model selection for Char Cloud users
• Better Deepgram language variant recommendations
• Fixed custom OpenAI endpoint configuration not being respected

Editor

• Added table support for inserting and editing tables directly in notes
• Added search and replace with case sensitivity option
• Cmd/Ctrl+click to open links in new tab
• Search auto-populates from selected text
• Improved markdown rendering styles and spacing

Attachments

• Images saved as files in session folder instead of base64
• Duplicate filenames automatically get numbered suffixes

PDF Export

• Export beautiful PDFs with metadata cover page including title, date, and participants
• PDFs save directly to Downloads folder and open automatically

Transcript

• Regenerate transcript from existing audio files via note header
• Optimize transcript word rendering and scrolling performance
• Fixed partial words leaking to inactive session transcripts during live recording

UI & Experience

• Redesigned app settings with improved layout and UX
• Changed app font from Inter to SF Pro
• Recording indicator overlay on dock icon while recording
• Split floating action button into separate "Join" and "Start listening" buttons
• Listening tab pinned to fixed left position during recording
• Sidebar automatically expands when searching
• Sidebar auto-scrolls to "Now" indicator on initial load
• Expandable fields in metadata panel
• "Open in new tab" context menu option
• Confirmation dialog when closing active listening tabs
• Video chat link visibility adapts to available editor width
• Event start times displayed in timeline sidebar
• Fixed timeline bucket sorting (weeks before months, correct chronological order)
• Reduced toast notification delays

Contacts

• Pinned contacts with drag-and-drop reordering
• Duplicate contact detection with merge functionality
• Current user pinned at top with "Me" badge
• Preserve "me" label when merging contacts

Calendar

• Enhanced context menu: "Open in new tab", "Reveal in Finder", "Delete completely"
• Create calendar events from Apple Calendar integration
• Fixed recurring event sync and recurrence series ID population
• Fixed timezone offset causing dates to appear off by one day
• Ignored events now persist after app restart

Data & Storage

• Replaced sqlite-based persisters with json and markdown-based persisters

Authentication & Account

• Auth session persists across app updates (no more re-login after updates)
• Stay logged in when app is backgrounded
• Fixed authentication token refresh errors
• Pro trial auto-starts on first app launch
• Prevent trial expired modal from interrupting onboarding
• Show "Upgrade to Pro" for expired trials instead of disabled features
• Auto-reset cloud STT and Char LLM settings when trial expires

Feedback & Support

• In-app feedback modal for bug reports and feature requests via Help menu
• Report Issue button on error page with pre-filled device info
• Git hash display in feedback modal

System

• Cmd+Q intercepted by default; Cmd+Shift+Q to force quit
• Tray menu shows update download progress
• Handle menubar "New Note" navigation correctly
• Reordered onboarding permissions for better UX flow

Char 1.0.1 brings significant improvements to plugin architecture, data management, and overall user experience.

Calendar Integration

• Display calendar event info in metadata chip
  • Show video icon and truncated event title
  • Display event details including title, location, meeting link, and date/time
  • Add Join button for meeting links

Auto-Enhancement & Title Generation

• Automatically switch to summary tab and start summarizing when listening stops
• Re-trigger summarization even if summary already exists
• Require minimum words before auto-enhancement triggers
• Show dismissible consent banner when listening starts (fades out after 5 seconds)
• Display skip reason banner when auto-enhance is skipped
• Prevent unnecessary title regeneration when switching tabs
• Restore focus to memos editor when switching tabs during meeting

Plugins

• Consolidate export, frontmatter, and folder plugins into unified fs-sync plugin

  • Move folder operations to fs-sync plugin
  • Move export functionality to fs-sync plugin
  • Move frontmatter operations to fs-sync plugin
  • Add audio operations (delete, exist, import, path) to fs-sync plugin
  • Add chat directory, entity directory, and scan utilities to fs-sync plugin
  • Add orphan cleanup commands (cleanup_orphan_dirs, cleanup_orphan_files)

• Add apple-contacts plugin

  • Implement Apple Contacts integration for importing contacts
  • Add import command for batch importing contacts

Persistence & Storage

• Major persister consolidation and refactoring
  • Merge note and transcript persisters into single session persister
  • Add chat shortcuts persister for storing chat shortcuts
  • Remove memories feature and related code
  • Refactor persister utilities into shared factories
  • Add factory helpers for JSON file and markdown directory persistence
  • Add generic transforms in human persister
  • Add values persister for key-value pairs
• Store transcript words inline instead of separate table
• Store array fields as JSON instead of comma-separated strings
• Move language settings to top-level 'language' key
• Remove extension_state and ai_providers from main store

Search & Indexing

• Tantivy search engine improvements
  • Refactor to consolidate search args into SearchRequest struct
  • Phase 1 foundation fixes for better search infrastructure
  • Phase 2 feature parity with Orama search capabilities
  • Add advanced search features including filters and sorting
  • Improve batching, concurrency, and index versioning

Audio & Devices

• Add DeviceListChanged event for device connect/disconnect detection
• Fix wrong sample rate returned from audio buffer
• Add com.apple.Sound-Settings.extension to microphone detection exclusion list
• Add error propagation from STT adapters
  • Improve error handling in Argmax, AssemblyAI, Fireworks, Gladia, OpenAI, and Soniox adapters
  • Better error reporting in listener actor

Speech-to-Text

• Fix Deepgram language configuration
• Remove unsupported detect_language option from Deepgram streaming
• Don't force accordion in STT config UI

Editor

• Add resizable image extension to Tiptap editor
  • Resize handles with hover effects
  • Preserve custom attachmentId attribute

Data Import

• Add Templates import to Char importer (supports v0 stable and nightly)
• Refactor importer plugin with simplified import flow
• Remove LIMIT in session queries for better import handling
• Remove auto import on app startup
• Remove data tab from main navigation (consolidated into settings)
• Update data import UI in settings
• Fix path display and reveal behavior for Char sources
• Improve legacy HTML-to-markdown conversion
• Use Tiptap native markdown conversion for better parsing

Performance

• Implement incremental persister save optimization using content hashing
• Optimize TinyBase store by inlining nested words

Meeting View

• Prefer listener view when re-entering a meeting

macOS Notification

• Improve progress bar animation with correct pause/resume behavior
• Move progress bar to bottom of notification

Fixes

• Fix edge-case for is_builtin_display_inactive on macOS
• Compute Ollama Origin header from baseUrl to fix Forbidden error
• Simplified error UI with single "Restart App" button
• Read AI language from settings store instead of main store
• Normalize bullet points (•) to dashes (-) in AI summaries
• Better Sentry config with user-id tracking
• Improve accessibility for tab button interaction

We're excited to announce Char 1.0.0, our first stable release! This release consolidates all the improvements from our nightly builds into a polished, production-ready experience.

Platform Support

• macOS support for Apple Silicon (aarch64) and Intel (x86_64)
• Linux support with AppImage and .deb distributions
• Standardized artifact naming with architecture info

Speech-to-Text Providers

• Deepgram - Full support with API key validation and keyword handling
• Gladia - Complete support with code switching, partial transcripts, multi-channel audio, custom vocabulary, and speaker diarization
• OpenAI - Realtime and batch transcription
• AssemblyAI - Streaming and batch transcription
• Soniox - STT provider support
• Whisper Large V3 - Local STT option
• Language detection and multi-language support across providers

AI & LLM Support

• Google Generative AI provider
• OpenAI and Anthropic model providers
• Ollama support with CORS fix
• LLM configuration error rendering in editor

Audio & Recording

• Scrolling waveform visualization in the listen button
• Fixed recording issues with headphones (sample rate, distortion)
• VAD (Voice Activity Detection) improvements with continuous masking
• AGC (Automatic Gain Control) with VAD integration
• Dual-websocket mode for multichannel support with local STT
• 24k sample-rate on macOS to minimize resampling
• Linux audio support via PulseAudio with headphone detection

Search & Indexing

• Tantivy-based full-text search replacing Pagefind
• Language detection and language-aware tokenization
• Multi-collection indexing for scalable search
• Search results with highlighted matches

Folder Management

• Create, rename, delete, and move sessions between folders
• Reveal session in Finder
• Folder detection based on directory structure

Export

• PDF export with typst-based formatting
• JSON export with batch support
• VTT export with speaker information
• Transcript export improvements
• Tab-aware export menu (memo, enhanced, transcript)

Editor

• Tiptap document JSON validation
• List navigation and backspace behavior improvements
• Tab and shift-tab support for list indentation
• Prompt editor with readonly ranges support
• 20x faster tiptap JSON to markdown export with custom Rust implementation

Chat

• Dedicated chat editor with slash command support
• Chat trigger on hover near bottom
• Resizable chat window

Settings

• Unified settings.json configuration
• Prompt, shortcut, template, and extensions tabs
• Custom template support
• App settings organized into tabs

Window & UI

• Window size based on screen size
• Persistent window position and size across restarts
• macOS traffic light button positioning
• Native menu support
• Keyboard shortcuts for tab navigation
• Tab restore functionality
• Progressive blur effect at scroll ends
• Responsive search with manual expansion
• 20% rendering optimization for long transcripts
• Fancy NotFound and ErrorBoundary components

Onboarding

• Redesigned onboarding experience with background music
• Free trial support
• Auto model and provider selection for Pro trial
• Back navigation in permissions and configuration screens

Updates & Distribution

• OTA (Over-the-Air) updates with cache support
• Tray menu with update check, status dialogs, and settings
• Changelog tab shown automatically after updates
• CLI update command
• Homebrew distribution

Notifications

• macOS notification enhancements
• Notification collapse animation
• Auto-start trigger improvements

Plugins

• JS Plugin - JavaScript code evaluation via rquickjs
• Notify Plugin - Filesystem watching with debouncing
• Overlay Plugin - Floating controls with click-through behavior
• Hooks Plugin - Event handling with 5-second timeout for user scripts
• Listener2 Plugin - Batch and subtitle functionality
• Updater2 Plugin - Update check functionality
• Deeplink2 Plugin - Type-safe deep link handling
• Network Plugin - Network availability monitoring

Calendar

• Calendar picker UI with permission handling
• Contact view opens in new tab when clicking participant chip

CLI

• Experimental CLI support
• CLI installer in app menu
• --help and --version flags

Developer Experience

• Deno-powered extensions runtime with iframe-based isolation
• Separate devtool window
• E2E tests using Linux WebDriver
• PostHog analytics fixes
• Sentry monitoring integration

Other Improvements

• Prevent closing tab or quitting app during active listening
• Session failure error surfacing in listen button tooltip
• Disable listen button when offline with non-local model
• Title generation after meetings
• Inline codeblock wrapping
• Sound effects playback fixes
• Keyboard navigation improvements