Mouthpiece 0.5.3

The widget can stay out of the way until you dictate.

• Show the widget only while dictating. A new setting in Settings > Dictation > General. With it on, the widget appears when you press the shortcut (or start a meeting) and hides itself once your words are pasted. An error stays up long enough to read, and the widget stays while your pointer is on it, while the undo offer is showing, or while it's asking you to allow pasting. The menu bar's Show/Hide Widget still brings it up any time. Off by default, so nothing changes until you turn it on.

If you updated from 0.5.0 and Mouthpiece still copies instead of pasting, remove it from System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility with −, then click Allow pasting in the widget.

Install or update: download Mouthpiece.dmg below, or skip the Gatekeeper prompt with

curl -fsSL https://jfinchy.github.io/mouthpiece/install.sh | sh

Mouthpiece 0.5.2

Mics that go quiet no longer cost you a dictation, and every widget style has a menu.

• The laptop mic is the fallback, not your headphones. When your chosen mic isn't connected and macOS's default is Bluetooth headphones, Mouthpiece records from the Mac's own mic instead. Headphone mics are lower quality, drop your music to call quality, and go silent when music is already playing.
• A silent mic is swapped mid-recording. If a mic you didn't pick sends nothing at all for 2 seconds, Mouthpiece moves to the next working mic (the Mac's own first) and keeps recording. Nothing is lost, and the widget says "Mic switched".
• "Switch mic" when a mic goes quiet. If the mic you picked sends nothing, during a recording or after it, the widget offers Switch mic: a menu of your mics with the Mac's own first. A pick takes effect straight away, even mid-recording.
• A menu in every widget style. Right-click the widget, or hover and click ⌄, for microphone, mic mode, the next dictation's mode, widget style and Settings. It's a standard macOS menu, so even the pill, the notch and the Minimal dot get it without growing.
• Voice bars with a real range. The level meter now follows loudness in decibels: normal speech sits around the middle, and quieter or louder words visibly move it, instead of every bar hitting the top. The bars are taller too.

If you updated from 0.5.0 and Mouthpiece still copies instead of pasting, remove it from System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility with −, then click Allow pasting in the widget.

Install or update: download Mouthpiece.dmg below, or skip the Gatekeeper prompt with

curl -fsSL https://jfinchy.github.io/mouthpiece/install.sh | sh

Mouthpiece v0.5.1

Permissions now survive updates, and a missing permission no longer loses your words.

• Updates keep your permissions. Mouthpiece is now signed with its own certificate. Earlier versions were signed per build, so macOS quietly dropped Accessibility and Microphone permission after every update, even when Mouthpiece still looked switched on in System Settings. Updating to 0.5.1 asks for them one last time; from here on, updates keep them.
• No lost dictation. If pasting isn't allowed, your words are copied to the clipboard (and saved to History) instead of failing, so ⌘V gets them back.
• One-click fix. The widget shows "Copied · Allow pasting". Click it: macOS asks, the Accessibility list opens, and the widget says "Pasting is on" the moment you turn it on. The setup checklist in Settings works the same way.

If Mouthpiece already looks on in Privacy & Security > Accessibility but still can't paste, switch it off and on again.

Install or update: download Mouthpiece.dmg below, or skip the Gatekeeper prompt with

curl -fsSL https://jfinchy.github.io/mouthpiece/install.sh | sh

Mouthpiece v0.5.0

New: meeting mode. Record a meeting and get a transcript split by speaker, made entirely on your Mac.

• Start a meeting from the menu bar icon or Settings → Meetings. Mouthpiece records everything your mic hears until you stop it; the widget shows the meeting's running time, and its button ends the meeting. Dictation pauses while a meeting records.
• A transcript split by speaker. After you stop, Mouthpiece works out who spoke when, transcribes each turn, and labels them "Speaker 1", "Speaker 2", and so on. If you've enrolled your voice (Settings → Voice), you're labelled "You". You can keep dictating while it works.
• Best results: set "People in the meeting" on the Meetings page. Left on "Work it out", two voices that sound very alike can end up as one speaker.
• Your transcripts are saved as Markdown on your Mac and listed on the Meetings page (View, Copy, Open, Delete), behind the History lock if you use it. The recording is deleted once the transcript is made; if the app quits mid-meeting, the recording is kept so you can transcribe it later.
• What it hears: meetings in the room and calls on your speakers. On headphones, only your side is recorded for now.

Let people know when you're recording them.

Install or update: download Mouthpiece.dmg below, or skip the Gatekeeper prompt with

curl -fsSL https://jfinchy.github.io/mouthpiece/install.sh | sh

Mouthpiece v0.4.0

Dev Whisper is now Mouthpiece. Same app, new name.

• Updating keeps everything. The first time Mouthpiece opens after the update it moves over your settings, history, downloaded models and vocabulary, renames the app to Mouthpiece in your Applications folder, and keeps Launch at login on if you had it.
• macOS asks for Accessibility and Microphone again. macOS ties those permissions to the app's identity, and the new name has a new one. The setup checklist in Settings shows what to allow. You can remove the old "Dev Whisper" entries from System Settings → Privacy & Security.
• Old names still work. Your Claude Code hook setup is unchanged, devwhisper:// links still work alongside the new mouthpiece://, and with hands-free listening you can say "Mouthpiece, …" or "Dev Whisper, …".
• New home: jfinchy.github.io/mouthpiece and github.com/JFinchy/mouthpiece.

If you install from the DMG instead of updating, drag the old Dev Whisper app to the Trash afterwards; your settings carry over either way.

Install or update: download Mouthpiece.dmg below, or skip the Gatekeeper prompt with

curl -fsSL https://jfinchy.github.io/mouthpiece/install.sh | sh

Dev Whisper v0.3.5

Live drafts, discard with undo, and new widget styles.

• Words appear while you're still talking. With live transcript on, a quick draft of the current phrase updates about every 0.7 seconds, so a long sentence starts showing in about 1.7 seconds instead of only after you pause. The text that gets pasted is unchanged; the full-quality pass still does the final version.
• Discard with Esc, undo with ⇧Esc. Press Esc while recording (or click ✕ on the widget) to throw the recording away. Press Esc while it's being transcribed to cancel the paste. Either way, Undo on the widget or ⇧Esc brings it back for 8 seconds.
• Four new widget styles: Pill, Notch (tucked under the menu bar), Live caption, and Compact two-line, alongside Compact and Detailed. Switch from Settings → Dictation, the widget's hover menu, or Widget style in the menu bar icon.
• A bigger voice meter. The level bars now fill the space they have in every style, so you can see the mic picking you up at a glance.

Install or update: download Dev-Whisper.dmg below, or skip the Gatekeeper prompt with

curl -fsSL https://jfinchy.github.io/dev-whisper/install.sh | sh

Dev Whisper v0.3.4

Fixes the microphone in the installed app.

• The microphone now works in the installed app. Every earlier release was missing the microphone permission text macOS requires (NSMicrophoneUsageDescription). Without it, macOS never asks for access and silently gives the app silence, so recordings came back empty with "no signal from mic". Now macOS asks once, the first time Dev Whisper uses the microphone.
• Microphone permission in the setup checklist. If access hasn't been given, is turned off, or is blocked by your organization's device management, Settings says which, with a button to fix it. A silent recording now tells you when permission is the cause instead of asking whether your mic is muted.
• Compact widget polish. It's wider (280px) so words aren't cut off, errors grow the widget to show the whole message, and the hover menu scrolls inside the widget with a thin scroll bar instead of spilling out of the window.

If macOS asked before and you clicked Don't Allow, turn Dev Whisper on in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone.

Install or update: download Dev-Whisper.dmg below, or skip the Gatekeeper prompt with

curl -fsSL https://jfinchy.github.io/dev-whisper/install.sh | sh

Dev Whisper v0.3.3

A new look.

• New app icon: a terminal prompt flowing into a waveform and a text cursor, amber to violet. If the Dock still shows the old one after updating, run killall Dock.
• Matching menu bar icon: the same prompt, wave and cursor as a simple glyph that follows your light or dark menu bar.
• Recording indicator fixed on dark menu bars: while recording (red dot) or listening (green dot), the icon used to turn black, which disappeared on a dark menu bar. It's now grey, and the dot sits in the corner instead of covering the icon.

Install or update: download Dev-Whisper.dmg below, or skip the Gatekeeper prompt with

curl -fsSL https://jfinchy.github.io/dev-whisper/install.sh | sh

Existing installs update themselves.

Dev Whisper v0.3.2

Privacy and security release.

New

• Lock History with Touch ID or your password. Settings → History → Privacy. When it's on, History stays hidden until you confirm it's you, and it locks again when you leave History, hide Settings, or after 5 minutes. Off by default.
• Logs leave out what you said. app.log keeps events and timings, but each transcript is replaced by its length. Turn on "Include transcript text in logs" (same place) when reporting a dictation bug.
• No Ollama cloud models. Ollama can run some models on its own servers. Dev Whisper now hides those and refuses to use them, so LLM cleanup never leaves your Mac.
• History and log files are now readable only by your user account.

Security

• Updated the TLS libraries used for update checks and model downloads (rustls, webpki and root certificates) to fix known vulnerabilities, plus build-tool updates (vite, source-map-js).
• Every change is now scanned for known vulnerabilities in the app's dependencies (cargo audit, bun audit).

Install without the Gatekeeper prompt

Dev Whisper still isn't notarized by Apple, so a browser download needs a one-time Open Anyway in System Settings → Privacy & Security. To skip that, install with:

curl -fsSL https://jfinchy.github.io/dev-whisper/install.sh | sh

or build from source (steps in the README).

Dev Whisper v0.3.1

Fixes "Dev Whisper is damaged and can't be opened" on a fresh download.

Earlier releases only signed the app's executable, not the whole app bundle, which macOS reports as damaged once the app has been downloaded. The app is now properly signed, and the release build checks this so it can't regress.

Dev Whisper still isn't notarized by Apple, so the first launch is blocked once: open it, then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway (on macOS 14 or earlier, right-click the app and choose Open).

Already have 0.3.0 installed and it won't open? Either install this version, or run:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Dev Whisper.app"

Everything new in 0.3 (codebase vocabulary, live transcription, agent replies and more) is in the 0.3.0 notes.