v0.9.0

VocaMac 0.9.0

VocaMac 0.9.0 adds two things people have asked for: text snippets and a choice of dictation sounds. It also includes a substantial set of microphone fixes for stuck recordings, missing first words, Bluetooth startup, and device switching.

Text snippets

• Create a trigger phrase and the text it should expand to after transcription. For example, saying "my email" can insert your full email address.
• Manage snippets from their own Settings page. Matching is case-insensitive, respects word boundaries, and supports multi-word phrases.
• Longer triggers take priority, so overlapping snippets behave predictably.

Your choice of dictation tones

• Choose from ten start-and-stop tone pairs: Lift, Flick, Ember, Step, Voca, Soft, Chirp, Scale, Drop, and Glass.
• Preview each pair from Settings before selecting it.
• Choose Off when you want silent dictation cues. Voca is the default for new installations.

More reliable microphone capture

• Fixed a Core Audio deadlock that could leave push-to-talk stuck after repeated recordings.
• Capture now arms before the audio engine starts, preserving the first word of short dictations.
• Selected microphones fall back cleanly when a Bluetooth, USB, or system route becomes unavailable, and VocaMac tells you which input it is using.
• Bluetooth startup can now be cancelled promptly instead of waiting through the full route-change timeout.
• The recording overlay shows "Waiting for microphone..." until capture is genuinely live.
• Microphone and default-input changes refresh automatically while Settings or the menu is open.
• Improved startup on affected M4 Macs by avoiding unnecessary Core Audio route mutations and recovering from graphs that open without delivering input.

A cleaner VocaHQ experience

• About now uses native macOS colors and a compact icon row for VocaHQ, VocaLinux, VocaMac, VocaWin, VocaPhone, and VocaGateway.
• GitHub issues, Discord, X, and email are available together in a single contact row, with a direct link to VocaMac's contributors.
• The installer now points to the VocaHQ repository and preserves the correct Finder layout on both standard and Retina displays.
• VocaMac's website and community links now consistently use the VocaHQ identity.

How to update

Download VocaMac-0.9.0-arm64.dmg from the Assets below, open it, and drag VocaMac to Applications. Replacing an existing signed installation keeps your settings and permissions. Homebrew users can run brew upgrade --cask vocamac.

VocaMac 0.9.0 requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later and an Apple Silicon Mac. Apple Speech requires macOS 26 or later.

Thank you

This release includes pull requests from @Mr-Sunglasses and @jatinkrmalik.

@Mr-Sunglasses proposed text snippets in #149, built them in #150, and led the microphone reliability work in #233. @jatinkrmalik built the dictation tone picker in #227, the new About experience in #230, and the final installer and About polish in #239, along with the website and community updates included in this release.

Special thanks to @cbauer42 for reporting the Bluetooth input failure in #196, sharing detailed logs and crash analysis, and testing several nightly builds as the microphone fixes developed.

Full changelog: v0.8.0...v0.9.0