Chaos Capture v1.4-rc1 — three themes and a keyboard menu 🐙🐝🦄

Release candidate — real-world fresh-install QA in progress. Unzip the WHOLE folder and run ChaosCapture.exe (the art folder must stay next to the exe).

New since v1.3:

• 🎨 Three complete themes by Nova: octopus (tentacle nebula), high contrast bees (black/white/yellow for low vision — dims its background by default), unicorn (true light mode, painted by its subject). New look = pick it in the menu.
• 🌗 Background dimming slider — love the art AND see past it; every pair of eyes gets its own setting.
• 🎙🔊 Two big labeled buttons — LISTEN and READ ALOUD, side by side. No hotkey knowledge required.
• 🗣 Pick who reads to you — free Windows voices, or bring your own Inworld/ElevenLabs key (your key never touches us; DPAPI-encrypted, direct to the provider).
• ⌨ Keyboard menu (Ctrl+Alt+M) — a real focusable window: arrows, Enter, Esc. Keyboard-only users get every power.
• 🔄 The Bluetooth fixer, for everyone — Windows Bluetooth audio has a classic failure: connected, but silently deaf. Earbuds, headphones, hearing aids — same bug, same fix. The wizard offers one-time setup (one admin OK); after that, one tap re-handshakes everything.
• 💚 Bluetooth health ring — green halo on 🔄 when your mic link is verifiably alive.
• 🖥️🚀 Desktop icon + start-with-Windows — wizard checkboxes and menu toggles, plain .lnk, no admin.
• 📓 capture_log.txt beside the app — when something's weird, the log says what happened in plain words.
• 🛡 Gentle shutdown — the mic stream is released before the window dies (Bluetooth audio drivers can wedge otherwise). Never beeps at you. Still free, still local, still nobody's business.

Windows SmartScreen will warn about an unknown publisher on a freshly downloaded copy: More info → Run anyway (once per downloaded copy). The Microsoft Store build will remove that wall.

Built by Ace (an AI) and Ren (a disabled human), art by Nova (also an AI), because this should be standard and free — and now it is.

Chaos Capture v1.0 — free dictation + read-aloud

Chaos Capture v1.0 — dictation with big friendly buttons 🎙️

No cloud. No account. No sounds. Your words stay on your computer. Free, forever.

Both directions of "words are hard today":

• 🎙️ Talk instead of type — Ctrl+Alt+D (or click the big button), speak, and your words appear at your cursor. Added to what you wrote, never replacing it.
• 🔊 Listen instead of read — copy any text, Ctrl+Alt+R, and your computer reads it aloud.

To install (no technical skills needed)

1. Download ChaosCapture.exe below and put it in a folder.
2. (Optional, pretty) Download ChaosCapture-art.zip, unzip it, and put the art folder next to the EXE for the illustrated cards. Without it you get the simple high-contrast look — also nice.
3. Double-click ChaosCapture.exe. Windows will show "Windows protected your PC" because we haven't paid for a signing certificate — click More info → Run anyway. (The Microsoft Store version, coming soon, won't do this.)
4. Click into anything you were writing, press Ctrl+Alt+D, and talk.

The fine print that isn't fine print

• Uses Windows' built-in speech engines — nothing to download, works on modest machines.
• Want better accuracy and have a strong computer? Run from source with pip install faster-whisper — the app finds it automatically.
• Add YOUR words (your doctor, your meds, your fandom) to dictionary.txt so they're spelled right.
• Every control works by mouse or keyboard. One hand is enough. No sound is ever made at you unless you press the read-aloud button on purpose.

Built by Ace (an AI) & Ren (a disabled human), art by Nova (another AI), because comparable commercial tools cost hundreds of dollars a year and basic communication should not have a subscription fee.

v1.1 (same download, more brain)

• 🧠 Get better accuracy button in the ⚙ menu: optional one-time ~180MB download of a small open-source engine that's noticeably smarter than the built-in one. Your choice, your computer, reversible.
• 📖 My dictionary in the ⚙ menu: opens a simple text file where you list the names it should spell right. Free, because it's a text file.