Ears 1.7.197

The Chrome extension is now on the Chrome Web Store.

• Settings ▸ Integrations ▸ Browser installs it in one click, and Chrome keeps it up to date from then on — no more copying folders and loading them unpacked. The manual route is still there, tucked under "Install by hand instead", for anyone who wants it.
• The reply badge now opens the reply. Clicking the envelope goes straight to Settings ▸ Help and scrolls to the conversation, instead of leaving you on whichever settings page you last had open.
• Update messages no longer tell you to reinstall the extension by hand when Chrome will do it for you.

Ears 1.7.196

Fixes

• The reply envelope sits at the right-hand end of the status row, rather than
  wedged between the status dot and the word beside it.
• A second copy of Ears no longer fills the log with the same error every
  twenty seconds. It says once, loudly, that it could not take the port, then
  notes it quietly while it keeps retrying. Nothing about the behaviour
  changed — only how much of the log it occupies.
• A test copy started with its own storage folder now writes its own log,
  instead of into the real one where its errors look like the everyday app
  misbehaving.

Ears 1.7.195

Reporting a problem

• Paste a screenshot straight into the description with ⌘V, the way you would
  anywhere else. Dragging an image or a file onto the box works too.
• The "Paste screenshot" button is gone. It existed because the text box
  ignored anything on the clipboard that was not text — asking you to use a
  control instead of the shortcut every other app already taught you.
• Text still pastes as text. Only images and files become attachments.

Ears 1.7.194

Reporting a problem

• The form has moved to the bottom of Settings ▸ Help, below the version and
  setup information — someone scrolling that page is usually looking for an
  answer first and a person second.
• You can attach files, or paste a screenshot straight from the clipboard.
  Up to five files, 5 MB each: images, text and PDF.
• "Include today's log" attaches the app's log for today. It is offered rather
  than sent automatically, because the log records what Ears did all day,
  including meeting titles — that is yours to hand over knowingly.
• Attachments are listed under the report so you can see what you sent.

Replies

• When a reply is waiting, an envelope now appears at the bottom of the
  sidebar, beside the recording status, as well as next to Settings. Clicking
  it goes straight there.

Registration

• The grace period for a new install is seven days rather than three.

Ears 1.7.193

A week to register

• A new install can record for seven days before registering. The prompt says
  how long is left, and "Later" is offered only while there is time on it.
• The countdown belongs to the installation, not to a file on your Mac: the
  licence service records when it first saw this copy and signs the deadline,
  so reinstalling Ears does not restart it.
• If the service cannot be reached, recording works regardless. A meeting must
  never be lost to a server problem at my end.

Report a problem, get a reply

• Settings ▸ Help now has a form for reporting something wrong or asking for a
  feature. The app and macOS versions travel with it, so the first reply can be
  an answer rather than three questions. Nothing from your meetings is included.
• Replies appear in the app, under the report you sent, and you can write back
  there. No email, nothing to land in a spam folder.
• When a reply is waiting, an envelope appears next to Settings in the sidebar.
• You can report a problem whether or not you have registered.

Ears 1.7.192

Registration

• Registration can no longer be skipped by pressing Escape. Recording starts
  once Ears is registered.
• "Not now" is now "Later", which is what it does: the prompt returns next time
  you open Ears rather than going away for good.
• If the licence service cannot be reached — you are offline, or it is down —
  recording works anyway. A meeting starting in ten seconds must never be lost
  to a server problem, and that is a fault at my end rather than yours.

Ears 1.7.191

Fixes

• "Delete my registration" now works. The confirmation was attached to the
  wrong settings page, so the button did nothing at all.
• The Licence section lines up with the rest of the General tab, and shows the
  address and the expiry together rather than on two ragged rows.
• Removed the "Email me occasionally about Ears" tick box. It set something the
  app never sent anywhere, so it promised a choice that had no effect.

Ears 1.7.190

Registration

• Ears now asks for an email address when it first runs, and registers your
  copy with the licence service. Ears is free.
• Registering is optional. "Not now" works, and so does the app.
• The licence renews itself quietly — when you open Ears, and after a meeting
  finishes. You should never see it expire.
• Settings ▸ Licence shows what you registered with and when the licence runs
  to, and has a button to delete your registration outright. That removes your
  email address and this installation from the service; nothing on this Mac is
  touched and Ears keeps working.

What is sent

• Your email address, a random identifier for this installation, and the app
  and macOS versions. Nothing else — never your meetings, recordings,
  transcripts, notes or screenshots.
• Being emailed about Ears is a separate tick box, off by default. Registering
  is not the same as agreeing to be marketed to.
• The privacy policy has been updated to say all of this plainly.

Under the hood

• Licences are signed with Ed25519 and verified on this Mac, so a licence can
  be checked with no network at all. A licence problem can never stop or
  interrupt a recording — a lost meeting cannot be recovered, and a licence
  complaint can always wait.

Ears 1.7.189

Providers

• Anthropic is no longer labelled "Claude" anywhere it means the company.
  Claude is a model made by Anthropic, not another name for it. The Claude
  Desktop integration still says Claude, because there it means the app.
• The OpenRouter model fields are menus of suggested models instead of empty
  text boxes: DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi and Qwen alongside the OpenAI, Anthropic and
  Google options, each with a line on what it is good for and what it costs.
  "Custom…" still accepts any model slug, so nothing that worked before stops
  working.
• The suggestions differ by job, because the jobs differ: the summary wants a
  good writer, Chat needs a model that can call tools or it will answer without
  ever searching your meetings, and screenshot reading wants cheap-per-image
  above all.

Settings text

• Removed one more reference to the "Separate the far-end voices on this Mac"
  setting, which no longer exists — every engine separates them now.

Ears 1.7.188

Local models

• Whisper models download without a Python runtime. They are single files on a
  web server, but Ears fetched them through Python's Hugging Face client — so
  on a Mac without the Parakeet runtime, choosing local whisper produced
  "install Parakeet support first" for a model that has nothing to do with
  Parakeet. Unbundling the English model last night turned that from an oddity
  into the first thing a new install would hit.
• Download progress is now the real figure from the transfer rather than an
  estimate from the size of a folder.

Languages

• The languages you speak are listed with the chosen ones at the top, ticked
  and separated by a rule, and everything else alphabetically below.
  Un-ticking one returns it to the alphabetical list.

Settings text

• Corrected descriptions that no longer matched the app: processing.log lives
  with the meeting record, not beside the audio; the storage section now names
  the Meetings folder and says which folders matter; and the recovery advice
  mentions Re-summarize alongside Re-process.