v1.0.9

v1.0.9 — Toggle hotkey mode (carpal-tunnel friendly)

A second hotkey mode alongside push-to-talk: press once to start, press once to stop, gated by a configurable hold-to-activate duration so it won't trigger by accident or in shortcut combos.

Built as a universal binary — works on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

What's new

• Toggle mode — press to start, press to stop. No need to hold the key while you talk. Built for long-form dictation and anyone managing carpal tunnel / RSI.
• Configurable hold-to-activate — set anywhere from 0.5s to 3.0s (default 1.5s). Long enough to prevent accidental activation, short enough to feel responsive.
• Symmetric hold-to-stop — same hold gates both starting and stopping. The trailing silent hold is automatically trimmed from the audio so Whisper doesn't hallucinate punctuation.
• Pulsing menu bar indicator — orange circle.dotted confirms the hold is being registered.
• Settings UI — single merged "Hotkey" card with mode picker and conditional duration slider.

Default mode remains push-to-talk, so existing users see no behavior change unless they opt in.

Reliability fixes

• HotkeyMonitor watchdog now synthesizes the missed key-up when macOS silently disables the event tap mid-press, so DictationEngine recovers cleanly instead of getting stuck in .recording.
• Restored AVAudioConverter.reset() before each conversion (the converter expects a continuous stream across discrete tap-callback buffers).

Install

Download WhisperDictation.dmg below. Universal binary — runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel.

Verify download integrity

shasum -a 256 WhisperDictation.dmg

Expected SHA256: see WhisperDictation.dmg.sha256 attached to this release.

Full Changelog: v1.0.8...v1.0.9