Steno 0.6.5

Steno v0.6.5

System audio

• No more Screen Recording permission. Recording both sides of a call now uses Core Audio Process Taps instead of screen capture, so Steno no longer asks for the Screen Recording permission. Turn the "Record system audio" toggle off any time to record the microphone only.

Updates

• Automatic idle install. Steno now installs a downloaded update while your Mac is idle and relaunches on its own — and never while you're recording or processing. Turn off "Install updates automatically" in Settings → General to keep the manual "Restart to update" prompt.
• Redirect-safe update check. The manual check-for-updates now follows redirects, so it keeps working after the download location moves.

Meetings

• Re-transcribe a recording. Re-run transcription on an existing recording from its note — useful after switching engine or language.
• Undo a deleted note. Deleting a note now shows an Undo; the note is soft-deleted and recoverable rather than gone immediately. The extra confirm step is gone as a result.

Transcription

• Chinese Simplified & Traditional. Choose Simplified or Traditional Chinese when the Whisper transcription engine is selected in Settings → AI.

UX polish

• Low-memory model warning. Settings now warns when a local summarization model may exceed your Mac's available memory before you switch to it.
• Opening Settings from a bare link now lands on General instead of stranding you on a stale tab.
• The AI's internal reasoning tags no longer leak into your notes in a few remaining cases.
• Fewer false "meeting detected" prompts.

Fixes

• The macOS Keychain "Safe Storage" prompt no longer appears on every launch.
• Macs below macOS 14.4 are no longer auto-updated to a build they can't launch — the updater now honours the OS floor, and a manual check explains that a newer macOS is required. (Thanks @Optic00 for catching this before it shipped.)

Under the hood

• Nav-security hardening: window.open is denied and foreign navigation blocked on all app windows.
• Per-PR CI now runs the backend unit tests and renderer typecheck; a nightly tier asserts real summarization-model output.

Upgrade notes

• Steno now requires macOS 14.4 (Sonoma) or later. This is a consequence of the new Core Audio system-audio path. Every Apple Silicon Mac can update to 14.4+ for free. If you stay on an older macOS, your current Steno install keeps working but will no longer receive updates.

Thanks to our contributors

Huge thanks to @Optic00 for the bulk of this release — system audio without Screen Recording, re-transcribe, undo delete, the low-memory warning, nav-security hardening, and much more — and to @BrianNguyen291 for Chinese Simplified/Traditional support. 🙏

Downloads

• Apple Silicon (M1-M5): stenoAI-macos-arm64.dmg

The .zip and .yml assets below are used by the in-app auto-updater - no need to download them manually.

First Time Setup

1. Download the DMG
2. Install by dragging Steno to Applications
3. Launch app - setup wizard runs automatically
4. Grant microphone permissions when prompted
5. Start recording meetings!

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) - Intel Macs are not supported (since v0.4.0)
• macOS 14.4 (Sonoma) or later
• Internet connection for initial setup
• Microphone access permissions

Intel Mac users

Steno is Apple Silicon only (since v0.4.0). Intel users should stay on v0.3.8, the last release supporting Intel Macs. Auto-update on existing Intel installs is gated and will not offer newer versions to those machines.

Steno 0.6.4

Steno v0.6.4

New

• Settings search — Press ⌘K on the Settings screen to search every setting and jump straight to the tab it lives on.
• Letter avatars — Notes in the Previous list show their initial instead of a generic file icon.
• Connected calendar account — Calendar settings now show which account you've connected.

Changed

• In-app notifications — Meeting and note alerts now appear as Steno's own toast instead of native OS notifications.

Fixed

• Update banner — The Restart button now has a larger, easier-to-hit clickable area.

Thanks to our contributors

This release includes work from @WilliamDrewett and @Vassista. 🙏

Downloads

• Apple Silicon (M1-M5): stenoAI-macos-arm64.dmg

The .zip and .yml assets below are used by the in-app auto-updater - no need to download them manually.

First Time Setup

1. Download the DMG
2. Install by dragging Steno to Applications
3. Launch app - setup wizard runs automatically
4. Grant microphone permissions when prompted
5. Start recording meetings!

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) - Intel Macs are not supported (since v0.4.0)
• macOS 12 (Monterey) or later
• Internet connection for initial setup
• Microphone access permissions

Intel Mac users

Steno is Apple Silicon only (since v0.4.0). Intel users should stay on v0.3.8, the last release supporting Intel Macs. Auto-update on existing Intel installs is gated and will not offer newer versions to those machines.

Steno 0.6.3

Steno v0.6.3

Save notes as PDF

• Export a meeting's notes — summary, key topics, key points, action items, and participants — as a polished, Steno-branded PDF straight from a note's ⋯ (More options) menu. The document is rendered entirely on-device, so nothing leaves your machine.

Onboarding

• A one-time privacy notice on first launch explains that Steno records, transcribes, and summarises on your device.
• The setup wizard now shows model-download progress instead of an indeterminate spinner, so you can see how far along a download is.

Fixes

• Amazon Bedrock now connects for inference-profile models — the profile ARN is fully percent-encoded in the request URL.
• Live transcript partials keep pace on slower Apple Silicon instead of drifting behind the speaker.

Under the hood

• Began splitting the large Electron main process into focused modules (Phase 0 seams + a Folders pilot), with no user-facing change.

Thanks to our contributors

• @Optic00 — privacy onboarding disclosure, setup download progress, the live-partials pacing fix, and the main-process refactor.

Downloads

• Apple Silicon (M1-M5): stenoAI-macos-arm64.dmg

The .zip and .yml assets below are used by the in-app auto-updater - no need to download them manually.

First Time Setup

1. Download the DMG
2. Install by dragging Steno to Applications
3. Launch app - setup wizard runs automatically
4. Grant microphone permissions when prompted
5. Start recording meetings!

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) - Intel Macs are not supported (since v0.4.0)
• macOS 12 (Monterey) or later
• Internet connection for initial setup
• Microphone access permissions

Intel Mac users

Steno is Apple Silicon only (since v0.4.0). Intel users should stay on v0.3.8, the last release supporting Intel Macs. Auto-update on existing Intel installs is gated and will not offer newer versions to those machines.

Steno 0.6.2

Steno v0.6.2

Settings & UX

• Redesigned Settings with a persistent left navigation rail and grouped sections (Preferences, AI, Templates, Workspace, System), replacing the old row of tabs.
• New About tab showing your app version with a built-in check-for-updates flow.
• Finer control over which notifications you see and how the menu-bar (tray) icon behaves.

Fixes

• The "Generate notes" button no longer stays visible after you resume recording into a note.
• Resuming a recording now keeps the transcript continuous instead of breaking it.

Thanks to our contributors

• @WilliamDrewett for the Settings redesign, About tab, and notification/tray controls (#344).
• @Optic00 for the v0.6.2 release prep (#353).

Downloads

• Apple Silicon (M1-M5): stenoAI-macos-arm64.dmg

The .zip and .yml assets below are used by the in-app auto-updater - no need to download them manually.

First Time Setup

1. Download the DMG
2. Install by dragging Steno to Applications
3. Launch app - setup wizard runs automatically
4. Grant microphone permissions when prompted
5. Start recording meetings!

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) - Intel Macs are not supported (since v0.4.0)
• macOS 12 (Monterey) or later
• Internet connection for initial setup
• Microphone access permissions

Intel Mac users

Steno is Apple Silicon only (since v0.4.0). Intel users should stay on v0.3.8, the last release supporting Intel Macs. Auto-update on existing Intel installs is gated and will not offer newer versions to those machines.

Steno 0.6.1

Steno v0.6.1

Fixes

• Auto-generated titles on demand — with automatic summaries turned off, generating a note's summary later ("Generate notes") now also gives it an AI-generated title, instead of leaving it stuck at "Note". Notes you've named yourself are never overwritten.
• Speech-model download (HTTP 401) — fixed the Parakeet transcription model failing to download when an unrelated or expired Hugging Face token was present in your environment. These are public models, so the download is now always anonymous and can't be broken by a stray token.
• Meeting auto-detect — calls whose microphone is captured by a browser helper process (e.g. browser-based video calls) are now recognised.

Under the hood

• Title generation is more robust to reasoning-model output (it strips stray <think> blocks and markdown) and now logs failures instead of silently keeping the placeholder name.

Thanks to our contributors

• @evgeny-golubev — meeting auto-detect for browser helper processes (#345)

Downloads

• Apple Silicon (M1-M5): stenoAI-macos-arm64.dmg

The .zip and .yml assets below are used by the in-app auto-updater - no need to download them manually.

First Time Setup

1. Download the DMG
2. Install by dragging Steno to Applications
3. Launch app - setup wizard runs automatically
4. Grant microphone permissions when prompted
5. Start recording meetings!

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) - Intel Macs are not supported (since v0.4.0)
• macOS 12 (Monterey) or later
• Internet connection for initial setup
• Microphone access permissions

Intel Mac users

Steno is Apple Silicon only (since v0.4.0). Intel users should stay on v0.3.8, the last release supporting Intel Macs. Auto-update on existing Intel installs is gated and will not offer newer versions to those machines.

Steno 0.6.0

Steno v0.6.0

Recording & notes

• Transcription pill dock — Recording now coexists with the app instead of taking over. A compact pill docks beside the Ask bar while you keep browsing your notes.
• Instant stop — Hitting Stop lands you on the note immediately, built from the live transcript; the batch transcript and AI summary upgrade it in the background.
• Continue recording — Resume recording into an existing note and the new segment appends to it; regenerate the summary on demand.
• My notes tab — A dedicated, always-editable notes layer that lives alongside the AI summary and is folded into it.

Settings & startup

• Microphone selection — Choose which input device Steno records from.
• Launch on login — Steno can start hidden at login so capture is always ready; opt out in Settings.

Fixes & under the hood

• Language auto-detect — Auto output-language detects the transcript's language instead of defaulting to English.
• Security — Canonical path containment enforced on renderer-supplied meeting paths.
• Summaries — In-meeting notes are folded into the summary again; stream failures now surface honestly instead of producing an empty summary; reasoning blocks are stripped from AI output.
• Product analytics for activation/engagement (anonymous, opt-out in Settings), plus a range of stability fixes.

Upgrade notes

• Launch-on-login is on by default (hidden) after upgrade — turn it off in Settings if you'd rather start Steno manually.
• Silence auto-stop now defaults to 5 minutes — a recording auto-stops after 5 minutes of continuous silence. Adjust or disable it in Settings.

Thanks to our contributors

This release includes work from @Optic00, @WilliamDrewett, @Vassista, @luchfilip, and @valentinweyer. 🙏

Downloads

• Apple Silicon (M1-M5): stenoAI-macos-arm64.dmg

The .zip and .yml assets below are used by the in-app auto-updater - no need to download them manually.

First Time Setup

1. Download the DMG
2. Install by dragging Steno to Applications
3. Launch app - setup wizard runs automatically
4. Grant microphone permissions when prompted
5. Start recording meetings!

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) - Intel Macs are not supported (since v0.4.0)
• macOS 12 (Monterey) or later
• Internet connection for initial setup
• Microphone access permissions

Intel Mac users

Steno is Apple Silicon only (since v0.4.0). Intel users should stay on v0.3.8, the last release supporting Intel Macs. Auto-update on existing Intel installs is gated and will not offer newer versions to those machines.

StenoAI 0.5.8

StenoAI v0.5.8

Transcription & notes

• Notes on demand — a new "Generate notes automatically" toggle (Settings). Turn it off and a recording stops at a transcript-only note; generate the AI summary later, on demand, from the note. (#276)
• Sharper speaker labels — the live transcript now uses true per-channel attribution, so [You] vs [Others] is far more accurate. (#284)
• Auto-detect output language by default — summaries follow the meeting's detected language instead of defaulting to English. (#282)

Templates

• Template gallery — a curated set of built-in note templates, plus a redesigned Templates settings with cloud-provider support. (#302, #298)

Privacy

• Debug log no longer leaks meeting content — the shareable Developer log is reduced at the source (transcript/summary text and PII stripped, on-disk processing.log too). (#293)
• Redacted "Save diagnostics" export — export a diagnostics file with paths, URLs, and meeting titles redacted, safe to share for support. (#294)

Fixes & reliability

• MLX reliability on Apple Silicon — stale env var + libmlx.dylib ABI collision. (#287)
• "Note ready" notification now navigates to the finished note. (#286)
• Closed a config.json cross-process lost-update race. (#291)
• Bedrock region validation; path-containment + temp-file race fixes. (#300, #277)
• Settings fixes — reset-storage clears the custom path, org sign-in Enter guard, template-delete failures surfaced, GeneralTab OAuth/name-seed races. (#311, #312)

Under the hood

• Split the 2.8k-line Settings.tsx into per-tab modules; setup-check emits JSON; retired the stale IPC-contract doc; architecture-review cleanup + IPC conformance test. (#289, #290, #295, #280, #288)

No migration or user action required.

Downloads

• Apple Silicon (M1-M5): stenoAI-macos-arm64.dmg

First Time Setup

1. Download the DMG
2. Install by dragging StenoAI to Applications
3. Launch app - setup wizard runs automatically
4. Grant microphone permissions when prompted
5. Start recording meetings!

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) — Intel Macs are no longer supported as of v0.4.0
• macOS 12 (Monterey) or later
• Internet connection for initial setup
• Microphone access permissions

Intel Mac users

v0.4.0 is Apple Silicon only. Intel users should stay on v0.3.8, which is the last release supporting Intel Macs. Auto-update on existing Intel installs is gated and will not push v0.4.0 to those machines.

StenoAI 0.5.7

StenoAI v0.5.7

Transcripts

• Per-segment timestamps — every turn of the live and saved transcript now shows a [MM:SS] (H:MM:SS for long meetings) offset, so you can see and cite when things were said. It's display-only — summarisation is unchanged. (#272, adapted from #102 by @BrianNguyen291)

Performance

• Faster on Apple Silicon — opt into Ollama's native MLX / NVFP4 model builds for quicker local summaries via Settings → "Switch to faster build". Your canonical model choice and settings are preserved; the faster tag is used only at runtime. Bundled Ollama updated to v0.31.1. (#269, @Optic00)

Languages

• Pin your meeting language — Parakeet users can now pin a European language (French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese) so summaries and notes come out in it rather than defaulting to English. (#267, @Optic00)

Quality

• Cleaner summaries — reasoning-model "thinking" (<think>) blocks are stripped before notes render, so a model's scratchpad never leaks into a summary. (#256, @Vassista)

Migrating from Granola

• A standalone granola-to-steno skill (for Claude Code / Cowork users with a connected Granola MCP) to sync existing Granola notes into Steno's file store. See the README's "Coming from Granola?" section. (#270, @Optic00)

Fixes & under the hood

• Auto-detect no longer fires on app_id-less mic events on macOS 14+ (fewer false "meeting detected" prompts). (#263, @Optic00)
• Removed a dead, unprotected process CLI command. (#268, @Optic00)

Contributors

Big thanks to @Optic00 for the bulk of this release (faster MLX builds, language pinning, the Granola skill, and fixes), @Vassista for cleaner summaries, and @BrianNguyen291 whose #102 the transcript-timestamp work is adapted from. 🙏

Downloads

• Apple Silicon (M1-M5): stenoAI-macos-arm64.dmg

First Time Setup

1. Download the DMG
2. Install by dragging StenoAI to Applications
3. Launch app - setup wizard runs automatically
4. Grant microphone permissions when prompted
5. Start recording meetings!

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) — Intel Macs are no longer supported as of v0.4.0
• macOS 12 (Monterey) or later
• Internet connection for initial setup
• Microphone access permissions

Intel Mac users

v0.4.0 is Apple Silicon only. Intel users should stay on v0.3.8, which is the last release supporting Intel Macs. Auto-update on existing Intel installs is gated and will not push v0.4.0 to those machines.

StenoAI 0.5.6

StenoAI v0.5.6

Reports & templates

• Report templates + per-meeting reports — define your own report styles and generate them from any note. A meeting can now hold more than one report (the structured Standard summary plus any template-driven reports), switchable in the detail view, with a Templates tab in Settings. (#252, @Optic00)

Transcript export

• Copy / save transcript — copy the full transcript or save it as Markdown (title, metadata, your notes, and diarised [You]/[Others] text) to paste into any external tool. (#215, @Optic00)

Reliability

• Never lose a transcript — if batch transcription returns empty, Steno falls back to the live transcript you watched during the recording instead of saving a blank note; the audio is kept for reprocessing. (#247, @Optic00)
• Better long-meeting summaries — map-reduce summarization chunks long transcripts so multi-hour meetings summarize reliably without overflowing the model's context. (#250, @Optic00)

Under the hood

• Quantization-aware summary models — the E4B and 12B summary tiers now use QAT builds (higher quality at a similar footprint). Existing selections are migrated automatically. (#251, @Optic00)
• Dynamic home hero — the home screen headline now reflects your live recording and calendar state. (#257, @ruzin)

Upgrade notes

• Summary model ids for the E4B/12B tiers changed to their quantization-aware builds (gemma4:4b → gemma4:e4b-it-qat, gemma4:12b → gemma4:12b-it-qat); if you were on one of these, Steno migrates the setting for you on first launch.
• Generated reports are stored in a per-meeting <note>_reports.json sidecar next to the note — your canonical .md/.json note file is untouched.

Contributors

Huge thanks to @Optic00 for the bulk of this release — report templates, transcript export, the live-transcript rescue, map-reduce summarization, and the QAT model switch — and to @ruzin for the home-hero work. 🙏

Downloads

• Apple Silicon (M1-M5): stenoAI-macos-arm64.dmg

First Time Setup

1. Download the DMG
2. Install by dragging StenoAI to Applications
3. Launch app - setup wizard runs automatically
4. Grant microphone permissions when prompted
5. Start recording meetings!

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) — Intel Macs are no longer supported as of v0.4.0
• macOS 12 (Monterey) or later
• Internet connection for initial setup
• Microphone access permissions

Intel Mac users

v0.4.0 is Apple Silicon only. Intel users should stay on v0.3.8, which is the last release supporting Intel Macs. Auto-update on existing Intel installs is gated and will not push v0.4.0 to those machines.

StenoAI 0.5.5

StenoAI v0.5.5

Enterprise / org

• Works behind corporate proxies. Org backup, AI, and note sync now route through the OS system proxy (including PAC/WPAD) and trust the OS certificate store on Windows and macOS — so Steno works on managed networks that force egress through a proxy or do TLS inspection. Previously these calls went direct and failed silently behind such a proxy.
• Backup status you can see. When an org note fails to back up, it now shows a quiet "Not backed up" indicator you can click to retry, and the failure is written to the diagnostic log — instead of failing silently. Failures are kept separate from successful shares so a retry always works, and a successful backup clears the indicator.

Productivity

• Instant search (⌘K). A global command palette to jump to any note from anywhere.
• Import audio files. Drag & drop or pick an existing recording to transcribe and summarize it.
• Pre-meeting reminders. A heads-up notification a couple of minutes before a calendar meeting starts (honors the master notifications toggle).

Under the hood

• Long stereo (system-audio) meetings keep [You]/[Others] speaker separation — the per-channel split timeout now scales with recording length instead of a fixed cap that silently dropped to mono.
• Processing/transcription logs persist to disk for diagnostics; deleting a note skips a redundant backend re-scan.
• User-facing copy rebranded to Steno.

Upgrade notes

• No action required. Existing settings, recordings, and credentials carry forward.
• On an enterprise network: if org backup previously failed silently, it should now succeed through your corporate proxy automatically (the app follows the system proxy). No per-user configuration needed.

Downloads

• Apple Silicon (M1-M5): stenoAI-macos-arm64.dmg

First Time Setup

1. Download the DMG
2. Install by dragging StenoAI to Applications
3. Launch app - setup wizard runs automatically
4. Grant microphone permissions when prompted
5. Start recording meetings!

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) — Intel Macs are no longer supported as of v0.4.0
• macOS 12 (Monterey) or later
• Internet connection for initial setup
• Microphone access permissions

Intel Mac users

v0.4.0 is Apple Silicon only. Intel users should stay on v0.3.8, which is the last release supporting Intel Macs. Auto-update on existing Intel installs is gated and will not push v0.4.0 to those machines.