Every version of Saydrop.

• Fixed: microphones with moderate gain (e.g. RØDE NT-USB+) were silently dropping every recording — the default silence gate was 10× too aggressive. It now matches the recommended sensitivity for USB condensers.
• Cleanup is now opt-in — LLM polishing (Gemma) is disabled by default so the app is immediately usable on first launch without waiting for a model download. Enable it any time from the menu bar Settings.
• Fixed: enabling Gemma cleanup in the signed bundle caused a startup crash (psutil Team ID mismatch in the hardened runtime). psutil is now bundled and codesigned with the app, so cleanup works correctly after enabling it.

• Choose your microphone — a new input-device picker in Settings lets you select exactly which mic to record from. Great for users with multiple audio interfaces, AirPods, or USB headsets.
• Whisper medium is the new default — benchmarks show whisper-medium-mlx is both faster and more accurate than large-v3-turbo on Apple Silicon for typical German and English dictation.
• Gemma E2B is the new default cleanup model — the lighter Gemma 4 E2B checkpoint delivers the same polish quality as E4B at roughly half the latency.
• Local Qwen3 cleanup backend — adds mlx-lm (Qwen3 1.7B) as an opt-in cleanup option for users who prefer a smaller on-device model.
• Fixed: very short taps (under ~1 s) no longer inject degenerate Whisper artefacts such as ... or silent filler — the clip is silently dropped instead.
• Fixed: when the clipboard injection fails (e.g. accessibility access was revoked), Saydrop now notifies you and refreshes the accessibility permission cache so the next attempt usually succeeds without a restart.

• Automatic updates — Saydrop now checks for new versions and installs them itself (powered by Sparkle, with cryptographically signed updates). Once you’re on this build, future releases arrive without a manual re-download.
• English by default — the settings window and all in-app UI strings now ship in English.
• Graceful microphone handling — if no input device is available, Saydrop surfaces a clear error instead of failing silently or crashing mid-dictation.
• More robust cleanup — the local Gemma cleanup model now runs in an isolated subprocess, so a hiccup in polishing can never take down the app or lose your dictation.
• Fail-fast configuration — on startup Saydrop validates its required settings and reports exactly what’s missing or malformed, rather than misbehaving later.
• Fixed: the hotkey handler now shows an error pill when a press fails, and the auto-reset timer no longer clobbers that error state before you can see it.
• Fixed: no longer crashes when the macOS notification system’s preference file is missing.
• Fixed: license re-checks now run online with a cooldown between retries, so a license needing revalidation recovers on its own without hammering the server.

• Native settings window — a full PyObjC settings panel replaces the menu pop-overs. Switch transcription model, toggle cleanup, adjust recording delay, and change the hotkey from one place. Changes take effect without restarting.
• fn / Globe key hotkey — the Globe key (fn on most Apple keyboards) is now available as an alternative trigger alongside the existing modifier-key options.
• Silent-streak notification — after three consecutive clips with no detected speech, Saydrop surfaces a notification so you know the mic may need attention.
• Fixed: settings window now always comes to the front when opened from the menu bar.
• Fixed: HuggingFace model-presence check is now cached, stopping a 25 fps filesystem probe that caused unnecessary CPU usage.
• Fixed: mic-permission warning notification is dispatched on the main thread, preventing occasional silent drops.
• Fixed: picked model stays selected after a download completes; on/off toggles now persist reliably across restarts.

The first public release of Saydrop — local push-to-talk dictation for macOS on Apple Silicon.

• 100% on-device transcription with mlx-whisper — your audio never leaves your Mac.
• Default-on local AI polish via a local Gemma model (cloud Gemini optional) that cleans up filler words and punctuation.
• Menu-bar app with a click-through recording overlay and a double-tap hotkey: double-tap, speak, double-tap again, and the polished text lands at your cursor.
• Auto-start via a LaunchAgent, signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple.