v1.0.8 stable is out this week. The headline items are local speech-to-text in beta, much stronger transcript search, better AI defaults, and a round of polish across calendar, onboarding, and contacts.
Cactus: local speech-to-text in beta
The headline feature this week is Cactus, our local speech-to-text engine. It runs Whisper small directly on your Mac, so English transcription can happen without sending audio to the cloud. We also added language-aware provider selection, so Char can choose the right transcription backend automatically based on the language you're working in.
AI and transcript search
Your default template in settings is now applied automatically to new AI-generated summaries, and summary section headings are produced in the correct language for non-English users. We also cleaned up the AI model lists so deprecated and hidden models are less confusing, and added a new Memory tab for custom vocabulary.
Transcript search also got a major upgrade. You can now replace text, match case, filter by whole word, and keep search results synchronized between the transcript and editor views.
Calendar, notes, and onboarding
Calendar got a visual cleanup, onboarding now shows a proper loading state while fetching calendars, and participant email resolution for Apple Calendar events is more reliable. In notes, Cmd+Click now opens links in your default browser, and the session menu adds a quick Reveal in Finder action.
Smaller improvements
Contact avatars now fall back to colored initials, telemetry opt-out now properly disables analytics, and the remaining Hyprnote references in the UI were updated to Char.
What's next
Cactus is still early and English-only for now, but it's a big step toward stronger on-device transcription. If you're on stable, v1.0.8 is available now.
As always, grab the latest from our changelog or let the app auto-update.