July 26, 2026
New
- System audio without the Screen Recording permission — record both sides of a call without granting Screen Recording. This uses Core Audio Process Taps, so Steno now requires macOS 14.4 or later. (Turn the “Record system audio” toggle off any time to record the microphone only.)
- Automatic updates — 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.
- Re-transcribe a recording — re-run transcription on an existing recording from its note, useful after switching engines or language.
- Undo a deleted note — deleting a note now shows an Undo, so a note is soft-deleted and recoverable rather than gone immediately.
- Chinese transcription — choose Simplified or Traditional Chinese when the Whisper transcription engine is selected in Settings → AI.
- Low-memory warning — Settings now warns when a local summarization model may exceed your Mac’s available memory before you switch to it.
- Deleting a note no longer asks for confirmation first, since Undo can restore it.
- The macOS Keychain “Safe Storage” prompt no longer appears on every launch.
- The manual check-for-updates now follows redirects, so it keeps working after the download location moves.
- 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.
- Macs below macOS 14.4 are no longer offered an update they can’t install; a manual check explains that a newer macOS is required instead.
July 24, 2026
New
- Settings search — Press ⌘K on the Settings screen to search every setting and jump straight to the tab it lives on.
- Notes in the Previous list now show a letter avatar (the note’s initial) instead of a generic file icon.
- Calendar settings now show the account you’ve connected.
- All app notifications — meeting detected/ended, note ready, errors, and more — now appear as Steno’s own in-app toast rather than native OS notifications.
- The Restart button in the update banner now has a larger, easier-to-hit clickable area.
July 22, 2026
New
- Save notes as PDF — export a meeting’s notes (summary, key topics, key points, action items, participants) as a branded, print-ready PDF from the note’s ⋯ menu. It’s rendered on-device, so nothing leaves your machine.
- A one-time privacy notice on first launch explains that Steno records, transcribes, and summarises entirely 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.
- Fixed Amazon Bedrock connections failing for inference-profile models by fully percent-encoding the profile ARN in the request URL.
- Live transcript partials now keep pace on slower Apple Silicon instead of drifting behind the speaker.
July 19, 2026
Improved
- Redesigned Settings with a persistent left navigation rail and grouped sections (Preferences, AI, Templates, Workspace, System), replacing the old row of tabs.
- Added an About tab that shows your app version with a built-in check-for-updates flow.
- Added finer control over which notifications you see and how the menu-bar (tray) icon behaves.
- 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.
July 19, 2026
Fixed
- Notes you summarise on demand (“Generate notes”) now get an AI-generated title, instead of staying “Note”. A title you set yourself is never overwritten.
- Fixed the speech-recognition model failing to download with an authorization error when an unrelated Hugging Face token was set in your environment.
- Auto-detect meetings now recognises calls whose microphone is captured by a browser helper process.
July 5, 2026
New
- Added a “Generate notes automatically” toggle in Settings — turn it off to skip AI summaries while recording, then generate them later whenever you’re ready.
- A new gallery of ready-made note templates to choose from in Settings.
- Export a diagnostics file for support that hides your file paths and meeting titles.
- Steno is better at telling your voice apart from other speakers in the transcript.
- Summaries are now written in the meeting’s own language, instead of always defaulting to English.
- Diagnostic logs no longer contain any of your meeting content, so they’re safe to share for troubleshooting.
- Improved transcription stability on Apple Silicon Macs.
- The “note ready” notification now opens that note directly, instead of just the app.
- Fixed a rare bug that could lose a settings change.
- Fixed an issue that could prevent choosing your AWS region for cloud AI summaries.
July 2, 2026
New
- Every line of the transcript now shows a timestamp, so you know exactly when something was said.
- You can pin a summary language (French, German, Spanish, Dutch, or Portuguese) instead of Steno defaulting to English.
- Added a guide for importing your existing Granola notes into Steno.
- Local summaries can now run faster on Apple Silicon Macs — turn on “Switch to faster build” in Settings.
- Cleaner summaries — the AI’s internal reasoning no longer shows up in your notes.
- Fewer false “meeting detected” prompts on newer versions of macOS.
July 1, 2026
New
- Create your own report templates, and generate more than one report per meeting.
- Copy or save the full transcript as a text file.
- Long meetings now summarize reliably instead of sometimes failing.
- The home screen now shows your current recording and upcoming meetings.
- If transcription fails, Steno now uses the live transcript instead of saving a blank note.
June 22, 2026
New
- Search (⌘K) lets you jump straight to any note from anywhere in the app.
- Import an existing audio file to transcribe and summarize it, not just live recordings.
- Steno now reminds you a couple of minutes before a calendar meeting starts.
- Steno now works on corporate/work networks that route traffic through a proxy.
- If a note fails to back up, you’ll now see a warning you can click to retry.
- Speaker separation stays accurate on long recordings, not just short ones.
June 15, 2026
Bug fixes for reliability, on both Mac and Windows.Fixed
- Fixed a bug where meeting notes could occasionally fail to save.
- Windows: recordings, calendar sign-in, and your cloud API key were being saved in the wrong place. Nothing to do — your existing settings move automatically.
June 14, 2026
New
- Two new AI models for summaries: one better for long meetings, one lighter for machines with less memory. Choose in Settings → AI.
June 12, 2026
Improved
- Closing your laptop lid now pauses your recording instead of letting it run with no audio. When you wake your Mac, you can resume it.
- Audio is cleaned up before transcription, so noisy or quiet recordings come out more accurate.
- Recordings start faster, especially on a slow or offline network.
- Fixed a crash on recordings longer than 30 minutes.
- If transcription fails, your audio is now always saved so the meeting can be reprocessed later.
- Fixed transcription being stopped by mistake on slower Macs.
- If transcription crashes, Steno now automatically tries again using a backup method.
June 9, 2026
Fixed
- Windows: the app now shows the correct Steno icon instead of a generic one.
- Fixed an issue where the Windows installer could occasionally fail to download.
June 9, 2026
New
- Steno is now available on Windows (early access) — record, transcribe, and summarize meetings fully on-device.
- Windows can now capture both sides of a call (experimental).
- Windows may show a security warning on first launch, since the app isn’t verified yet — choose “More info” → “Run anyway” to continue.
- Transcription and summaries are slower on Windows for now, since they don’t yet use your graphics card.
June 9, 2026
Fixed
- Fixed a bug where the live transcript wouldn’t appear on screen during recording. Recordings and final transcripts were not affected.