🎉 We are happy to announce the new release, version 1.0.33! 🎉

Check out the new features we've added, including a floating window for speaking pace, real-time transcription, and shortcuts for easier control. We've also made some improvements to the UI/UX and analysis quality.

Please note that there are some known issues, including problems with changing input devices during recording and lag in text rendering. Check out the "Issues we know about or what's not supported" section for more information.

Here is the full changelog:

New

• Floating window: You can now see a small window showing your current speaking pace that gives you suggestions if you speak too fast or slow. We plan to add more features like suggesting topics for small talk or showing you the top filler words you’re using during the recording.

• Real-time: You will now see real-time transcription during recording. It may be useful if you are practising English with Spellar AI without meetings or presentations.

• Shortcuts: You can now use key combinations to control Spellar AI.

  • Start or stop recording by pressing ⌘ + R.

  • Press space to start/stop recording playback.

  • Press ← or → while playing a recording to slide backwards or forward.

  • This is still a work in progress as we’re planning to support it in a better way so Spellar AI feels totally native.

• Errors: Now, if something goes wrong, you will see a banner describing the issue.

• Permissions: Processing goes properly and you won’t get a crash for the case you restricted permission. However, we have an issue when Speech Recognition permission doesn’t get asked, which causes text transcription to not work. Please report feedback if you have this case.

• Sign In with Apple: You can now use Apple to sign in/sign up.

• Analysis: There is now a popover showing transcription with badly pronounced words. To activate it, click on any highlighted word in the pronunciation tab of the Feedback section.

• Icon: We updated our main icons and menubar icon 🎉

Improvements

• Redesign: We introduced new colours, screen layout, and improved the UI/UX in general.

• Recording: You can now close the main window during the recording.

• Sign-In Screen: We improved the sign-in and sign-up screens if you previously used email.

• Analysis: We improved the quality of analysis for pronunciation and grammar, so it should give proper recommendations now. Keep in mind that it’s currently quite limited, and for some meetings, you may not see the analysis for the full text.

• Menu Bar: We left only working actions, now it’s quite few of them tho 😬

Known Issues and Unsupported Features

• Spellar AI may not work or even crash if you change the microphone or sound input during recording.

  • We plan to support input device switching in the future.

• Text rendering may lag, especially if you scroll fast (we use SwiftUI). It can also have some edge cases that don't work properly when you change the size of the window. The frame won't recalculate until you re-enter the screen.