Changelog

Latest

1.0.0 — first public release · July 15, 2026

Heliotype 1.0.0 ships meeting recording with no bot in the call, calendar-based naming through the native macOS Calendar, a guided first run, crash-safe recording, and a real command-line interface. Highlights:

• Recording without a bot. System audio is captured through a CoreAudio process tap, plus your microphone captured clean — far-end bleed is ducked at mixdown. Nothing joins the call and no screen-recording indicator appears. Requires macOS 15+.
• Calendar naming, natively. Each recording is auto-named PROJECT-Title-YYYYMMDD-HHMM.m4a from the matching event in macOS Calendar (EventKit), with a deterministic timestamp fallback.
• Live recording state in the menu bar. A running timer shows Recording… (MM:SS) so it is obvious the meeting is being captured.
• Guided first run. A welcome, a self-ticking setup checklist, and a "Get a Free Key" dialog walk a new user from install to first transcript.
• Crash and quit recovery. An interrupted session is swept at launch and offered back through a Recover flow, so an unsaved recording is never silently lost. Quit and system shutdown stop, mix, and save before exit — the mic is never left hot.
• One-sided-capture warning. If only the microphone or only system audio was captured, the app says so instead of shipping a half-recording.
• Pre-upload cost estimate. Before any upload, the app shows the estimated AssemblyAI cost, so there are no billing surprises. Recordings already being transcribed are never uploaded — or paid for — twice.
• Transcripts stay put. Recordings land in ~/Movies/Heliotype by default (changeable from the menu); the transcript is written beside the recording as .txt. An existing transcript is never overwritten — new output takes a (2) suffix.
• A real command line. heliotype [--dry-run] [--version] FILE… transcribes existing recordings from the terminal; dry-run mode writes a stub with no upload or spend.
• Key in the Keychain. The AssemblyAI API key lives in the macOS login Keychain, not in a plaintext config. An existing plaintext key is migrated automatically on first run.

Updates

How you'll hear about updates

Heliotype does not auto-update or phone home to check for a new version. New builds are announced on this page and at @heliotypeapp — download the latest DMG from the homepage when one ships.