What's new

Open beta

Comms is in open beta, and the beta no longer ends on a date.

• Improvedthe 1 October deadline is gone. Each build works for 90 days from the day it was built, and Check for Updates keeps you on a current one, so you should never see it run out.
• Improvedthe menu says "Open beta" instead of a date.

Your shortcuts

• Newevery keyboard shortcut can be changed. Settings → Keyboard shortcuts, click the keys, press the new ones; ⌫ restores the default. For when ⇧⌘R already means something in the app you are reviewing (Paste to Replace in Figma, Reader in Safari).

Quiet when idle

Comms no longer listens while it waits. The microphone opens when you open the mic picker and when you record, and closes with them. With Bluetooth headphones your music stays clean until you actually use the mic, and the orange dot means what it says.

• Improvedrecordings are about 45% smaller. Same full-resolution picture, 30 fps instead of 60.
• FixedComms no longer holds the microphone while idle. The mic is on while the microphone picker is open and while recording, and off otherwise. Music on Bluetooth headphones no longer drops the moment the palette is up, and the orange mic dot only shows when Comms is listening. Click the mic button to see the level on its ring.
• Newthe keyboard shortcuts are in the app. Settings has a "Keyboard shortcuts" row that opens the list: record, draw, and the keys that work while drawing.

Recordings you can open

• Newthe daily update check now includes your app build, your macOS version, and whether you have made any recordings (as a rough band, never an exact count) — no names, no IDs, no content. Details on the privacy page.
• Newevery recording folder now includes `index.html` — open it to play the video, jump to drawings, and read the transcript. Rebuild with `comms page <folder>`.
• Newrecordings save as a `.comms` package with the Comms icon; double-click opens the page. Wrap an old folder with `comms package <folder>`.
• Improved`comms session` now prints the timed transcript after the annotations.
• Improvedwhile drawing, **S** now cycles the pen size (thin → medium → thick). It replaces **[** and **]**, which are not on every keyboard.
• Improvedconnecting an agent is one pasted command. It signs in as the agent's folder name and prints what to do next — no name to choose, no recipe to read. Agents sharing one repo folder are still asked to name themselves, once, so you can tell the rows apart.

A steadier ear

The level meter now listens the way QuickTime does. The practical difference: with a Bluetooth headset connected, every microphone in the picker works — including the MacBook mic, which used to go red and stay red the moment a headset held the system input.

• Fixedpicking the built-in microphone while a Bluetooth headset is connected works. The meter no longer depends on whatever device macOS calls the default.
• Fixedconnecting a headset no longer disturbs a meter pinned to another microphone at all — no blink, no restart, nothing.

Calm restarts

0.7.3's device-following could chase its own tail with a Bluetooth headset as input: the meter rebuilt once a second and the mic indicator strobed with it. Restarts are calm now.

• Fixedwith a Bluetooth headset as the input, the meter no longer rebuilds itself in a loop. A device change first watches whether audio actually stopped, and rebuilds at most once every two seconds.
• Fixedthe macOS microphone indicator no longer blinks on and off while Comms is idle with a headset connected.

The meter follows your microphone

Bluetooth headsets could leave the mic meter dead and the button red until you dug through the picker. The meter now follows your audio devices wherever macOS moves them.

• Fixedputting a Bluetooth headset on or taking it off no longer kills the level meter. The meter follows the headset's mode switch and starts again on its own.
• Fixeda red mic now recovers by itself when the device comes back, instead of staying red until you reopened the picker.
• Fixeda slow-starting microphone was declared dead half a second into its retry. The retry now gets its full grace period.
• Improvedthe settings panel closes when recording starts, and the settings button is hidden while recording — one less thing in your take.
• Improvedundo a drawn mark with ⌘Z (or Ctrl+Z) in draw mode, matching what your fingers already know. The old U key is retired.

Sent, claimed

Send a take and see it land. And a stack of fixes so a recording can never quietly go missing.

• Newthe AGENTS list shows what became of the last take you sent each agent — "sent" until the agent picks it up, then "claimed" and when. A row that stays on "sent" is the one to look at: nobody is collecting.
• Fixeda take cut short by quitting or a crash now recovers the next time Comms starts, instead of being lost.
• Fixeda recording with nothing playable in it is no longer published to agents or the clipboard.
• Fixeda take held for "who gets it?" with nobody left to choose is released at launch instead of staying invisible forever.
• Fixedtwo parts of the app could write a recording's metadata at once; now one writer at a time, and a failed write says so instead of hiding the take.
• Improvedquitting waits for the recorder to finish the file.
• Improvedagents are told which Mac a listener runs on, and the CLI refuses with a proper error instead of a polite message when something is wrong.
• Improvedstopping an agent from the list waits until it has really stopped, and recordings posted while an agent was away reach it reliably when it returns.
• Improvedthe app and its CLI now share one definition of the agent sign-in files, checked at build time, so they can never drift apart again.
• Improvedthe log no longer grows without bound, and a recording's reported frame rate is what was actually captured.

A wake you can trust

An agent that cannot be reached used to look exactly like one that could. Now Comms checks, and says so.

• NewComms watches the wake command an agent leaves behind. AGENTS shows "wake failed" against anyone it could not reach, and the agent is told the next time it looks — so it can say it is only collecting when it happens to run, instead of reporting itself connected while your recordings pile up.
• NewCodex in the ChatGPT desktop app can be woken like everything else. It was the one tool a command alone could not reach; `comms codex-relay`, run inside the task once per app launch, gives it the same immediacy the others have. Experimental — it leans on an interface OpenAI does not document, so if an update takes it away, Comms now tells you rather than quietly dropping what you sent.

Agent mail

Finish a recording and it goes to the agent you chose. Not to a guess, and not to whoever you picked last week.

• Newagent mail. Connect an agent by pasting one line into it, whatever it is: Claude Code, Codex, Conductor, something that does not exist yet. Comms names no product and needs no setup per tool — it tells the agent what it needs and the agent works out the rest, including how it wants to be reached. `comms recipe` prints the whole contract.
• Newchoose who gets it after you stop, not before. The bar turns into a chip per connected agent; click one and it is sent, or dismiss and the take is kept and sent to no one. Choosing up front meant forgetting, and the next five takes going to last week's pick.
• Newthe send button opens AGENTS — everyone connected, where they run, and how long they have been up. Hover a row for a red X to hang up; the agent is asked to stop and the row goes when it really has.
• Newa trash button on the recording bar. Click it while rolling and the take is discarded — no file, no clipboard, nothing for an agent to pick up.
• Neweach annotation in `session.json` now carries a `text` field — the on-screen text inside the drawn mark, read on-device from the clean frame. Agents can act on "circled the button that says Choose…" without opening a single image.
• Improvedagents must name themselves, and no two can share a name. Two sessions of one tool used to show up identically, and the wrong one got hung up on.
• Improvedan agent stays in the list between turns, so you can record a second thing while it is still working on the first. It collects everything waiting the next time it looks.
• Fixedthe green dot on the send button was cropped to a crescent by the button's own edge, with a faint green outline around it.

A tidier palette

A consistency pass over the palette and its panels, worked out on the design board first.

• New"Fade stroke" picker in settings — choose how long pen strokes stay before fading: 1s, 3s, 6s, or never. Replaces the "Persist drawings" switch ("never" is the old ON; if you had it on, you are migrated).
• Neweverything answers the cursor now. Buttons and chips brighten on hover — including the stop button and open-panel buttons — pen swatches show a ring, and Quit highlights like a menu row.
• Improvedthe bar is a full capsule now, and the mic level ring and the start sweep have crisp square ends, matching the icons.
• Improvedmenus and settings share one spacing rule: separators sit evenly between sections, in both pickers and the settings panel.
• Improvedtranscription always runs when the mic is on. The "Transcribe on save" switch is gone — transcripts are the point. The Language row shows "Transcribing…" while it works.
• Fixedthe pickers' sections sat tighter than the settings panel — a macOS layout quirk silently ate the menu insets.

Permission prompts stay clickable

• FixedmacOS's screen-recording approval prompt could appear while the pen was active — clicks then drew ink instead of pressing Allow, and there was no visible way out. The pen now lets clicks through to system permission dialogs, the same way it already does for the palette.

Picker polish

Small fixes to yesterday's pill, mostly around the pickers.

• Improvedthe capture and microphone pickers open where the settings panel does — same spot above the pill — and their button stays highlighted while the menu is open, like the pen and settings buttons.
• Fixedopening a picker while settings was open left both panels on screen; now one panel at a time.
• Fixedthe selected pen colour is now marked with a dark dot — the white ring used before was invisible on the white swatch.

The pill

The palette got its redesign: a compact pill, and you choose what to record — a screen, a window, or an area you mark.

• Newthe palette is now a compact pill. The mic level is a ring around the mic button, the mic menu opens from that button, and the screen picker moved from settings onto the bar.
• Newrecord a screen, a window, or a marked area. "Record Area…" dims the screen and lets you drag the rectangle to record, QuickTime-style — a dashed frame marks the armed area until you clear it. Window recordings capture that window only, so the pen stays off there.
• Improvedthe capture and microphone pickers are now Comms panels, not native menus — same look as settings, with sections and hover rows.
• Improved`comms transcript` now strips spoken fillers ("uh", "um") and repairs the punctuation around them; `--verbatim` keeps the exact words. The transcript file on disk stays verbatim.
• Improvedthe menu bar menu lost the shortcut cheat-sheet line.

Microphone fixes

The mic picker now behaves. Thanks Piotrek for the report.

• Fixedswitching microphones (say, AirPods to an audio interface) could leave the level meter dead until the app restarted. The meter now follows every switch.
• Fixeda phantom "CADefaultDeviceAggregate" device could appear in the microphone menu. It is gone; if you ever picked it, Comms falls back to the system default.
• Fixedthe app could freeze when the system audio service stopped responding. Audio setup now never blocks the app.
• Improvedwith no microphone picked, the menu shows which device "System Default" is; a microphone that fails to start is marked ⚠︎.

Beta gate

The free beta, with a way to talk back. A real bug report or a feature request we ship earns a free license — send it from the menu. Plus: one press to record, and the palette tells you when your note is ready to paste.

• New"Send Feedback…" in the menu opens the feedback form on trycomms.app with your version and macOS filled in.
• Newbeta builds stop working on 1 October 2026 and point you to the latest download; the menu shows the date.
• Newafter you stop a recording, the palette confirms the save — a green check and "Path copied — paste it to your agent", then back to normal.
• Improvedrecording starts the moment you press play — a quick ring sweep marks the start, and the pen appears once the take is rolling. The pen now lives inside recordings only.
• Improvedwhile drawing, the Dock and the menu bar stay clickable — the pen releases when you reach for them and comes back when you return.
• Improveda sharper icon set across the palette and menus.
• ImprovedComms now checks for updates daily on its own — no opt-in dialog on first launch.

Draw and scroll

Small release: the pen gets out of your way.

• Improveda new Comms mark — app icon and menu bar icon.
• Improvedstopping a recording turns the pen off and clears the canvas, so you can click things again without deactivating it first.
• Fixedtwo-finger scrolling works while the pen is active — the page underneath scrolls, and drawing resumes as soon as the gesture ends.

The brief gets sharper

Everything an agent needs from a note, without the video: `session.json` now lists each thing you drew with a clean and a marked crop, the whole sentence you said, and the app it was in. Plus: pick which screen to record.

• New`session.json` — every recording ships a brief: for each thing you drew, when you drew it, where (in video pixels), what you said while drawing it, and cropped frames of that region (`annotations/`). Agents read that instead of watching the video.
• NewChoose which screen to record — by default the one under the cursor when you start (⇧⌘R records where you work), or a fixed display, in Settings → Screen.
• New`comms session <folder>` in the bundled CLI prints the brief.
• Improvedannotations carry the app and window under the stroke, a `clean` crop from just before the ink landed (so the target isn't hidden by the mark) next to the marked one, both with much more context; and `said` is the whole sentence, not a clipped time window.
• Improvedthe Comms mark — new app icon and menu bar icon, sized to sit with its neighbours.
• Fixedthe countdown ring now starts at 12 o'clock and runs clockwise.

First public beta

The first build outside the studio. Record your screen, draw and talk, and hand the session to an agent. Free until October 1; file a real bug, or a feature request we ship, during the beta and your license is free forever.

• NewRecords your screen with system audio and your mic.
• NewFreehand pen overlay: five colours, three widths. Strokes fade after a couple of seconds unless Persist drawings is on.
• NewOn-device transcription with timed segments and words (transcript.json).
• Newsession.json manifest: every stroke becomes an annotation with a bounding box, the words said over it, and a cropped frame in annotations/.
• NewBundled `comms` CLI (session / transcript / frames / search) and a howToRead note in meta.json, so any shell agent can work a session folder.
• New3-2-1 countdown before recording; permissions panel that shows exactly what to grant on first launch; automatic updates via "Check for Updates…".