Latest
1.1.0 — license keys and a real trial · July 17, 2026
Buying Heliotype now hands you a license key right on the checkout
confirmation page, and the app verifies it entirely offline — no
account, no activation server, nothing phones home. Highlights:
- License keys, verified on your Mac. Paste the key
from the confirmation page via Enter License Key… in
the menu. Lost it? Your Stripe receipt links back to the same page,
which shows the same key again.
- The 14-day trial is now real. The full app, free,
for 14 days from first launch — then buying is asked for when you
start something new. Nothing you already recorded or transcribed is
ever locked, and a rolling recording can always be stopped and
saved.
Earlier
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.