Vehla 8.9

New

• BarKeep on macOS 27: choose Shown, By position or Always hidden for each app by dragging its icon between bars in Settings › BarKeep › Menu Bar Apps instead of dragging icons past the chevron. Always hidden icons stay hidden when you reveal the others; right-click the chevron (or type “hidden icons” in the Command Palette) to see every hidden icon and open one, which shows just that icon and opens its menu.
• BarKeep: show or hide menu bar icons with a keyboard shortcut, a Hyperkey or Glide action, or “barkeep” in the Command Palette; reveal them by resting the pointer on the chevron or the menu bar; choose a chevron style and hide it when nothing is hidden (macOS 27); and tighten the spacing between menu bar icons so more fit beside the notch.
• Keep Display Awake expands in the menu bar panel: keep your Mac awake for 15 minutes to 8 hours or until you turn it off, pick the menu bar icon and color shown while it's on, let only the display sleep, and keep the Mac running with the lid closed (asks for your administrator password once; turns off at 10% battery).
• If Vehla quits unexpectedly, it offers on the next launch to email the crash report so the problem can be fixed. Nothing is sent unless you choose to; turn it off in Settings › Privacy & Pro.
• The closed Notch shows more live activities: a screen recording with its timer, Pause and Stop (in place of Capto's floating controls) or Instant Replay with Save, a meeting counting down its last 10 minutes with Join when it starts, and Keep Awake. Flow and Summon can show Listening and Transcribing there instead of Flow's panel. When several are live, the most important fills the Notch and the next shows as a small icon. Choose them in Settings › Notch / Island › Live Activities.
• Move the floating Island anywhere on screen: hold the modifier keys from Settings › Hotkeys › Window Management (⌥⌘ by default) and drag it. It opens downward from that spot and goes back to the top when it closes.
• Open Vehla's Settings from anywhere: record a shortcut in Settings › Hotkeys, assign it to a Hyperkey or Glide action, type “vehla settings” in the Command Palette, or open a vehla://settings link (add a page, such as vehla://settings/barkeep, to go straight to it).
• Settings › Workflows has Example Workflows you can switch on to try right away, such as gh to search GitHub, hn to search Hacker News, killport to free a port, newfolder to create a Desktop folder and myip to copy your public IP. Each shows what you can type in the Command Palette.
• Press ⌘K on an app in the Command Palette and choose Uninstall… to open Purge & Uninstall with that app selected, ready to review its related files before removing them.
• Hyperkey can use a key other than Caps Lock: choose Right Command, Right Option, Right Control, Right Shift, Tab, Escape or ` in Settings › Hyperkey. Caps Lock keeps working normally when it isn't the Hyper key.
• Glide supports a four-finger click that you can assign to any Vehla or native action.
• The menu bar's Memory tab shows Vehla's live footprint, Kokoro helper memory, tracked local AI allocations and feature cache estimates, with shared memory clearly labeled.
• The Memory tab now breaks Vehla's total into compact per-feature rows, plus Vehla's core memory, that add up exactly to the total.
• An experimental Compact search index setting in General keeps file and app search results identical while using less memory.
• Vehla's new default menu bar has tabs for feature switches, all Capto controls, model unloading, and app links. It uses Liquid Glass on macOS 26 and later and frosted translucency on earlier versions.
• Polish is now available throughout Vehla.
• Glide Draw Gestures lets you record custom trackpad shapes and assign apps or actions. Hold Command, draw with one finger, then release Command to run the matching action.
• Capto’s optional replay buffer saves the last 30 seconds to its editor. Start it only when needed; saving, sleep, lock or a five-minute limit stops capture.
• QuickGlass recipes run saved sequences such as Proofread, Shorten, and Make friendlier, with one final result and the existing preview, Apply, and undo controls.
• PureSnitch can be installed as a native Store extension for monitoring network traffic and managing opt-in host-wide IPv4 firewall rules through its companion service.
• Type vehla health in the Command Palette to check feature status, permissions, local AI setup, and MCP connections, with links to the settings that need attention.
• Backup and Restore in Settings lets you export Vehla's settings, shortcuts, and customizations to a file and restore them on another Mac. API credentials are excluded.
• Search Cover Art is available in the Command Palette as a compact way to find movie, show, anime, and game posters, then copy them, drag them into Shelf or another app, or open their IMDb pages.
• Z-Library is available in the Command Palette for searching books through the zlib CLI, downloading individual or selected results, and keeping a persistent download queue.
• The palette preview pane and ⌘K actions are enabled by default for new installs and after updating. Turn them off in Settings › General.
• Move any window from anywhere: turn it on in Settings › Window Management, then hold ⌥⌘ and drag anywhere in a window, even over buttons, to move it.
• Edit by voice: select text, hold Flow's AI cleanup key and say what to change, such as “make this more formal” or “translate to Spanish”, and Flow replaces the selection with the result.
• Flow formats lists: say “start a list” followed by your items, or count them out (“first …, second …”), and Flow pastes one item per line.
• Flow's optional AI cleanup key dictates with AI cleanup: hold it to have your AI model fix punctuation, numbers and spoken punctuation before pasting. Use a single key like Fn or record your own shortcut in Settings › Flow.
• Dictation History keeps your recent Flow dictations, searchable and starrable, with the original words beside cleaned-up text. Press ⌥⇧D or open it from Settings › Flow.
• Flow can remove filler words such as um, uh and hmm, collapse stutters, and correct names and jargon from a Custom words list in Settings › Flow.
• Living AI Pets turn the floating launcher into a draggable desktop companion that chats through Ask AI, reacts to Summon, and comes with twelve selectable characters, including Sofi, Freddie, Stuart, Georgie, Astro, Fizzie, Cyan Bot, Zibby, and Mango.

Improved

• Vehla uses about two-thirds less CPU while idle: BarKeep redraws its chevron only when it changes, and the Dock calendar widget refreshes once a minute. On macOS 27, Settings › BarKeep can also check the menu bar less often to save more battery.
• Vehla uses less memory: memory freed after the Command Palette, QuickGlass, the Capto editor or Capture History closes goes back to macOS shortly afterwards, and QuickGlass builds its "…" actions menu only when you open it.
• Show or hide Notch / Island with Hyperkey or Glide gestures.
• Settings, Open Vehla and Quit Vehla share one row at the bottom of every menu bar tab.
• Store commands and Speedtest no longer open the palette preview pane.
• Capto capture results and Latest Capture actions show their saved images, GIFs and videos in the palette preview pane.
• The palette skips application previews and labels selected AI models as Active in its model menu.
• Palette previews appear only when you browse results with the arrow keys, hide when you type, and keep the palette at its normal size.
• Emoji search in Emote and the Command Palette forgives typos and partial words, so “hart”, “thu up” or “thumbs_up” find the right emoji.
• On Vehla Free, the menu bar has a Usage tab showing this month's AI uses, when they reset, and your clipboard, notes and snippet limits.
• Keyhop is hidden from Settings and the menu bar.
• The Memory tab is off by default. Enable it with Show Memory Tab in the menu bar's App tab.
• Unload Models in the Memory tab now releases all loaded local models directly, without switching tabs.
• Trackpad and mouse scrolling work across the entire menu bar panel, including blank glass, padding, its header, tabs and footer.
• The menu bar header is cleaner, with dismissal through its icon, an outside click, or Escape.
• Check for Updates now animates while checking and shows confirmed results or a clear retry message.
• The tabbed menu bar is now the default, with a single Vehla icon and no Preview badge. The original menu is disabled.
• The new menu bar uses muted monochrome icons and neutral glass tab highlights that adapt to light and dark appearances.
• QuickGlass lets you pin more than eight actions and recipes, with scrolling and arrows when the action strip fills up.
• Snipe Text now automatically detects tables and copies their cells for Excel or Numbers, using the same shortcut and no preview. Other selections keep the familiar text copying.
• Saved window layouts can capture your current arrangement, preview positions, show per-window results, and safely undo completed moves.
• Restore previous window positions after SnapWheel, saved layouts, or organizing windows, while preserving later manual moves. Turn arrangement undo on or off in Settings.
• QuickGlass previews text replacements with highlighted changes before applying them and lets you undo a verified replacement from the same panel.
• QuickGlass settings let you turn previews and undo off to replace selected text immediately.
• Vehla Health is now listed in the Command Reference in Settings and the palette.
• BarKeep and Summon are now available without enabling Beta Features.
• Beta Features can now be enabled directly from the new Beta tab in Settings.
• BarKeep can now be enabled or disabled directly from Vehla's menu on macOS 27.
• Capto's recording controls sit higher on screen for full-display and tall-area recordings.
• Image attachments can be routed independently to Apple Intelligence, local Qwen-VL, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, OpenRouter, or LM Studio.
• Background music, Messages, and BarKeep checks now use substantially less CPU while idle.
• Music progress now advances live during playback without increasing Spotify or Music polling.
• Closing Settings now releases its interface from memory until it is opened again.
• Closing Capto's Capture History now frees its thumbnails, and Capto keeps at most 48 MB of thumbnails in memory (less when macOS is low on memory).
• Summon tool approvals can now be reviewed directly above a Pet companion without opening Ask AI.
• The Command Palette shortcut is now labeled more clearly throughout Vehla.

Fixed

• The Dock widgets' automatic text color turns dark over light windows again: the widgets themselves were counted as black when measuring what's behind them, so text stayed white over a white window.
• The Dock widgets' automatic text color no longer checks the screen every few seconds when only the wallpaper is behind them; it updates when a window, the wallpaper, the Space or light/dark mode changes, and keeps checking every few seconds while a window is behind them.
• Vehla no longer crashes when you click one of its own windows in a Peek Dock preview or use Keyhop while a Vehla window is in front. Keyhop now says it works in other apps instead.
• In MCP Workspace, Return starts a new line in a server's Arguments field instead of needing Option-Return.
• QuickGlass no longer jumps when you expand and collapse a result near the bottom of the screen: the result opens above the action row instead of sliding the whole bar up.
• Typing quickly in the Command Palette and pressing Return now runs the result for what you typed, instead of the item that was at the top before the results caught up.
• The Command Palette no longer makes the current app beep or takes a second or two to open when nothing is selected: Vehla skips ⌘C when the app's Copy command is unavailable and stops waiting on apps that don't respond.
• Vehla no longer uses CPU in the background after GIF autocomplete or the GIF picker closes: animated previews stop as soon as they're out of sight.
• Capto recordings no longer include the recording controls (timer, Pause and Stop) when a countdown runs before recording.
• Quit Vehla in the menu bar panel quits the app again instead of leaving it running.
• Vehla no longer keeps using CPU after a Summon answer closes: the card's animation now stops with it.
• Hovering over the notch area still reveals Notch / Island after hiding it with Hyperkey or Glide gestures.
• Shelf copies no longer pile up on disk. Choose when leftover copies from earlier sessions are deleted in Settings › Shelf › Storage, or clean them up right away.
• Flow dictation no longer adds the transcript to clipboard history when it restores your clipboard, and never overwrites something you copied while the paste was landing.
• The Notch now curves smoothly into the screen's top edge with more pronounced top corners.
• The expanded Notch fades from solid black into clear Liquid Glass on macOS 26 and later.
• Each menu bar icon click now toggles the panel once, preventing a second click from closing and immediately reopening it.
• Capto replay clips now retain the display’s full resolution, including Retina scaling, and use your recording codec and quality for sharper text.
• Saved window layouts wait for real windows, remember their displays, and verify positions without letting launch rules override them. Changing an auto-layout display preserves its custom position.
• Native workspace launch prompts now show their required consent checkbox, so the Run Workspace button can be enabled.
• Snippets and QuickGlass now work in Terminal and iTerm while continuing to ignore secure input.
• On macOS 27, clicking the clock opens Notification Center again while BarKeep is hiding menu bar icons.
• Opening the Command Palette no longer risks a crash while capturing selected text from another app.
• Emote's emoji utility shortcut now works without Beta Features enabled.
• Emote now accepts Command-Shift-Space as its emoji utility shortcut.
• Local AI models no longer preload at launch when Prefer local AI is turned off.
• Action and native-command hotkeys now open immediately when the focused app confirms there is no selected text.
• Emote and GIF Autocomplete now recover automatically if macOS disables their keyboard listener.
• Hyperkey keeps working after a Bluetooth keyboard reconnects or the Mac wakes, and no longer clears other key remaps on macOS 27.
• Vehla launches faster: Store extensions are only re-verified when their files change.