v1.8.9 → v1.8.13: Faster Dictation, Smarter Formatting, Less Friction

The last few releases were not about flashy features.
They were about making NOVA feel more natural, more predictable, and more invisible in daily work.

Smarter Text With the New Dictionary

One of the biggest improvements across these versions is the Dictionary.

NOVA now understands what you mean, not just what you say.

You can define:

• names
• email addresses
• shortcuts
• recurring phrases
• personal references

And NOVA will:

• use them during dictation
• apply them during formatting
• keep text consistent across apps

This removes a lot of small corrections people used to make manually.

In v1.8.13 we fixed edge cases where the dictionary wasn’t applied correctly during formatting — this is now stable and predictable.

Default Language, Less Setup

NOVA now automatically uses your system language by default.

No extra configuration.
No mismatch between OS, keyboard, and dictation.

This sounds small, but it removes a surprising amount of setup friction — especially on first launch.

Default Formatting Prompts (Out of the Box)

Starting from v1.8.10, NOVA ships with default formatting prompts enabled.

That means:

• cleaning grammar
• rewriting in business style
• structuring raw text
• summarizing

All work immediately, without setup.

You don’t need to think about prompts.
You just pick what you want to happen to the text.

This change directly supports NOVA’s core idea:
formatting is infrastructure, not creativity.

Faster Voice Flow and Better Capture Control

Several updates focused on voice capture reliability and control:

• automatic capture stop
• improved silence thresholds
• ability to close capture with Esc
• clearer capture and player windows
• close buttons where you expect them

The goal here was simple:
voice input should never feel stuck or unclear.

Translation and Context Awareness

NOVA now supports:

• fast translation use cases
• better handling of previous message context
• cleaner assistant responses

This makes short, one-off questions and transformations feel much more fluid — especially when working with selected text.

Tray Actions and UI Polish

You can now:

• trigger actions directly from the tray
• access profile and account settings faster
• report bugs directly from the app

Along with that came multiple UI and style fixes, icon updates, and small visual improvements that reduce cognitive noise.

Developer Quality-of-Life

For development builds:

• auto-updates can now be disabled

This avoids unnecessary interruptions during testing and iteration.