Changelog

Current builds— registry verified Sep 1, 2026

• Lven Instant · Windows: 0.8.25 — released Sep 1, 2026
• Lven Instant · Linux: 0.8.25 — released Sep 1, 2026
• Lven Instant · Android: 0.9.41 — released Sep 1, 2026
• Lven Cloud · Windows: 0.1.21 — released Sep 1, 2026
• Lven Cloud · Linux: 0.1.19 — released Aug 31, 2026
• Lven Cloud · Android: 1.0.36 — released Sep 1, 2026
• earslate · Android: 0.5.2 — released Aug 15, 2026
• Folio PDF · Android: 1.1.5 — released Aug 17, 2026

The floating bubble follows the field, not the app— 2026-08-15

What changed

• The bubble is a control for putting text into a field, so it is on screen only while a field is actually selected. Leave the field, or leave the app, and it goes on the same frame rather than a second or two later.
• It stays if you are recording, while a transcript is being delivered, and if the app has not been granted the permission it needs to see focus at all — in that last case there is nothing to act on, and taking the control away would be worse than showing it.
• A field selected with no on-screen keyboard still shows it. Keyboard presence used to be remembered for the life of the device, so a hardware keyboard read as the keyboard having just closed.
• The bubble no longer appears over a text box you have not selected. A screen reader's cursor was being treated as a caret; it now counts only while touch exploration is driving the device, so TalkBack users keep the bubble.
• Quitting the desktop app removes the bubble immediately. It could previously linger while the rest of the app shut down.

Current limits

• iPhone has no system-wide floating control and is unaffected. macOS carries the same behaviour in code but has no public build.

Current download

Lven for Linux ships a .deb and an AppImage— 2026-08-15

What changed

• Both products now ship three ways: the portable archive as before, a Debian package, and an AppImage. All three carry their own Qt runtime.
• The packages register a desktop entry and icon, so Lven appears in your applications menu instead of only running from a terminal.
• Package dependencies are derived from the binaries themselves rather than written by hand, so apt can tell you what is missing before you install rather than after.

Current limits

• The .deb is built on Ubuntu 22.04 and will not install on Ubuntu 24.04 or newer. Use the AppImage there — it runs on any 64-bit Linux without installing.
• On Wayland the global hotkey is unavailable — the shortcut protocol is not implemented there — so dictate from the on-screen control, or bind --toggle to a compositor shortcut. On Wayland, Lven Instant still writes into the focused field where the application allows it, and falls back to the clipboard otherwise; Lven Cloud leaves the transcript on the clipboard for Ctrl+V. X11 has the hotkey and automatic paste in both.

Current download

earslate 0.4.4— Superseded by 0.5.2

What changed

• Playback no longer freezes for around half a second when a single audio packet arrives late: the buffer keeps playing and resumes the moment the next packet lands, instead of waiting to refill.
• Reconnecting after a dropped connection no longer discards the audio of the new session, and can no longer leave two playback streams running at once.
• The welcome screen described the previous architecture, including a claim that no API key setup was needed. It now states plainly that you bring your own Gemini or OpenAI key and that no ClassEve server is in the path.
• The app no longer asks for Bluetooth permission. It never used it; earbuds work through normal audio routing.
• Fixes a fault that stopped a Gemini session from starting whenever captions were switched on, which is the default, so a fresh install could not connect at all.
• Live captions and audio no longer drop out several times a second: incoming frames that omit optional fields are handled instead of discarded.
• Stop now works while a session is still connecting; previously the button stayed on Stop and did nothing.
• Playback holds a reserve sized from the audio actually arriving, which removes the stutter that occurred roughly once per chunk.
• The bring-your-own-key architecture remains direct from the Android app to the selected provider; ClassEve operates no session broker.

Current limits

• A valid Gemini or OpenAI API key is required, and provider availability, quota, pricing, and policies apply.

Current download

Lven Instant for Linux 0.8.10— Superseded by 0.8.25

What changed

• Paid access is verified on your own machine rather than against our servers. Previously any failed check — a dropped connection, a captive portal, a few minutes without DNS — stopped recording at the next poll. You can now work offline indefinitely; free trials are still checked online.
• The archive still extracts to a folder named for its version and carries its own Qt runtime, so a new release never lands on top of an old one and nothing depends on your distribution's Qt.

Current limits

• On Wayland the global hotkey is unavailable — the shortcut protocol is not implemented there — and the app says so plainly rather than pretending a portal session is a working shortcut. Dictate from the on-screen control; text still reaches the field where the application allows it, and where it does not the transcript goes to the clipboard and the app sends the paste. X11 has the hotkey.

Current download

Lven Instant for Windows 0.8.11— Superseded by 0.8.25

What changed

• The app now runs on machines without the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime installed. Every previous build required it to already be present, and would not start otherwise — a great deal of other software installs it, which is why this went unnoticed. The runtime now ships inside the application folder: nothing extra to install, no administrator rights, no restart.
• The installer and the app report the version you actually have. Through 0.8.10 both described themselves as 0.8.9 in the file's Details tab, in Alt-Tab, and in Add/Remove Programs. The version now comes from one place, and a test fails the release if those ever disagree again.
• Paid access is verified on your machine rather than against our servers, so working offline no longer interrupts it.
• Verified for this build: clean install, upgrade over an existing install with settings and history preserved, and a launch with the system search path stripped to the install folder alone — proving the bundled runtime is complete.

Current limits

• SmartScreen can prompt on first run: More info, then Run anyway — then check the SHA-256.

Current download

Lven Instant for Android 0.9.16— Superseded by 0.9.41

What changed

• Recording no longer stops working after you restart your phone. Paid access was checked by three separate caches, and one of them treated every reboot as a reason to distrust what it had — so restarting without a connection refused recording, in an app whose whole point is that it works without a server.
• Access is now decided in one place and verified on the device against a key built into the app. A reboot, a flight, a dead zone or a week without signal changes nothing, and a dropped connection can only ever mean “check again later”, never “you have lost access”.
• The Settings row that listed component licences has been removed. The licences of the components Lven bundles still ship with the app, as they must; the row simply no longer implies Lven Instant is itself open source, which it is not.

Current download

Lven Instant for Android 0.9.15— Superseded by 0.9.41

What changed

• Tapping the bubble starts recording immediately — nothing flashes first. Android 14 requires a briefly visible screen before a background app may use the microphone; it satisfied that with a dialog that appeared on every tap and read as the app relaunching itself. The requirement is still met, invisibly.
• Transcription is more accurate: decoding now weighs several readings of what it heard instead of committing to the first, so one unclear sound no longer rewrites the whole phrase.
• The words you teach Lven are finally used. The recognizer only applies a custom vocabulary under this decoding mode, so taught words were being ignored at decode time until now.
• On phones that support it, noise suppression cleans the microphone before quiet speech is amplified, instead of amplifying the noise with it.

Current download

Lven Instant for Android 0.9.14— Superseded by 0.9.41

What changed

• Paid access is verified on the device against a key built into the app, so a flight, a dead zone, or a few days without signal no longer interrupts it. Free trials continue to be checked online.
• Signed with the same certificate as previous releases, so it installs over an existing copy as a normal update.

Current download

Lven Instant for Windows 0.8.10 and Linux 0.8.9— Superseded by 0.8.25

What changed

• Upgrading no longer leaves part of the old version behind. The Windows installer wrote over an existing install rather than replacing it, and the Linux archive extracted into an unversioned folder, so in both cases a file the new version stopped shipping stayed on disk — and got loaded in preference to the correct one.
• The Linux download now extracts to a folder named for its version, so two releases cannot land on top of each other.
• Both are now held by a test: each Windows build installs, plants a file the new payload does not contain, reinstalls, and fails the release if that file survives.
• Carries the 0.8.9 / 0.8.8 work: the Windows installer includes the on-device speech runtime it was missing, and the Linux archive carries its own Qt runtime rather than depending on your distribution's.

Current limits

• SmartScreen can prompt on first run: More info, then Run anyway — then check the SHA-256.

Current download

Lven Instant for Android 0.9.13— Superseded by 0.9.41

What changed

• Fixes the first-run setup gate: declining the accessibility prompt is now recorded durably, so setup no longer repeats the same step on the next launch.
• Third-party notices and the runtime SBOM now ship as in-app assets.
• Keeps the 120 ms processing beat introduced in 0.9.12, which releases the newest buffered transcript at a single boundary after Stop while preview, recorder teardown, inference, and polishing continue concurrently.
• Targets Android API 36; the direct-download arm64 and 32-bit ARM builds are published as separate direct-download artifacts.
• At that release the Google Play listing was the recommended installation and update channel for supported devices. The Play and direct channels are signed differently, so an app installed from one cannot be updated by the other.

Current download

Folio PDF 1.1.3— Superseded by 1.1.5

What changed

• The toolbar icons were redrawn to one optical system. Rotate sat in the top half of its frame and appeared to float above the row it was in; the pencil hung low and touched the frame edge; the close button and the chevrons were noticeably smaller than the controls beside them; the preview eye collapsed into a dark slit at toolbar size, and the settings gear read as a plain disc rather than a gear.
• The app now fails its own build if any icon drifts off centre, outside the frame, or out of scale with the rest of the set — measured from what the icons actually draw, stroke included, rather than from a sample of their coordinates.
• Carries the 1.1.1 reader work: PDF search with result navigation and page highlighting, long-press copy of the current page's text, and better zoom rendering, memory behaviour on long documents, page themes, margin trimming, and screen-reader access.

Current limits

• The current release requires Android 9 or later and is on Google Play, with the same build also published as a direct public-beta APK.

Current download

Lven Cloud for Android 1.0.22— Superseded by 1.0.36

What changed

• Overlay bubble state now drives the wave and processing indicators directly, so the bubble matches the actual recording and processing state.
• Adds a short buffered pause after Stop so the newest transcript is delivered at a single boundary instead of arriving mid-teardown.
• Targets Android API 36 and ships as a signed direct-download APK.

Current limits

• Lven Cloud transcribes on ClassEve's service, so audio leaves the device; it is not an on-device product.

Current download

Lven Cloud for Windows 0.1.4 and Linux 0.1.3— Superseded by 0.1.21

What changed

• Upgrading no longer leaves part of the old version behind, on either platform — the same defect Lven Instant had, fixed the same way and now covered by the same test.
• The Linux download extracts to a folder named for its version, so two releases cannot merge into one directory.
• Carries the 0.1.3 work on Windows: an installer in place of the ZIP distribution, which failed with a missing Qt6Widgets.dll when run from inside the ZIP preview. It bundles the Qt runtime, installs the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime, and registers an uninstaller.
• The payload is checked before release against the libraries it actually loads, on a machine with nothing else installed.

Current limits

• SmartScreen can prompt on first run: More info, then Run anyway — then check the SHA-256.

Current download