What's new.

A handful of new things Halo can do

• Ask Halo to play what you want. Say "play my Focus playlist," "put on some jazz," or "play Taylor Swift" and it starts it in Apple Music, on top of the play, pause, skip, and "what's playing?" it already handled for Apple Music and Spotify.
• Control your home by voice, through your own Shortcuts. Make a shortcut with a Home action (lights, locks, a scene) in Apple's Shortcuts app, name it something you'd say out loud, and Halo runs it when you ask. It even matches a spoken or close name, so "good night" finds your "Good Night" shortcut.
• Two new cards in Settings, under Integrations. Music and Shortcuts & Home each explain what Halo can do, and Shortcuts & Home shows you the exact shortcuts it can run and links you straight to the Shortcuts app to make more.
• Automation now appears in Settings, under Permissions, so if you ever turned Halo's control of Music or Shortcuts off, you have a clear way back to it.
• Turn a follow-up into a reply without leaving the notch. When someone's waiting on you, the card now shows your recent chat with that person inline, as a real back-and-forth, drafts a reply in your voice, and lets you send it straight back in Slack or iMessage.
• A five-second undo on anything Halo sends or runs. Send a reply, or approve an action, and a short countdown appears first with a way to cancel, so you can catch it before it goes out.
• Halo stops nagging once you've handled it. Before surfacing a follow-up it checks the actual conversation, and if your reply is already the latest message, it stays quiet.
• Cleaner, clearer replies. The inline chat reads like a real thread with the other person on the left and you on the right, and Halo now speaks to you directly instead of accidentally addressing the person it just messaged.

Halo comes to iPhone

• Halo is coming to your iPhone. A companion app that lets you text Halo from your phone is on its way to the App Store. Your message rides your own iCloud and your Mac does the thinking, so it stays as private as everything else Halo does.
• The iPhone app is open source. Every line lives on GitHub at github.com/itsSilver/heyhalo-ios (and the shared message format at github.com/itsSilver/heyhalo-reach-kit), so anyone can read exactly how it works and confirm your messages only ever travel through your own iCloud.
• Smoother in the background. Fixed a rare freeze and stopped Halo from quietly checking your browser while you're just browsing, so it stays out of your way.

The bigger on-device models play nicer

• Magic Reply now works with the bigger models. Magic Reply and the quick draft tweaks (fix, formal, casual, shorten) did nothing after you switched to the Balanced or Power on-device model. They now run on that model, so you get stronger drafts wherever you write.
• The bigger models are gentler on your Mac. Switching to Balanced or Power no longer makes the whole system stutter. Halo now runs them in smaller steps that leave room for the rest of your Mac to stay smooth, with no real hit to speed.
• Steadier on-screen sparkle and menus. Under a heavy burst of activity from some apps, the autocomplete sparkle and Halo's menus could get stuck on screen and stop responding. They now stay put and dismiss cleanly.

Quieter on memory, smoother sign-in

• Fixed a memory drain. Once you tried the Balanced or Power on-device model, a large background process could keep running after you quit Halo, holding several GB of memory and leaving your Mac sluggish with janky animations. Halo now shuts that process down cleanly the moment you quit.
• Reinstalling Halo on the same Mac no longer counts as a new device. Before, a fresh install could quietly use up your 2-Mac limit and lock you out of signing in. Your Mac is now remembered across reinstalls, and if you ever do reach the limit, Halo shows a clear message with a button to manage your devices.

A Halo that knows you, with much sharper recall

• Halo learns who you are. Tell it your name or just say "call me Silver" in chat and it uses that everywhere; set your pronouns so it addresses you naturally; and if it still doesn't know what to call you after a few days, it asks once, gently. Your names and handles now live in one place under Profile, and Halo never files your own words under someone else.
• Recall got a real upgrade. It now captures more of what you actually see and do, every app, tab, and chat you move through, and keeps a complete record on your Mac. Answers rank so the memory that matters wins instead of stray text off your screen, and chat conversations turn into lasting memories with the right "who said what." When someone gives you a deadline, it becomes a real due date.
• Follow-ups are more useful and far less noisy. Halo drafts a reply right in the card so you can copy it without opening a chat, puts what's due soonest at the top, only surfaces conversations genuinely waiting on you, shows one row per conversation instead of duplicates, and never nags you about your own messages. What you dismiss now stays dismissed after a restart.
• Your Apple apps are now part of the welcome flow. Messages, Mail, Calendar, Reminders, and Notes each get a one-tap grant, a plain note about what access they need and why, and recall switched on by default for Mail and Notes so Halo can answer questions about them right away. You can turn any of it off whenever you like.
• First-time setup is more reliable. Finishing the welcome steps now brings Halo to life properly, and when a permission needs a restart to take effect, Halo says so instead of quietly doing nothing.
• The menu bar shows when setup isn't finished, with a clear "Finish setup" button and the other actions held back until Halo is ready.
• Closing the welcome window before you're done now quits Halo cleanly, so reopening picks straight up where you left off.
• Asking Halo about your mail or calendar before access is granted now tells you exactly what to turn on, instead of saying it found nothing.
• The notch chat now renders formatted answers (bold, lists, and links), and when Halo answers from memory it shows the sources it used as chips you can tap to open the page, reveal the file, or play the recording.
• Added a Balanced on-device model, a middle option between the fast one and the thorough one, so you can trade a little speed for better answers without going all the way up.
• A batch of fixes across calendar, call detection, and how Halo reads in chat.

Halo opens reliably now

• Fixed the big one: Halo would look like it launched and then nothing would happen, no window, no sign of it running. A packaging slip left a core part of the app out of the build, so it quit the instant it opened. The download now includes everything it needs and starts up normally.

No surprise permission prompts while browsing

• Halo no longer pops up "wants access to control your browser" out of nowhere. That request used to appear on any browser page with a video or audio playing, even when you weren't recording. Now it only asks the moment you actually start recording a call, and the message clearly explains what the access is for.

A smoother first run

• Granting the microphone and calendar during setup works now. Tapping Grant on those two could previously do nothing, while speech and screen access worked fine. Both now bring up the system prompt the moment you tap, so the mic, call recording, and pre-meeting briefs are ready right away.
• The setup wizard picks up where you left off. When granting a permission asks you to quit and reopen Halo, you come back to the same step instead of starting over from the welcome screen.

Chat that follows through, and a warmer voice

• Asking Halo about your calendar, your reminders, or anything it can look up now reliably gets a real answer. It follows through on the lookup instead of occasionally stalling out with a generic "Hey, what's up?".
• Follow-up questions keep their context. Ask "what's on my calendar today", then just "what about tomorrow?", and Halo knows you still mean your calendar, and answers for the right day.
• Halo no longer talks over itself. When it reads an answer aloud it won't mistake its own voice for you interrupting and cut off mid-sentence.
• Spoken replies sound like a person, not a data readout. No more dates and timestamps announced like a newspaper headline, and the voice is warmer and gets to the point.
• When you talk to Halo, your words now appear in the message box as you speak, so it's clear it's hearing you.
• A warmer, more consistent voice throughout. Halo greets you by name and speaks with calm, dry confidence, from the morning hello to the little status lines while it's working, the suggestions it offers, and the briefings and summaries it reads back.
• Turning on the microphone, speech, and calendar permissions now works the way it should. If you'd turned one of them down before, the button in Settings takes you straight to the right spot in System Settings instead of doing nothing.
• First-run setup now offers the microphone, dictation, and calendar right up front, so the mic, call recording, and meeting prep are ready the first time you reach for them.
• A clearer reminder that the microphone, like screen recording, needs a quick quit and relaunch right after you grant it for the change to take effect.
• Fixed a stray permission warning that could flash in Settings for a minute right after launch and then clear itself. It was harmless, just confusing.

Halo on your phone, and a more proactive companion

• Halo on your iPhone. Reach Halo from your phone and it answers with everything it knows back on your Mac. When you step away it can send you a heads-up, and the Dynamic Island keeps you posted on whatever it's working on. Everything sensitive still lives on your Mac.
• A more proactive Halo. It now spots things worth handling, gets them ready in a "Ready for you" area for one-tap approval, and quietly takes care of the safe, easy-to-undo ones on its own. While you're out, it saves what happened into a single catch-up digest instead of a stream of pings.
• Standing requests and scheduled tasks. Ask Halo to do something on a schedule, or whenever a certain situation comes up, and it handles it in the background. It always checks with you first before anything that can't be undone.
• More horsepower when you need it. Switch on the Power option in AI Models for a noticeably stronger brain on long chats and summaries. It's optional, runs entirely on your Mac, and uses more memory while it's on.
• Optional browser help. With your go-ahead, Halo can read the page you're on and fill in forms for you. Banking and payment sites are always off-limits.
• Simpler sign-in and clearer limits. You can sign in even without a subscription, and your Halo Cloud usage now shows at a glance as a current-session and weekly view.
• A bit more personality. Spoken replies are warmer and wittier, and they call back to things you've talked about before.
• Plus on-device contact names, sharper meeting prep, steadier calendar timing, and a long list of fixes and polish.

Sharper transcripts & reusable writing presets

• Meeting & call transcripts are noticeably more accurate — a new on-device speech model now handles recordings, especially long, multi-speaker calls. Still 100% on your Mac; dictation and the "Hey Halo" trigger stay instant as before.
• Writing presets — save your own reply and rewrite instructions once and reuse them as chips in Magic Reply (⌃⇧R) and Rewrite (⌃⇧W). Halo remembers which preset fits each app, so the right one is already picked for wherever you're writing.
• Voice output now uses your Mac's built-in voices. For the most natural sound, install an Apple Premium voice in System Settings → Accessibility → Spoken Content.
• Polish across Magic Reply and Rewrite, plus the usual round of fixes.

First public beta

• Halo is now in public beta on Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 26.
• Writing — ghost-text autocomplete in your own voice, inline everywhere you type, plus Magic Reply and quick "/" macros.
• Voice — dictation, the "Hey Halo" trigger, and spoken answers, all on-device.
• Calls & meetings — one-shortcut recording with live, speaker-labeled transcripts, live translation, and after-the-call summaries.
• Memory & recall — ask about anything you've seen or said, person dossiers, and a morning briefing.
• Assistant — drafts replies, sends messages, and manages your calendar and reminders, always with a confirmation.
• Halo Cloud (optional) — a frontier model for heavier chat and long summaries; everything ambient still stays on your Mac.
• Automatic updates — Halo keeps itself up to date in the background.