Control Alter from your phone

TL;DR: Gateways are coming to Alter. It lets you connect Discord and Telegram, so you can send messages, record voice notes, answer follow-up questions, retrieve files, and run your existing Alter actions — all while Alter runs locally on your Mac.

Important: Gateways are connections to Alter running locally. Alter must remain open on your Mac. This is not a cloud-hosted Alter instance.

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New Features & Enhancements

• Gateways: Multiple Discord and Telegram instances; Discord conversation threads with interactive buttons for access prompts; Ask Anything on Telegram; voice-note transcription in gateway context; Markdown tables rendered for Discord; availability controls to stay online with the lid closed; per-gateway action availability and access settings; doctor checks with docs links; localized gateway settings and Action Editor help.
• Workspace document cache v2: Faster, more reliable workspace document caching for attachments.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub & QuickHub: Shortcut conflicts with split panels; attachment shortcuts route reliably; workspace attachment context and presentation preserved.
• Dictation & transcription: Long transcription results no longer truncated; Argmax custom-vocabulary race during in-flight transcribe; microphone continuation leak in transcript-ready prompt.
• Fair use: Reset countdown uses provider UTC reinit date when available; compile fix for missing fair-use reset countdown.
• Other: MiniMax M3 Flow parameter fix; sandbox container cleanup.

Hub Split Panel

TL;DR: Split Panel lets you add a second panel next to your current Hub session — work in parallel on two tasks or one complex project without losing your place. Drag text between panes, move tabs side to side, @-reference the other panel, and open Markdown, HTML, or PDF files in a side panel with “Open in the other panel.”

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New Features & Enhancements

• Hub Split Panel: Add a second panel next to your Hub session to work in parallel — with shortcuts and stable new-chat / drop behavior.
• Drag-and-drop context: Select text in one session and drag it into the other panel to ask a question or add it to your task.
• Flexible tabs: Reorder tabs or move a tab from one side panel to the other (including on external displays).
• Cross-panel referencing: Use @ to refer to and add context from the other open panel.
• Integrated file viewer: Open Markdown, HTML, and PDF files in a side panel via “Open in the other panel” — inspect documents next to Alter without a third-party editor.
• Audio workflows: Microphone and transcription run as workflows — queued transcription, workflow status in the mic menu and Edge Bar, and local speech diagnostics to help us debug users.
• Shell tools: Shell commands can include a purpose for clearer tool calls.
• ChatGPT tool calls: Tool calls display as they arrive during streaming.
• Localizations: Hub suggestion cards and new split-pane UI strings localized for non-English users.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub: Blank window presentation, QuickHub hosting constraint loop, model sync feedback loop, overlay inspector with split layout, and input shortcuts on macOS 27.
• Conversation: Preserve generation errors; send queued messages after tools finish.
• Audio / transcription: Invalid microphone devices, meeting input picker flicker, hardened voice workflow processing, and rejection of malformed transcript timestamps; skip corrupt transcript rows during conversion.
• Custom endpoints: Better compatibility with exotic OpenAI-compatible endpoints.
• Editor: Prevent Sonoma sidebar truncation.
• Menubar: Clicks restored on macOS 27; workflow status shown in the menu.

Memory

TL;DR: Memory is now first-class in Alter — scoped memory captures what matters automatically, a Catch-Up workflow helps you review and refine what Alter remembers, and saved sources are clickable so you can jump straight back to where a memory came from.

A full guide is available in the documentation: Memory

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New Features & Enhancements

• Scoped memory: First-class scoped memory with automatic capture, authorization hardening, and provenance tracking so Alter remembers context without you managing it manually.
• Memory Catch-Up: New workflow to review, refine, and humanize what Alter has learned.
• Memory sources: Open saved memory sources directly from settings; source links are clickable.
• Hub suggestion cards: Redesigned suggestion cards and faster initial Hub tab loading.
• Speech prompts: Speech prompts now always start a new chat.
• Running tool icons: Animated running tool icons in conversation view.
• Alter Docs: Embedded Help documentation updated with the latest features.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub tabs: Left and right clicks on tabs work correctly on external screens (macOS 15).
• Computer use: Hardened URL handling; fixed background action workspace permissions.
• Edge Bar: Re-pin panels after display disconnect.
• Background Jobs: Custom actions with Skills and no workspace retains their ephemeral workspace to avoid permission issues.

Codex Sign-In & GPT 5.6

TL;DR: Sign in with Codex and use the new GPT 5.6 models. Computer use is dramatically faster — screen reads up to 77% quicker, and clicks/typing resolve in milliseconds instead of seconds on heavy apps like Notes and Spotify. Queue messages to steer your agent mid-task, and follow along with a cleaner grouped tool-call UI.

New Features & Enhancements

• Codex sign-in: New Codex provider integration with support for GPT 5.6 latest models
• Faster computer use: Major AppSense optimizations measured on real apps — AX screen reads up to 77% faster (Notes: 4.4s → 1.7s); element resolution for clicks and fills collapsed from 1–4+ seconds to ~1–4 ms on Spotify, Notes, and Reddit (~330–4100× faster). Plus improved app guidance and dynamic app-specific tools.
• Music app tools: Focused Spotify and Apple Music tools, plus a Deezer recipe.
• Queue messages: Send follow-up messages while the agent is still streaming to steer it mid-task.
• Grouped tool calls: Tool calls are now grouped in conversation view with cleaner summaries, attachments, and styling.
• Reasoning effort selector: Choose reasoning effort for supported models (Codex only, Alter next).
• Send shortcut: Configurable keyboard shortcut for sending messages.
• New Models: GPT 5.6 Luna & Terra

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub: Respects IME composition for Enter handling; fixed crash when opening QuickHub and text input undo crash.
• Ask user tool: Limited to 5 options per question.
• Audio: Fixed audio recording on input switch and a memory leak
• Search: Faster search index listing.
• Switcher: Ignores pasted switcher command tokens.

Background Computer Use

TL;DR: Until now, using AI to interact with your mac often meant pausing your own work. Not anymore. With Background Computer Use, Alter can interact with your machine and handle complex tasks in the background while you continue working on other things.

Make sure to join the Discord or Subscribe to our Youtube channel for a long form video tutorial.

New Features & Enhancements

• Background Computer Use: New tool that lets Alter operate apps in the background while you keep working — with a live preview card, dedicated agent browser with self-cleaning tabs, and optimizations for apps like Discord and Spotify.
• Ask Anything defaults: Computer use, Flow, and Ask User are now default tools for new sessions.
• Edge Bar: Inner-edge placement and updated reveal-distance logic for the activation hotspot.
• QuickHub: Now the default interface for new users; respects fullscreen position preference.
• Task sharing & export: Share task traces and export task chat as markdown.
• Transcripts: Duration shown on ready transcript task cards.
• AppSense: Re-enabled CEF and Qt access; waits for web areas before attaching.
• Scroll tool: Millisecond timing support.
• New models: GLM 5.2, Deepseek V4 Flash & Pro, Minimax M3, Cerebras Gemma 4 31B

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Translations: Added missing strings from recent releases.
• Onboarding: Restored missing grant button for automation permission.
• Edge Bar: Now displays over fullscreen apps.
• Markdown: Fixed currency rendering.

Introducing the Edge Bar

TL;DR: The Edge Bar is a slim, elegant toolbar that sits on the edge of your screen, ready to give you instant access to Alter’s most powerful features. Once invoked, you can slide it up or down to reposition the activation hotspot exactly where it feels most natural.

Paired with QuickHub, this will deprecate the notch and the old interface, including the control block taking too much estate in your menubar. The notch will stay until the EdgeBar becomes stable.

New Features & Enhancements

• Edge Bar: A slim toolbar on the edge of your screen with instant access to Alter’s most powerful features, including full menu access and a draggable activation hotspot.
• Action editor: Rename folders, collapse folders, and move actions into folders by drag and drop; cleaned up folder UI and moved create-folder out of the search field.
• Meetings: Dedicated button to quickly regenerate with another voice processor in the Transcript Hub view.
• Input area: Removed the scrollbar for a cleaner compose experience.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub input: Fixed Enter not sending messages, Shift+Enter accidentally sending, and Cmd+V being blocked app-wide; fixed Enter failing after deleting context items with the mouse.
• Context strip: Space key selection and Backspace to delete focused or selected context items.
• MCP: Switched to a public HTTPS redirect URI for improved compatibility.
• Transcripts: Persist “no event” to the calendar section correctly.

Focus Hotfix

TL;DR: This beta focuses on restoring reliable focus behavior across QuickHub and context controls, while tightening AppSense tab handling and fixing transcription on macOS 27 beta.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Focus reliability: Reverted an earlier hub focus restoration change and fixed context strip focus loss when deleting context items.
• Hub focus behavior: Set focus to the text input when switching tabs so Hub stays ready for immediate typing.
• AppSense tab handling: Restored support for attaching multiple tabs from the same window.
• Transcript stability: Solved an error that blocked transcription on macOS 27.

QuickHub and AppSense Hotfix

TL;DR: This beta focuses on QuickHub and AppSense reliability, with fixes for fullscreen presentation, hub focus restoration, more reliable AppSense context handling, and clearer feedback when AppSense content is unavailable.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• QuickHub fullscreen support: Fixed QuickHub presentation over full-screen Spaces.
• Hub focus reliability: Fixed hub focus on activation, restored input focus after switching, and avoided persisting blank new chat tabs.
• AppSense context stability: Fixed unwanted AppSense context deduplication, preserved AppSense content when other context is auto-added, and now shows an error when text content is unavailable because the user acted too quickly.
• Flow safety: Prevented the task tool from being used inside Flow.
• Performance: Fixed high CPU usage after wake-up caused by MCP clients looping indefinitely.

Recording and Transcription Improvements

TL;DR: @everyone We’ve rebuilt our audio capture pipeline for a crisper recording and switched to the new Soniox V5 engine for better cloud transcriptions, plus an unreleased feature sneak peek for early adopters (open the newsletter for more details).

Also check a new tutorial where Olivier shares how he creates Alter actions to orchestrate multiple tools:

New Features & Enhancements

• Audio capture pipeline: Rebuilt capture for cleaner, more reliable meeting recordings.
• Cloud transcription: Switched to the new Soniox V5 engine for improved cloud transcription quality.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Meeting history: Fix history saving of meeting recordings.
• Live transcription: Fixed a Whisper live callback deadlock that could stall transcription.
• Dictation cleanup: Ignored dictation cleanup failures so they no longer interrupt workflows.
• Startup reliability: Captured AppKit launch exceptions, removed the placeholder window, and gated hub rendering until explicitly opened.
• Preferences: Sanitized persisted layout values and resolved a runtime concurrency warning.
• Chat rendering: User raw tags now render literally in messages.
• Workspace tools: Fixed Xcode Python shim handling in bash tool execution.
• Notch input: Fixed plain Return key submission from notch input.
• Pasteboard: Fixed a crash when copying to the pasteboard.
• QuickHub shortcuts: Reduced modifier attach sensitivity when opening QuickHub.
• Hub app sense: Refresh app context when focusing the hub.

Monday Hotfix Startup Stability

TL;DR: Improve startup reliability, recording stability with third party audio tools, duplicated context cards.

New Features & Enhancements

• Microphone architecture: Replaced the audio engine with the new software mixer foundation, fixing issues with FineTune, among others.
• Action editor: Show only “Modified by me” actions in the action editor sidebar.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Startup reliability: Fix startup sequence to avoid crashes when restoring Hub or QuickHub windows after settings or data migrations.
• QuickHub lifecycle: Fix crash due caused by tool call views during computer use.
• Shortcuts: Fix crash with the “perform” tool performing keyboard shortcuts.
• Chat and context rendering: Preserved code block formatting when copying, deduplicated action attachment contexts, fixed source rendering after web search.