Skip to content

Use quiet capture icons in the menu bar - #1669

Merged
r3dbars merged 4 commits into
mainfrom
codex/neutral-recording-menubar-icon
Aug 9, 2026
Merged

Use quiet capture icons in the menu bar#1669
r3dbars merged 4 commits into
mainfrom
codex/neutral-recording-menubar-icon

Conversation

@r3dbars

@r3dbars r3dbars commented Aug 9, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Owner

What changed

  • Meeting recording now uses the neutral template symbol record.circle instead of a filled red recording symbol.
  • Active dictation now uses the neutral template symbol waveform instead of a red microphone.
  • Accessibility labels still say recording meeting and dictating.
  • Red remains on the destructive Stop controls inside the open menus.
  • Apple-controlled microphone, system-audio, and camera privacy indicators are untouched.

Why

The always-visible red status-item symbols were conspicuous when the user shared an entire display. Transcripted owns these icons, so the smallest fix is to keep distinct silhouettes while removing the baked-in red treatment.

Visuals

The visuals are synthetic and contain no transcript or audio content.

Validation

  • bash build-deps.sh --force
  • bash build.sh --no-open
  • bash run-tests.sh --filter StatusItemPresentationTests — 6/6 passed
  • bash run-tests.sh — 12,138/12,138 passed

The deterministic test pins both symbol mappings, their accessibility labels, template rendering, removal of the red status-item treatment, and runtime SF Symbol availability.

Proof boundary and manual QA

This change reduces unnecessary visual exposure when the macOS menu bar is included in a whole-display share. It does not hide the status item or suppress Apple's privacy indicators. Existing NSWindow.sharingType = .none assignments are defense-in-depth only and are not treated as captured-pixel proof.

Still validate with synthetic text and no real transcript/audio content:

  1. Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams: share the whole display and confirm the neutral meeting/waveform icons are visible but unobtrusive.
  2. Repeat each provider with window-only sharing and confirm the menu bar is absent as controlled by the provider.
  3. QuickTime whole-screen recording: confirm the same icon behavior.
  4. Locally open the Transcripted menu while meeting recording and dictating; confirm the red Stop actions and accessible labels remain unmistakable.

Independent review

codex review --base origin/main exited 0 with no actionable findings. The reviewer rejected only a transient shared-build race caused by its own parallel build/test attempt; the required sequential rerun passed bash build.sh --no-open and all 12,138 fast tests.

@r3dbars
r3dbars merged commit cd06f8e into main Aug 9, 2026
6 checks passed
@r3dbars
r3dbars deleted the codex/neutral-recording-menubar-icon branch August 9, 2026 12:38
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Labels

None yet

Projects

None yet

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

1 participant