Light mode, pixel icons, and Toolbay Flow on Mac done properly

First we reverse engineered Wispr Flow and made it free. Then we saw Obsidian was charging, so we made that free too. Now we're making Granola free. This is the first Toolbay newsletter: everything new in the apps, in plain words, with the bug fixes left out.

Light mode and pixel icons, everywhere

• The Toolbay app has a light mode: pick System, Light or Dark. toolbay.ai now follows your computer's setting too.
• New pixel-art icons for every app, drawn on the same 32-pixel grid as Bedrock's. Each has a light and a dark version, and the Dock icon follows your theme.
• The Toolbay app and Toolbay Flow got a squarer, more compact look with faster motion.

Toolbay Flow on Mac, set up like Wispr Flow

• Only two permissions: Microphone and Accessibility. After you allow them, Flow restarts and picks up where you were, and the permissions now survive updates.
• Fn works every time. Flow holds the Fn key back from macOS (no more emoji picker), accepts the globe key, and warns you if macOS is still using Fn for something else.
• Your music isn't lowered when you dictate with AirPods. Flow uses your Mac's built-in mic when the default input is a Bluetooth headset, like Wispr Flow does, and never keeps the headset mic open between dictations.
• The floating bar is back to the Wispr-style pill.

Get it: Toolbay Flow. New to it? Read how to dictate on a Mac for free.

The Toolbay app works like a launcher

• Home now shows Your apps first, with Open or Switch to, then more free apps to install.
• Updates reach apps that are already open: Toolbay checks every 30 minutes and shows an "Update to" button that closes the app, updates it and reopens it.
• One copy of each Mac app, updated in place, so no more duplicate Dock icons.
• Toolbay Flow, Bedrock and Cereal all ship in the built-in catalog, so they show up instantly on first launch.

Get it: Toolbay for Mac and Windows.

Bedrock: let your Claude build your personal wiki

• A three-page setup guide on first start. Page one gives you a prompt, with your vault's real location filled in, that has Claude build a personal wiki of your projects, people and life areas. Page two sets up a daily update. Page three picks graph colors, app colors and a book theme (Pixelated, Minimal, Animals, Halloween, or let Claude design one).
• Bedrock keeps a note called Instructions for Claude where it leaves requests and your preferences; Claude checks them off the next time it works in your vault.
• The graph shows a note's icon above its node and uses its color property.

Get it: Bedrock. How it works: let Claude build your personal wiki.

Cereal 0.4

• Now matches 89% of Granola's features, by Cereal's own checklist.
• Hot corner and a mini window. Cereal follows the call when you switch speakers or headphones.
• Speaker names suggested from the meeting's attendees, and one click to name the other person in a 1:1.
• Optional snapshots of shared screens, kept only when the screen changes.
• Send notes to Notion, log them in HubSpot, and turn chat answers into an email, a calendar event or a Slack post.
• Your notes in other AI apps through a local MCP server and a command line.

Get it: Cereal. Comparing? See Cereal vs Granola.

Every app is free and open source. Already have Toolbay? It updates them for you.