New Features
- New
Highlight Words As They're Read Aloud 🖍️
Read aloud can now highlight each word on the page as it's spoken — karaoke style — in Reading Mode, on selected text (the selection toolbar or the right-click menu), and in the PDF reader, auto-scrolling to keep the current word in view. Turn it on under Settings → Beta features and pick your highlight colour. Works with local browser voices.
- New
Chemistry Mode for Voice Typing 🧪
Voice typing has a new Chemistry mode — speak chemistry and Helperbird writes the formula. Say "H two O" and get H₂O, "sulfuric acid" → H₂SO₄, "sulfate" → SO₄²⁻, "calcium hydroxide" → Ca(OH)₂. It even balances spoken equations: "two H two plus O two yields two H two O" becomes 2H₂ + O₂ → 2H₂O, correctly keeping the coefficient full-size while subscripting the atom counts. Chemistry mode knows all 118 elements, common compounds, acids and bases, polyatomic ions, isotopes ("carbon fourteen" → ¹⁴C), hydrates, organic groups, reaction arrows, and state symbols. Turn it on from the voice typing options menu — a 🧪 badge shows when it's active.
- New
Physics Mode for Voice Typing ⚛
A new Physics mode converts spoken physics into notation — units, vectors, constants, and all the maths. Say "ten newtons" → 10 N, "nine point eight metres per second squared" → 9.8 m/s², "vector F" → F⃗, "vector v cross vector B" → v⃗ × B⃗. Because physics is maths plus units, everything Math mode does works here too — Greek letters, exponents, fractions, and constants like the speed of light. Pick it from the voice typing options menu; an ⚛ badge shows when it's on.
- New
Pick Your Voice Mode: Regular, Math, Chemistry, Physics 🎙️
The voice typing options menu now offers four mutually-exclusive modes — Regular (plain text), Math, Chemistry, and Physics. Choose one and it stays set, with a badge on the mic button so you always know how your dictation will be interpreted. The setting follows you across the popup, the PDF reader, and the Equation Editor.
- New
Features Now Sorted A–Z 🔤
Both the popup's main features list and the Quick Actions picker now sort every feature alphabetically by name. No more hunting down the line to find Translate or Word Prediction — Grammar, Highlight Menu, Immersive Reader, Notes, PDF Reader, Reading Mode, Simplify, Summarize, Translate appear in the order you'd actually look for them. Sorting is locale-aware, so French, Spanish, and Japanese users see correct alphabetical ordering in their own language. Emoji prefixes on each feature name are ignored when sorting, so 'Grammar' sorts under G rather than under whatever glyph happens to precede it.
Bug Fixes
- Fix
Better Square Roots in Math Voice Typing √
Math mode now understands spoken square roots even when you drop the word "of" — "square root seventy two" becomes √72, not literal text. It also handles "sqrt" (which speech recognition sometimes produces) and "the square root of", plus the same improvements for cube roots.
- Fix
Quick Actions Menu Scrolls Properly on Safari 📜
Fixed a Safari bug where the Quick Actions add/remove menu would glitch when scrolling past the first dozen or so features — the list snapped back, items further down wouldn't load, and only the visible ones were clickable. The menu had two competing scroll areas; it now uses a single, properly-bounded scroll container, so the whole feature list scrolls smoothly and every feature is reachable and toggleable. Thanks to the user who sent in a wonderfully detailed report.