Settings

Open them from Settings… in the menu bar, or with whinge settings.

General#

• Open Whinge at login, so it is ready for command line recordings.
• Save whinges in: where session folders go. Documents/Whinges by default.
• Recording frame rate.
• Privacy screen: what's hidden while a whinge is on, from when Whinge starts listening until it stops. Hide desktop icons is on to begin with. Wallpaper shows the desktop as it is, a plain colour or a picture. Hide other apps hides everything but the app in front, and shows them again afterwards. It's a window over the desktop, so your Mac's own desktop settings never change.
• Updates: Check for updates automatically (on to begin with), Download and install updates automatically, and Check for Updates…. See install.
• Diagnostics: whether to share failure reports. See privacy.

Drawing#

• Marker colours, in toolbar order. Add up to nine; right-click one to remove it.
• Marker sizes.
• Draw shortcut, ⌃⌥D by default. It's only registered while a whinge is recording.
• Clearing stops drawing: whether Esc or Return hands the mouse back.

These apply from the next whinge.

Speech#

• Microphone: follow the system default, or choose a particular input. The same choice is used for start phrases, recordings and bug reports. If it isn't connected, Whinge uses the system default and tells you which microphone it's using. Changes apply immediately in the lobby and to the next recording.
• Speech language: recognised on this Mac with Apple Speech. A new language may download its model.
• Start phrases: choose from all 15 phrases, including “Whinge, whinge, baby”, “Houston, we have a whinge”, “Show me the whinge!” and “Whingeabunga!”. “Let's whinge” and “It's whinging time!” are enabled by default; existing selections are preserved. Keep at least one enabled. Near misses such as “let twinge” and “it's whinge and time” count too.
• Test Phrases: say each enabled phrase and watch it get ticked off. The meter shows your input, and the words and explanation show what the recogniser made of it. Testing doesn't start a recording; recognised words still go to the debug log. Stop testing, leave the Speech pane or close Settings to release the microphone. Finish or cancel a whinge before testing.

The lobby shows the latest words, warns about quiet or missing input, and offers a retry button if speech recognition fails. The microphone button opens these settings.

Permissions#

Whether Whinge has Screen Recording and Microphone access, with a way to fix it if not.

The files#

Everything lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Whinge/, and hand edits work:

• config.json: what the settings window writes as you change things. Only what differs from the defaults needs to be in it.

General also installs the whinge command into ~/.local/bin. Each pane has a button to put its settings back to the defaults.