Heard documentation

Open Settings from the Heard menu bar, or from the bottom right corner of the screen (see On screen). Changes apply immediately, no restart needed.

The sidebar has three groups. Home, History, and Friends show what Heard and your agents are doing. Your voice, Parrot, Phone, and Connections shape how Heard listens, speaks, and connects. General and Account sit at the bottom. Pages marked Power need Heard Power.

Home

Your live coding sessions as cards. Click a card to jump to that session’s window. See Multiple agents. Below them, your model allowance (Claude and Codex usage windows) and token totals.

History

Everything Parrot has said, so you can read back a line you missed.

Friends

Your month next to the friends you invited.

Section	What it shows
This month	Sessions, active days, words Parrot read you, and your current and best streak, over the last 30 days.
The sky	You and your friends as hot-air balloons; higher means more agent hours this month. Invite friends by email: someone already on Heard joins your sky right away, someone new gets an invite email and waits on the ground until they join. You can nudge a waiting friend once a day.
Your month in voice	Characters Parrot read you, month by month.
Streak	One square per day your agents worked, plus your crew of agents.
Invite	A share card and a ready-to-paste message with your invite link. Every friend who joins and uses Heard gets you a free month of Power; they get a month of Power free.

Your voice (Power)

Setting	What it does
Talking	How you dictate. Push-to-talk: hold right ⌘, speak, let go. Hands-free: double-press right ⌘ to keep talking without holding it, then tap once to send (up to a minute). “Hey Parrot” is separate and needs Power.
Check hold-to-speak	Say one phrase and Heard checks the key, your microphone, and the typing end to end, then tells you which part to fix if one is broken.
Clean up dictation	Removes filler words and fixes punctuation.
Microphone	Pick an input device, and check microphone access.
Vocabulary	Words Heard should know: project names, teammates, and jargon. Corrections apply to every dictation and spoken reply.
Speech to text	Status of the on-device speech model.
Wake word	Status of the “Hey Parrot” wake word (Power), with a download button if it is missing.

Parrot

One page for everything about Parrot: how it narrates your agents, and, with Power, how it answers when you talk to it.

Narration

Setting	What it does
Choose a voice	Who reads your updates: Butler (the default), Aria (calm), Friday (warm), or Atlas (cinematic). Preview voice plays it.
How you work	Co-pilot, Companion, Focus, or Custom, plus the Send setting (Pre-fill or Automatic). See Listening modes.
Speaking speed	0.7x to 1.2x playback speed.
How much	Needs me, Low, Normal, or High. How much Parrot narrates.
Tone	Casual, Neutral, or Formal. How lines are worded.
Errors / Completions	On by default. Switch one off to silence failures or finished-task lines; neither makes a listening mode say more.
Speaker	Follow the Mac’s output device, or pin narration to one device. If a pinned device disconnects, Heard says so and falls back to the default.
Stay quiet during calls	Holds narration while another app uses the microphone. Turn it off to keep narrating over a screen recording.

Conversation (Power)

Setting	What it does
Read your code	Parrot always reads your local folders and git repositories. Project folders are the folders it looks in; add one when a project lives somewhere else.
Open apps, websites and searches	Lets Parrot open things on this Mac when you ask. Turn it off to keep Parrot talk only.
Also see and click inside apps	Computer use, for apps Parrot can’t otherwise reach, like searching WhatsApp or typing in Grok Bot. Off by default; needs Screen Recording.
Safe open commands	Open Claude in a repository, or reveal a repository in Finder.
Look at your screen	One frame when you ask about it, never saved.
Answer depth	Brief, Balanced, or Deep first answers. See Heard Parrot.
Progress updates	A short spoken line when a lookup is taking longer.
Memory	What Parrot remembers about you and your work, with a way to forget any of it.

Phone (Power)

The Phone card under Get connected links your iPhone number so you can text Parrot from Messages. Show QR opens Messages on your iPhone with a code to send; you can also enter your number by hand. Unlink removes the number. See Text Parrot from your iPhone.

Connections

The coding tools Heard follows. Turn on Claude Code or Codex here.

General

Setting	What it does
Launch at login	Start Heard when you sign in to your Mac.
Language	Language for the interface and system messages.
Automatic updates	Install new releases in the background, or check now.
Mac access	Microphone (for push-to-talk and Parrot), Accessibility (to type your words and jump to the right terminal), and Screen Recording (only for Parrot’s computer use).
Tips	The short tips Heard shows when they’re useful. Each shows at most twice.
Store my transcripts	Off unless you turn it on. Keeps the text of what you said on this Mac only. A delete button removes stored transcript text.
Help improve Heard	Off by default. Shares anonymous usage, masked on your Mac before anything is sent.
Something not working?	Run a check tests your mic, key, voice, and agents and fixes what it can. Email support writes to support@heard.dev.

A button at the bottom left of General replays the setup.

Account

Your signed-in account and plan, with links to plan and billing at heard.dev.

The Heard menu bar icon shows your account and plan, and has:

Pause Heard to stop everything, or Mute Heard to silence audio while Heard keeps working
Dictation, a reminder of the two gestures: hold right ⌘ to talk, double-press for hands-free
Settings and Something not working?, which opens self-serve diagnostics