Under the hood
Cue 0.6 is the biggest performance update since launch. We rewrote the audio pipeline and processing engine to be dramatically faster and lighter.
What changed
- CPU usage down 60% — Cue now idles at near-zero CPU. Fans stay quiet.
- Instant activation — press ⌥ + Space and Cue is listening in under 50ms
- Streaming is smoother — text appears character-by-character with no jank
- Battery impact reduced — on M-series Macs, Cue barely registers in Activity Monitor
New audio engine
We moved from a buffered processing model to a streaming architecture. Instead of waiting for chunks of audio, Cue now processes speech as it arrives — reducing latency from ~300ms to under 100ms.
Apple Silicon optimized
The offline model now uses the Neural Engine on M1+ chips for inference. This means:
- 2x faster offline transcription
- 40% less memory usage
- No thermal throttling during long sessions
Fixes
- Resolved memory leak during extended dictation sessions (2+ hours)
- Fixed text insertion delay in VS Code with many extensions
- Improved handling of Bluetooth microphone reconnections
- Cue now gracefully handles sleep/wake without losing state