Fenn 0.5.0

The biggest Fenn yet. Meet Hey Fenn, a voice assistant that lives in the notch and works your PC. The taskbar gets its own Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, window peek and per-app volume, the notch gets an edit mode, and updates now install themselves. Everything since 0.4.2 is below.

Installs over any earlier Fenn or Nook. Your settings, notes, clipboard history and plugins come with you.

Hey Fenn New

A voice assistant built into the notch.

• Say “Hey Fenn”. Or click its tile, or press Ctrl+Alt+G. Fenn listens, answers out loud and does the thing. Speech is recognized and spoken on your PC.
• It uses Fenn's tools. Set a timer or a Pomodoro, add a calendar event (“dentist friday at 3pm”), ask what's on next week, write a note, play, pause or skip music, ask what's playing, keep the PC awake, or open any tool by name.
• It works your PC. Volume, brightness, sound output, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, dark mode and other switches; the clipboard; locking the PC; a screenshot or the color picker. It can read the screen, click, type, press keys and scroll. While it does, the pointer glides to where it's going with a soft glow, and a ring shows each click.
• It looks things up. The weather where you are, a web search, or reading a page you name.
• It draws on your screen. Ask it to circle, underline or point an arrow at something, and Draw puts it there.
• A face in the notch. Little eyes and a mouth that listen, think and talk. When it works on something longer it moves to a corner and lists its steps; when it opens one of Fenn's tools, the face rides along as a small pill.
• Pick its brain. Run a model locally with Ollama (Settings can install it and pull a model, with progress), or bring your own API key for Gemini, OpenAI, Claude or OpenRouter. Switches in Settings turn web access, seeing the screen and mouse and keyboard control on or off.
• Voices and listening. Choose and preview a voice, and pick Best or Light speech recognition. The speech models download from Settings.
• Hey Fenn is free for everyone for its first days after release; after that it comes with the supporter package. Its tile counts down the free days left.

Taskbar

• Wi-Fi in Quick settings. See the networks in range, connect (with the password for a new one), disconnect and forget, without Windows' flyout. A wrong password asks again.
• Bluetooth in Quick settings. Paired devices and whether they're connected; connect and disconnect headphones and speakers, find new devices nearby, pair and remove them.
• Screens and accessibility pages. Win+P's choices (this screen only, duplicate, extend, second screen only) and the accessibility switches, right in Quick settings. “More settings” still opens Windows Settings for the rest.
• Peek at a window. Rest on a preview tile and that window shows at its real size and place, over everything else and under the bar. Minimized windows show where they'd come back to.
• App volume on the wheel. Scroll over a running app's button to change just its volume, 5% a notch (finer on a touchpad). A small pill shows the level, or “No sound”.
• End task. Close an app that stopped answering from its menu on the bar, the way Task Manager does.
• Show desktop. A slim handle at the bar's right end shows the desktop; click again to bring the windows back.
• Every monitor. Choose one bar on the primary monitor, one that follows the pointer, or a bar on every monitor (Start, the tray and shortcuts stay with the primary).
• Windows key opens Fenn's Start by default. Tap Ctrl+Win for Windows' own Start. Win+E, Win+D and every other Win shortcut still work, and Win+L locks straight away. Typing into Fenn's Start no longer steals focus, which stops Windows 11 26H2 opening its own Start on top.
• Restart for updates. When Windows Update is waiting for a restart, the bar says so; click it for Windows Update.
• A new look. The bar, Start, search and Quick settings share lit glass plates that catch light along their top, accent glows from beneath, and a soft light that follows the pointer. Turn the glow off in Settings if you prefer it flat.
• Close Fenn from the tray. Fenn's own icon in the tray has a “Close Fenn” option.

Notch

• Edit mode. Click the pencil under the grid. Pick a tile up and the others spring out of its way; drag a corner to resize between 1×1, 2×1 and 2×2. Drop tools you don't use into the Hidden tray that hangs under the panel, and drag them back whenever you like.
• Put the notch anywhere along the top. A position slider from the left edge to the right replaces the three fixed spots.
• Pick any color. Color swatches in Settings open a full color picker.
• Easier to read on bright wallpapers. The glass gets a little more opaque where the background behind it is busy, so text stays legible.
• A welcome page. The first start of a new version opens the notch on a short welcome that greets you by name, or offers sign-in.

Tools

• Timer: Pomodoro and laps. The timer now has a Pomodoro (focus, short and long breaks) and a stopwatch with laps. The tile switches between Pomodoro and the regular timer and remembers which you used; click it for a bigger page with presets and your Pomodoro lengths.
• Lyrics: choose the source. Pick where a song's lyrics come from, or leave it on Auto. Fenn remembers your pick for that song.
• Media. Long titles glide to show the rest while a song plays, with the level meter at the end.
• Phone link. A Larger phone screen option, and an option to start the receivers with Fenn so paired phones reconnect on their own. Big uploads from the phone go in slices and resume after a dropped connection instead of starting over. Fenn now tells you when a Windows Firewall rule is blocking phones from reaching it. iPhone mirroring no longer floats a loose video window or plays behind the panel, and forgetting an iPhone ends its mirroring. The screen sent to the phone keeps full color, so small text stays sharp.
• Plugins: safer installs. Plugins that don't match exactly what Fenn's review team approved are marked as not reviewed. If a different plugin already uses the same id, Fenn warns you and waits for your yes before replacing it.

Updates and accounts

• Updates install themselves. Fenn downloads a new version in the background, checks it, and installs it when you're not using the PC or the notch. The notch is gone for a few seconds and comes back on the new version. The Update button in Settings still does it right away.
• Fenn Pro tools. Some tools can be Fenn Pro or supporter only; their tiles wear a small crown and open a page that explains. Without Pro, Fenn holds up to five plugins (updating one you have is always fine).
• Tools can be paused remotely. If a tool ever has a serious problem, we can switch it off for everyone until it's fixed. Its tile leaves the grid and comes back once it's on again.

Fixed

• Keep awake (Coffee) sometimes left the laptop unable to sleep until Fenn restarted. It now uses a Windows power request, which ends for sure when you switch it off or Fenn quits.
• Firefox and other browsers stayed the wrong size, under the bar or short of the edge, after the taskbar moved between monitors.
• Windows' own taskbar flashed on the primary monitor when Fenn's bar moved between monitors.
• Fenn's own space reservation (“Keep windows below it” and the taskbar) didn't take effect while Fenn's tray was running.
• Clicking a tray icon sometimes closed the tray before the app's menu opened.
• The taskbar now knows when a game or video is fullscreen on its monitor, even when it isn't the focused window, and stays out of the way.

Earlier versions are in the changelog. See how much Fenn 0.5.0 uses on Performance.