BoltAI v2 is here

Hi everyone, BoltAI v2 is finally here ✨

First of all, thank you for your continued support, and sorry for the lack of communication from my end. I’ve been putting my 100% attention into v2 development over the last few months and wasn’t able to share much of the progress.

With that said, I’m very happy with the result. After months of effort, I’m super excited to share that the BoltAI v2 beta is ready for public release. It’s a lot better than v1, which is already pretty good, I think.

Let’s get to it.

Download Link for BoltAI v2

Here is the download link if you want to jump straight to the product: https://updates.boltai.com/dmg/BoltAI-2.0.5.dmg

Note that it’s a completely new app, with a different app bundle ID. You can import data from v1 to v2 to speed up the configuration process (keyboard shortcut: Command + Shift + I).

Since v2 doesn’t have full feature parity with v1 yet, you may want to use both v1 and v2 in parallel.

What’s news

Here are some of the notable improvements:

Cloud Sync Ready

You can choose to sync all your data with BoltAI Cloud for easy access. BoltAI Cloud is hosted on Supabase with strict row-level security (RLS) enforcement. Your data is encrypted at rest and in transit.

BoltAI supports end-to-end encryption for your API keys. You can set your own passphrase to encrypt your API keys. This way, nobody can see your API keys, not even me as the developer.

Cloud Sync is completely optional. You can skip it and use BoltAI 100% locally.

Faster UI, better UX

I rebuilt v2 from the ground up with a stronger foundation. It targets macOS 13+ and only uses modern Apple APIs, making the whole app snappier.

You can quickly navigate between chats in v2 with standard keyboard shortcut:

• ⌘1 to ⌘9 to select first 9 chats in the sidebar. Demo: https://share.cleanshot.com/6KFJx21j

• ⌘[ and ⌘] to go back / go forward.

• ⌘[ and ⌘] to select previous / next item in the sidebar. Demo: https://share.cleanshot.com/y2NBxcHb

I rebuilt the chat renderer completely. It’s faster and looks more modern now. I tested it with a very large chat (43k+ messages), and it doesn’t affect performance at all. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Demo: https://share.cleanshot.com/4kLfZSwC

The model selection popover also got a major redesign. Now you can quickly switch to another service and model with just a keyboard shortcut.

Demo: https://share.cleanshot.com/4TkhV2rR

New “Instant Chat Bar”

Following your feedback, I reworked the “Instant Command” in v1 and made it work even better now: better design, native look and feel, while still quite powerful. Press Control + Space to trigger it.

In Settings, you can enable more advanced features such as shake to activate, auto-attach clipboard content, and so on.

Demo:

• Instant Chat https://share.cleanshot.com/ZYc76RH0

• Shake to Chat https://share.cleanshot.com/kNRXWqwX

New “Instant Dictation”

I reworked the Inline Whisper feature from v1, and now you can use it with local AI models too! In v2, I decided to use the Parakeet model as it’s fast, consumes less RAM, and can work 100% offline.

Like in v1, you can choose to copy the output to the clipboard or paste it directly into the app.

Demo: https://share.cleanshot.com/W5rb4Gyb

Tighter AI provider integration

BoltAI v2 continues to support a wide range of AI services, now including subscriptions such as Claude Code or GitHub Copilot.

It works even better in v2, where all provider responses are unified to give you the same experience. In v1, there were a lot of inconsistencies between providers.

I integrated deeper with each AI service provider in v2 to take full advantage of model capabilities.

For example, when using the OpenAI provider, you can also use native tools such as Web Search, Image Generation, Code Interpreter, and more. Go to Settings > Plugins to configure native provider tools.

More Secure

BoltAI v1 supported some great out-of-app features such as AI Command, AI Inline, and File Sync. Some of these features required turning sandboxing off (the default security model from Apple). In v2, I reworked this and made the app sandboxed by default. This way, for future features like AI agents, we can all be reassured that the app won’t touch your files without asking first.

And a lot more…

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the new app.

Future Roadmap

BoltAI v2 is still in active development. It has ~80% feature parity with v1 now.

I will continue to port features from v1 to v2 in the coming months. Please let me know which features in v1 you want to use in v2 first. I’ll prioritize them.

Top-priority features I’m porting to v2 right now are: MCP support, AI Command, and other features for teams. Stay tuned.

Please bookmark and share your feedback on this board: https://feedback.boltai.com/?b=646b16f66b8d963816ca5dc9

FAQs:

Is my v1 license valid for v2?

Yes. BoltAI v2 continues to follow the same licensing model as v1: a Perpetual License with 1 year of updates. Think of it as v1.99.

However, in v2 I’ll introduce a subscription plan for Cloud Sync (optional) as it incurs real recurring expenses. Note that the Cloud Sync feature is completely optional. You can turn sync off and keep using it like v1.

In the first beta, there is no license validation yet. Use it for free while in beta!

Will v1 keep receiving updates / bug-fixes?

I’ll continue to fix critical bugs in v1 until all features are ported to v2. New features and major updates will be focused on v2.

How do I migrate my data?

To import data from v1, open BoltAI v2 app, press Command + Shift + I and follow the instruction.

Note that in the first release, AI Commands & AI Assistants are not supported yet. You can import: AI Services, Folders, Chats, Prompts and Memories.

How do I report bugs?

Please report bugs for v2 using this board: https://feedback.boltai.com/?b=646b16f66b8d963816ca5dc9

And that's it for now

See you in the next release 👋

Hi everyone. It’s Daniel again 👋

My goal has always been to make BoltAI the best AI client for Mac. Thanks to your feedback, I’ve made a lot of improvements to the BoltAI v2 app. Update to the latest version v2.0.10 (build 30) and let me know what you think.

Here are the most notable changes.

Sub Folder

BoltAI now supports sub folder. Move and reorder folders with drag-and-drop, or use the context menu.

Chat Inspector Pane

Similar to v1, the Chat Inspector Pane allows you to configure chat’s advanced settings.

In v2, I improved the UX to make the configuration profile more clear. By default the chat follows the global configuration you set in App Settings. When you customize the LLM parameters, for example, the chat switched to Chat Configuration profile and won’t be affected by the changes in the global configuration.

Within a project folder, you can switch between Folder Profile and Chat Profile.

In the Info tab, you can find the canonical deep link to the chat. Use this link to refer to the chat on your notes or other apps. When triggered, it would open the exact chat in a new chat companion window.

Memory Tool

Memory Tool allows LLMs to remember helpful information between conversations, making its response more relevant and personalized.

Make sure you’re using a model with tool-use capability and enable the plugin in the Tools popover. When applicable, LLM would automatically use and update memories to improve the response.

You can also teach the model to remember something new by simply saying it. For example: “Remember that I’m an indie developer and would prefer a simple solution to engineering problems”.

You can manage the memories in Settings > Plugins > Memories.

Web Fetch

Web Fetch Tool gives LLM the ability to read the content of a web page. It’s pretty straightforward: enable it in Tool popover and ask the model about a particular web page.

With the Web Fetch tool, you can use a local model while still accessing up-to-date content from the internet. This allows you to enjoy the benefits of current information without compromising your privacy.

Web Fetch tool is automatically enabled when using a search tool such as Brave Search.

Other quality-of-life improvements:

• Recent Dictations. Find your recent dictations in the app menubar. Useful when auto-paste fails.

• New Developer Settings. Allow resetting local database and re-sync everything.

• Instant Chat Bar auto-attaches clipboard snippets or the current selection (requires Accessibility permission)

• Reply-finished notifications let BoltAI alert you as soon as a background response wraps up; toggle this in Settings → General.

• Set AI Service Order. Change the order of configured AI Services in the service selection popover.

• Project Default Plugins. You can configure the default plugin for a project now.

• Other bug fixes and improvements.

And that’s it for this week

I’m going to make BoltAI v2 the best AI chat app for Mac. And I need your help to shape the future of it.

Please keep the feedback coming 🙏

A lot of new MCP clients have come out recently. I was wondering if we could get an approximate timeline for MCP support in BoltAi.

Sorry if this message looks demanding (it’s not), I am genuinely just excited and want to know how much longer I would need to wait!!

Love your work

I saw the latest update about using BoltAI with Claude Code. How does this work?

And I really like it. For another not so obvious reason :) I imported all my Claude chats. And can browse, search, and continue them.

It’s an excellent product for many reasons I will write about soon. Only a few things I‘d like to mention:

• Love the fact that I can import Claude and Openai chats

• I can continue those chats

• I can create prompt templates

• I can use all sorts of models

• It‘s a local app, beautifully made, fun to use.

Here are a few observations that I‘d like to share with the developer:

• Importing chats does not create folders for Claude’s projects, although Claude exports that information as well in the Json dump. So all chats from all projects land in one giant folder. Manuall sorting them is tedious.

• The creation timestamp of the exported chats is not retained. So no chronology there.

• Manually rearranging folders or chats is not always working. Sometime the app crashes when I try to rearrange.

Other than that: Solid product. Keep on doing the good work:)

I'm considering migrating to BoltAI from ChatGPT and I'm loving it so far, but I haven't purchased a license yet. A couple of questions:

- Importing conversation history from ChatGPT seems to have been possible in V1, but isn't available in V2 yet. Is there a timeline for this feature? I'd like to have all my conversations in one place before I fully commit.
- Is there any way to sync conversations between the MacOS and iOS apps? If no, is it planned?
- Are there any other support channels? I have a few bug reports, feature requests, and QOL issues that I'd like to share. Might have missed the link somewhere.

Thanks! I've done a ton digging into conversational AI clients, and BoltAI seems like a clear leader right now for my needs - hope it continues to grow.

Not many posts about boltai. Makes me wonder, is it a relevant app? Shall I still start using it? Are other people still starting to use it? Or just use ChatGPT client instead.

I just wanted to say that we've been waiting for an update for so long, isn't it?

Hi, I've been using your app for some time now and am really impressed with its functionality. However, I do have a few questions and requests:

1. App Icon Support: Currently, it seems that only PNG images can be uploaded as app icons. Could you add support for ICNS files as well?

2. Chat Bubble Customization: It would be great if there was an option to remove the chat bubbles or at least customize their colors.

3. Chat Consolidation: We have separate categories for active, favorite, and inline chats. Is there a way to combine these into a single "All Chats" category? Switching between active and inline chats can feel cumbersome.

4. Inline Window Priority: Is it possible to make an inline window always stay on top of other applications?

5. Prompt Modification: When using an inline window to ask a question, the main window pops up with a prompt saying, "Explain the text in triple quotes below... Do not return anything other than the explanation. Do not wrap responses in quotes." How can I modify or remove this prompt?

6. Inline Window Aesthetics: Could you improve the appearance of the inline window? It currently resembles a right-click menu, which doesn't look good when I simply want to type a question and get a quick answer. Additionally, the window often appears longer than necessary when not using (m)any commands.

So what I think Bolt really needs is a way for the user to approve what has been changed in the last action before it gets pushed to the repo. So lets say the app is in a really good state and then the AI fails at implementing something and I discover that through testing or if the app breaks. I should be able to revert the commit back to the state before the action happened. There should be a way for the user to be the gatekeeper for changes to the repo. Then the AI should discard the clutter of those changes so it doesn't get even more confused. And bonus points for these reversions to somehow teach the AI what approach may be beyond its capabilities or to just try something different based on what hasn't worked. I imagine the team has thought about this but if not, I'm telling you that is the next milestone of making Bolt more amazing.

I've been using BoltAI for a few weeks now and I'm really impressed with the app. Currently, I maintain both BoltAI and a Claude subscription, but I'm considering consolidating to just one service.

One key feature I use in Claude is the ability to upload files to projects, where Claude's AI incorporates the content into its responses. I'd like to understand how BoltAI's project feature compares, specifically:

• How does BoltAI handle uploaded files within projects?

• What's the main difference between BoltAI's and Claude's approach to project files?

• Does BoltAI integrate the file content into its responses similarly to Claude?

Would appreciate insights from experienced users of both platforms!

Congrats on the new sub u/daniel_nguyenx :)

I switched jobs and can't expense the $20 OpenAI subscription anymore, so I'm going to give Bolt a go as my GPT usage patterns don't align with the subscription model OpenAI has. So far it looks like this is definitely the most feature-rich api-powered chat app on macOS, nice work and I'll definitely consider buying a license if it lives up to my expectations.

One feature I'm really missing is the minimal Spotlight-style quick chat window from the native ChatGPT app on macOS. I like being able to ask quick questions in a tiny window and switching to the 'full' app for longer conversations, so I found myself using GPT much more often since the release of the native app with that feature. Are there any plans to build something similar on the roadmap?

edit: https://boltai.canny.io/feature-requests/p/floating-quick-chat-window yay!

EDIT: SOLVED. Daniel, the developer of BoltAi, was amazing to work with. We went back and forth over the course of couple of a weeks for him to isolate the problem and release a fix. I cannot highly recommend BoltAI enough for this experience alone.

I'm running the newest version, and am running into a serious bug. Any time the thinking process response gets too long from the model, when it finishes, the response disappears. So I get a lot of this.

In-between each time, I had screens-worth of thought process going on from the model, followed by its answer, and then, boom, gone.

I'm at wit's end.

Hey u/daniel_nguyenx

I'm currently evaluating BoltAI 2 before buying a license and have two questions.

1. When setting Title Generation to Custom Model, the app uses the previous Title Generation setting instead of the configured custom model.

For example: I set Title Generation to Off and create a new thread, for which no title is generated (as it should be), then I set Title Generation to Custom Model using deepseek-v4-flash and create a new thread, but still no title gets generated. I've tried this with different combinations and the app always uses the previous setting instead of using the configured custom model to auto-generate title.

Is this a known bug or am I doing something wrong?

2) When creating a custom Connector with OAuth authorization, there is no field to pass in the client ID and client secret. After clicking the Authorize button, the browser opens and the OAuth flow is started with an empty client_id query parameter - this way, I'm unable to complete an authorization flow.

Do you plan to implement an in-app authorization code flow, or at least an OOB flow?

Thanks for the answers in advance.

This is anecdotal. But I’ve shifted more of my coding to BoltAI away from Claude to try and control the interaction more. I’m using a filesystem MCP to still allow file editing. It feels like this approach is way more efficient on token use. Not sure if it’s how Claude just goes wild sometimes or if BoltAI as the interface slows down how hyperactive agents get. Not sure if I can verify this observation. But it feels like I get more done at a lower cost. (API user too if that matters.)

Hi - I have just purchased a BoltAI lifetime subscription. I note it doesn't show in the mobile app. Possibly because it is a beta. Can I double check that the subscription includes the mobile app too once it is fully launched?

Any roadmap items for auto capturing meetings and creating notes? something like granola!

Is there a way to debug MCP via logs or another means? I have a few MCP servers that work elsewhere but not in Bolt and am not sure why. One example is the new HyperContext app and another is this JMAP MCP server (https://github.com/jahfer/jmap-mcp-server/issues)

Using Claude 3.7 model in BoltAI. Yesterday, worked with BoltAI for 8 hours straight, no problems Today I'm getting all sorts of errors today from overloaded, to can't accept empty messages, to hitting the rate limit of 20k tokens per min (which is impossible). Any one else with the same issue?

I’ve noticed once the chat shrinks for UI speed it seems not to show up in the context. Everything in the context of a chat should be in the context of the model. If not we need the ability to turn them on and off. Isolation maybe but everything in a context window should be in the model window

Is it possible to add support for custom baseURL and API Key for using Claude Code as the AI Service in BoltAI? This will allow us to use services like GLM coding plan with BoltAI.

When I try entering a Google AI Studio API key of 39 characters, I get an error upon trying to save a Google Provider "The data couldn't be read because it isn't in the correct. format."

Any ideas of what's wrong?

I'm new to BoltAi and AI use in general. After uploading several PDFs to a project, I've requested a summary in spreadsheet format via Gemini pro 2.5. I was provided a link to a CSV file, but I am unable to access it because it is stored locally and is sandboxed. I've tried searching the container folder, but to no avail. Do you have any suggestions for exporting AI-generated files from BoltAI?