September 2025 BT Speak Release Notes
Important: New Instructions for Updating Your BT Speak
This update must be installed in two parts, with a short pause between them. Please follow the instructions below for details. If you encounter any difficulties, please reach out to our support team by calling (772) 214-1616 and select option 2.
Ensure that your BT Speak is connected to a Wi-Fi network and that your battery level is at 40% or higher.
Type O-Chord for the Options menu.
Type M for the BT Speak Management menu.
Type U to Check for Software Updates.
Your BT Speak should tell you that a new update is available and will ask if you’d like to install it. Press the letter Y to begin the installation.
BT Speak will download and install the first update package (1 of 2)
After BT Speak restarts, return to the BT Speak Management menu (press O-Chord, then M) and select Register this BT Speak.
Once you have registered your device, wait at least one hour before proceeding to the next step. This ensures your device is ready to download the next update. You may use your BT Speak normally during this period.
Anytime after the 1 hour period, return to the BT Speak Management Menu and press U again to install the second and final update package (2 of 2).
When BT Speak restarts, the update is complete and you can begin enjoying the new features.
A Friendlier Experience When Updating
You will now hear progress messages when you download and install the new updates for your BT Speak. For example, the download progress will be spoken ( “50% downloaded”). After downloading, you should hear “verifying update”, followed by “installing update.” Once the update has been installed, you will hear that the update has been installed successfully and that the BT Speak will now reboot.
Podcasts App Updates
Based on user feedback, we have added new features that improve the Podcasts App experience:
Podcasts can now be streamed. To stream a podcast:
Select a podcast feed from the main menu to enter the feed’s episode list.
From the episode list, select any episode that has not been downloaded. Note that downloaded episodes are labeled (downloaded).
Select Stream from the list of choices. The podcast will begin playing in the background and you will be in the Now Playing menu where you can control its playback. Seeking backward and forward in the stream is limited, as there is no complete podcast file available.
Podcast storage can now be relocated to USB drive or SD Card
Progress information when downloading podcast episodes has been improved
The app is much more reliable when subscribing and downloading certain podcasts
When a Podcast feed is deleted, the feed name is now correctly removed from the Podcasts main menu
Fixed a bug when deleting podcasts using the “Delete Old Episodes” option
Added new “Delete Played Podcasts” menu item. This deletes all episodes that have been played or partially played
Wording and terminology are now more friendly and consistent throughout the interface
New BT Speak Users’ Manual
The fourth edition of the English BT Speak Users’ Manual has been released. You can access it by going to Options, Help Topics, Guides and Tutorials, the Users’ Manual (English). This manual contains many new additions and many of the existing chapters have been revised. The chapter on using the editor has undergone extensive revisions.
AI Chat App Enhancements
AI Chat now defaults to the latest GPT-5 model (gpt-5-chat-latest), replacing the previous default of GPT-4o. This model is significantly faster and more accurate. It also features greater reasoning ability. Its data is current to October 2024.
Note: you can check your current model using the ModelStatus command. If it doesn’t report gpt-5-chat-latest, use the FlipModel command once or twice to switch to the new model.
We’ve expanded the conversation memory, so AI Chat can see more of your previous messages in a single thread.
When you ask a single question in the Ask AI app, it won’t be saved to AI Chat’s history or session files. This means you can ask quick questions from within the editor without losing your most recent AI Chat conversation session.
The AI Chat help file now contains links to open its history and session files in the file viewer.
Accessing Chords in Blazie Mode Using a QWERTY Keyboard
When using a peripheral QWERTY keyboard with BT Speak, you can now use function keys in place of common chords which do not have QWERTY equivalents in Blazie Mode. These are particularly useful when working in the editor. More work is planned to improve QWERTY support. The new function key commands are:
Context-sensitive Help: F1
Options Menu: F2
Editor Menu: F3
Delete Menu: F4
Paste Menu: F5
Navigation Menu: F6
Run a Shell: F10
Miscellaneous Improvements
Wikipedia has been upgraded to keep it up to date with the latest Wikipedia service. This change should also resolve disruptions in service and sometimes application crashes that users have recently experienced.
In BT Learn, we fixed an issue where correct answers were sometimes marked wrong if you added extra spaces at the end of your response.
In the Phonebook app, we resolved a bug that deleted a contact’s address fields when the contact’s name was edited.
In the YouTube Stream app, the channel list now shows all of your subscriptions (not just the top 50) and organizes them alphabetically for quicker access.
The file translator now keeps line breaks in-tact when translating to complex formats like .docx (MS Word) and others.
You can now run OCR directly on .bmp, .jpg, and .png image files from the file browser, making it easier to transform pictures into readable text.
The Third Edition of the BT Speak Users’ Manual is now available in Spanish, French and German. You can access these versions by going to Options, Help Topics, Guides and Tutorials, the Users’ Manual.
Concluding Remarks
As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions for future updates. Feel free to reach out to us by emailing info@blazie.net or by calling us at (772) 214-1616 The Blazie Technologies Team