What’s New in Leasey 11.5: The September Update, Part 1.

Release date: 1 September 2026.

Before we talk about the new features, we want to say a very sincere thank you.

The response to Leasey 11.5 has been quite extraordinary. We knew that the Summer update contained a large amount of work, but we could not have predicted the level of enthusiasm and practical feedback we have received since it became available. LeaseySocial, LeaseyWord and Leasey Media Centre have been especially popular. LeaseySocial in particular has been far more widely used, discussed and enjoyed than we ever imagined when we began designing it.

That feedback has not gone into a filing cabinet. Every improvement in the September update has been produced because of what people have told us. Sometimes the feedback has been a feature request. Sometimes it has been a comment about how someone works. Sometimes it has been a small irritation which only becomes obvious when a feature is used every day. Those comments matter because Leasey is not a product designed in isolation. It is shaped by the people who use it.

These posts will not list absolutely everything that is new. The documentation will do that. Instead, they focus on the main highlights, with enough detail to give you a clear idea of what has changed and why those changes matter.

Because there is a lot to say, we are presenting the September update in two parts. This first post concentrates mainly on the new Leasey Texts application and the improvements to Leasey Media Centre.

Leasey Texts Has Been Rewritten.

Leasey Texts is not new in name. Long-standing Leasey users will know that for many years it has been possible to store pieces of text and reproduce them when needed.

But the September update includes a complete rewrite of this feature.

The new application is divided into two main parts:

Although these two parts are closely related, they serve different purposes.

Leasey Texts is for information you know you will want to use again. It might be your postal address, an email signature, a standard reply, a reference number, a paragraph used in a form, or a short phrase you type many times a day.

Clipboard History is for information you have copied recently and might need again shortly. It might be a phone number, a tracking code, a file path, a paragraph from a web page, a link, a line from an email, or several separate items you want to gather together.

Both features are designed around the same Leasey principle: make the task straightforward, make it work well with JAWS, and make sure the user knows what has happened.

Why Rewrite Leasey Texts?

Leasey has had text reproduction features for a very long time. Many users rely on them. However, the older system was showing its age.

In particular, while users could create abbreviations, the process of using them was not as smooth as it could be. The new Leasey Texts application makes abbreviations feel much more natural.

For example, suppose you create a Leasey Text containing your email signature and give it the abbreviation:

sig

You can then type that abbreviation from almost anywhere in Windows, press Space, and Leasey replaces the abbreviation with the full stored text.

That sounds simple, and it should be simple. But simplicity here is the result of a lot of careful design.

Leasey Texts can tell you what has been inserted. It can optionally speak the name of the Leasey Text, or the full expanded text. It can play a sound when an abbreviation expands. It can add a trailing space so you can continue typing immediately. It can expand abbreviations before punctuation, so if you type an abbreviation followed by a comma or full-stop or period, the full text can be inserted and the punctuation placed correctly afterwards.

For a JAWS user, that spoken or Braille confirmation is important. If you type an abbreviation in the middle of an email, web form, document, chat message or support system, you need to know with confidence that the expected text has been inserted. Leasey Texts is designed to give you that confidence.

A More Flexible Abbreviation System.

Each Leasey Text can have its own abbreviation settings.

You can decide whether the abbreviation is enabled.

You can decide whether it is case sensitive.

You can decide whether Leasey should speak anything after the expansion.

You can decide whether it should speak the name of the Leasey Text or the full expanded text.

You can decide whether a sound should be played.

You can decide whether a trailing space should be added.

This matters because not all stored text is used in the same way.

If the abbreviation inserts a short phrase, you might want Leasey to speak the full text. If it inserts several paragraphs, hearing the whole thing every time would soon become tedious, so you may prefer to hear only the name. If the text is inserted frequently in a busy working environment, a short sound and a spoken confirmation may be enough. If it is used in punctuation-heavy writing, expansion before punctuation can make the process feel much more fluent.

The idea is not just to store text. The idea is to make stored text fit naturally into how you work. We even have plenty of sounds for you to choose from!

Creating and Organising Text.

There are several ways of working with Leasey Texts.

The simple list is still available for quickly inserting a stored item.

If text is already on the Windows Clipboard, you can store it quickly as a Leasey Text.

The main Leasey Texts interface is available when you want more control.

From the main interface, you can create a new Leasey Text, edit an existing one, add or change an abbreviation, assign a category, choose speech and sound behaviour, search the list, and organise items more carefully.

Categories are optional. Some people will want one straight list. Others will want categories such as Work, Personal, Email, Forms, Addresses, Technical Support or Training. Both approaches are valid. Leasey Texts allows the list to grow without becoming unmanageable.

There is also an import process for people who used the previous Leasey Texts system. When the new application starts for the first time, it attempts to import existing texts and abbreviations where they are available. You can also run the import manually from Options.

Clipboard History.

Clipboard History is the second part of the new Leasey Texts application.

When Leasey Texts is running, text copied to the Windows Clipboard can be stored in a history list. You can then review recent clipboard entries and use them again.

We should be very clear about what this feature is intended to be.

There are other clipboard management applications available, some free and some commercial. Some of them do many highly sophisticated things. They may store many different data types, provide complex filtering, synchronise in specialist ways, or offer features for particular professional workflows.

Leasey Clipboard History is not trying to compete with those applications feature for feature.

That is not because the technical work would be impossible. It is because our aim is different.

The aim is to provide a clipboard history feature which is easy to understand, easy to operate with JAWS, and integrated into an application many Leasey users are already permitted to run. A number of organisations have approved Leasey for installation in the workplace. Users have told us that they wanted clipboard history as part of Leasey precisely because installing another clipboard manager may not be possible in their environment.

So the design question becomes: what can we provide that is useful every day without creating another complicated application people have to learn?

Reviewing and Pasting Recent Clipboard Entries.

Clipboard History gives you several practical ways to retrieve recent copied text.

You can open the full Clipboard History tab.

You can open a simple paste list.

You can paste one of the ten most recent clipboard entries directly using shortcut keys.

This is useful in many everyday situations.

Suppose you copy a phone number from one message, a name from another, and a reference number from a web page. Without clipboard history, copying the third item means the first two have gone unless you pasted them somewhere first. With Clipboard History, those copied entries can remain available.

You can bring up the list, choose the item you want, and paste it into the application where you are working.

There are also shortcuts for the ten most recent entries. By default, Alt+Shift+1 pastes the most recent entry, Alt+Shift+2 pastes the second most recent entry, and so on through to Alt+Shift+0 for the tenth. If you know the order in which you copied items, this can be extremely fast.

Monitoring for Clipboard Entries can be stopped at any time, perhaps for security reasons or in the event you wish to use an alternative Clipboard Manager.

Clipboard Entry Properties.

You can open the Properties of an entry by pressing Enter on it. That allows you to review the text a character or a word at a time.

However, it is also possible to edit the text if necessary or rename the entry title.

If the Clipboard Entry contains links or paths to folders, those too can be launched directly from Properties.

Marking Clipboard Entries.

Clipboard History also allows entries to be marked.

You can mark more than one clipboard entry and then copy or paste them together. You can choose how marked items are separated when they are combined. Options include a space, comma, full-stop or period, vertical bar, line break or paragraph break.

This is a small feature with a lot of possible uses.

You might copy several lines from a web page and combine them into a note.

You might gather a name, address and telephone number from different places.

You might collect several short answers from a document.

You might copy a list of items and paste them one at a time into separate fields.

The point is that Clipboard History is not only a safety net for the last thing copied. It can become a simple collecting tool.

Usefully, you can also mark clipboard entries so they can be pasted in a precise order.

Mark the clipboard entries in the order you want to paste them.

Move into the chosen edit area, such as a number of form fields.

Each time you press Control+V, a Clipboard Entry is pasted in the order in which they were copied and JAWS confirms this.

Converting Clipboard Entries.

A Clipboard History item can also be converted into a Leasey Text.

That means if you copy something and realise you will need it again in future, you can turn it into a permanent stored text without starting from scratch.

It can also be converted into a Leasey Clip, making the feature part of the wider Leasey ecosystem rather than an isolated clipboard list.

Both these utilities ensure that the Clipboard History feature is fully integrated into other features the product already has available.

Leasey Media Centre: Podcasts Take a Big Step Forward.

Leasey Media Centre was one of the most ambitious parts of the Summer release. It brought together radio, podcasts, local audio, playlists, recording, sound control and a dedicated media player designed with JAWS users in mind.

For the September update, podcasts have received the most attention.

The change may sound simple at first: Leasey can optionally create a temporary playback copy of a podcast episode before playing it. But that one change unlocks several important benefits.

Until now, the default method of playing a podcast episode was streaming. Streaming is immediate and convenient. You choose an episode, press Enter, and Leasey plays it directly from the internet.

Streaming still exists.

However, Leasey can now also download an episode into a temporary listening area and play that copy automatically. This is not the same as saving the episode permanently. It is a temporary playback copy designed to improve the listening experience.

Why Temporary Playback Copies Matter.

A temporary playback copy can make several features more reliable:

This is especially valuable for long podcasts. If you listen to a ten-minute item, you may not care much about chapter marks or saved positions. If you listen to a one-hour interview, a two-hour technology podcast, a lecture, a radio documentary or an audio course, those features become far more important.

With the right options enabled, you can start listening to a podcast, stop after 25 minutes, return later, press Enter on the episode, and Leasey can resume from approximately where you stopped.

The saved position belongs to the episode. You do not need to create a bookmark manually just to return to where you left off.

We strongly recommend trying temporary playback copies unless you have a particular reason to stream directly from the internet every time.

Saving Podcast Episodes Permanently.

Temporary playback copies are for listening. They are not the same as episodes you deliberately save and keep.

The September update also improves the process of saving podcast episodes permanently.

You can save one episode, but you can also save multiple episodes. This is useful if you are going on a journey, preparing for a period without reliable internet, archiving a series, or collecting material for later listening.

Leasey provides progress information while saving. It also gives you a way to cancel before saving if you realise you have chosen the wrong item or too many episodes.

Again, the goal is not merely to provide the function. The goal is to make the process understandable while it is happening.

Filtering the Episode List.

The podcast episode list can now be filtered in several different ways: all episodes, played episodes, unplayed episodes and those which are in progress; in other words, those you have partly heard.

Podcast Chapter Marks Just Got Smarter.

This is one of the most exciting improvements in the September update, and for blind podcast listeners we believe it could be one of the most useful.

Think about listening to a podcast which lasts an hour or more. Perhaps it begins with an introduction, moves on to the news, contains two or three interviews, includes a product demonstration or review, answers listener questions and finally ends with some closing comments. If you want to return to one particular part, how do you find it?

For a sighted listener, the podcast application may offer visual clues. There may be a progress bar, artwork, headings, visible show notes or other information on screen which helps to give some sense of where they are in the programme. For a blind person listening with a screen reader, an hour-long podcast can all too easily feel like one continuous piece of audio. You can move backwards and forwards, certainly, but you may have very little idea where the part you want actually begins.

Chapter marks change that completely.

When a podcast contains chapters, Leasey can present the programme almost as though it were a document containing headings. Instead of thinking, "The interview I want was somewhere around 35 minutes into this programme", you can move through meaningful sections such as Introduction, News Round-Up, Interview with John Smith, Product Review, Listener Questions and Closing Comments. That is what Leasey offers at the moment. You can explore the structure of the programme and go directly to the section which interests you, either by bringing up a list of chapter marks or navigating through them sequentially.

For a blind listener, that is not simply a convenience. It gives long-form audio something it has traditionally lacked: structure which can be navigated.

We have therefore been astonished to discover just how few podcasts actually contain chapter information. Some excellent programmes lasting an hour, two hours or even longer provide no chapters at all. If the podcast producer has not created them, ordinarily there is nothing a podcast player can do about it.

Until now.

If an episode does not contain its own chapter marks, Leasey can offer to create suggested chapters for you.

Leasey can identify significant changes of subject and suggest appropriate divisions in the programme. It can then turn those divisions into chapter marks which you can use while listening.

Imagine a two-hour technology podcast with no chapters. Rather than repeatedly jumping forward and listening for clues, Leasey may be able to identify sections covering Windows, JAWS, smartphones, artificial intelligence, listener questions and so on. You can then move through those suggested chapters until you find the subject you want.

It is important to understand that these automatically created chapters are suggestions. Leasey is examining the podcast and making its best judgement about where one section ends and another begins. The podcast producer has not supplied those divisions, and Leasey cannot guarantee that every suggested chapter title or starting point will be perfect.

But perfection is not really the point. Without chapter information, you may have a 90-minute recording containing no navigational structure whatsoever. If Leasey can turn that into eight or ten sensibly named sections which allow you to move quickly around the programme, the difference can be enormous.

For many years, blind people have become accustomed to navigating written information by headings, links, lists and other structural elements. We think long-form audio deserves the same kind of attention. With podcast chapter marks, Leasey is attempting to provide exactly that: turning a long stretch of audio into something you can explore, navigate and return to with far greater independence.

Recently Heard Radio Stations.

Radio has also gained several improvements.

Leasey Media Centre now keeps a list of recently heard radio stations. This is different from the existing Most Recent button or keystroke, which plays only the last station heard.

The new recent stations list lets you review stations you have played recently, choose one and play it again. You can also add a station from that list to Favourites if you decide you want to keep it permanently.

This is a very practical addition. Many of us find stations casually. We try something, move on, and later cannot remember exactly what it was called. The recent stations list gives you a way back.

Radio Song History.

Some radio stations send song title and artist information while they are playing. When that information is available, Leasey Media Centre can now keep a song history list.

This means that if you hear a song you like, you do not necessarily need to stop what you are doing to write it down. Later, you can open the song history and review what was played. But this isn't a regular Song History feature. It goes a great deal further than that.

You can copy song details to the clipboard.

You can also ask Leasey to tell you more about the song using the ChatGPT API key stored in Leasey's settings. When information is available, this can include an overview, genre, notable elements, context, chart performance, artist trivia, cultural impact, behind-the-scenes information and concluding notes.

For music lovers, this is one of those features which may quickly become addictive.

Player Information.

Leasey Media Player now includes a reviewable information window for the current item.

This can include the title, podcast name, current playback position, total duration, time remaining, playback speed, whether the item is streaming or local, whether a podcast episode has been saved permanently, bookmark information and whether automatic resume playback is enabled.

The information is displayed in an edit field so it can be reviewed with standard JAWS reading commands.

This is another example of giving the user control. It is one thing to hear a short spoken status message. It is another to have information in a reviewable form so you can read it carefully.

Audio Notes.

Audio Notes allow you to attach notes to positions in local audio files or podcast temporary playback copies.

This can be useful in many situations.

You might be listening to a lecture and want to mark an important explanation.

You might be reviewing a meeting recording and want to note an action point.

You might be studying an audio course and want to remind yourself that a particular section needs revisiting.

You might be listening to a podcast and want to capture a thought before it disappears.

Leasey can also announce when audio notes are available during playback, if you choose to enable that option.

Copying One Section of an Audio File to Another.

Leasey Media Player can now copy a useful section of one local audio file to another. After all, you can easily do this with text, so why not audio?

You mark the beginning of the section, mark the end, preview it, and then save that selection as a new file. The original file is not changed.

This is useful for extracting a clip from a longer recording, saving a demonstration, keeping a short extract from a lecture, or preparing an audio example.

Again, the feature has been designed with a clear workflow:

You can also append further segments of audio if you wish, either to the same file or an alternative one.

What Comes Next?

Leasey Texts and Leasey Media Centre are only part of the September update. In the second post, we will look at new improvements to LeaseySocial, Talk to ChatGPT, LeaseyWord, Leasey Spell Check and Leasey File Manager.

The update is planned for release on 1 September 2026.