The app gets a name: VerbaIDE

Until this week our app had only a working name, the kind you put on a folder and hope to replace. On August 7 we bought the domain verbaide.com, and on August 9 we renamed the whole app to match: the menu, the About tab, the permission prompts, the app bundle and the files we ship.

Why “Verba” and “IDE”

“Verba” reads as “verbal” or “words” to almost anyone, so an international user sees an ordinary tech name. “IDE” is borrowed from developer tools. The people we build for already live in tools of that kind: developers, founders, people in support and operations who type all day. We want the app to feel like a tool for text, not a toy.

Our tagline is “The IDE for human language.” You write code in an IDE. You write letters, tickets and messages in human language, and you can do it faster by speaking.

“IDE” has a second reading, too: Intelligent Dictation & Expression. We keep that phrase for places where the abbreviation has to be spelled out.

A second meaning for Ukrainian readers

In Ukrainian, “верба” is a willow, and the willow is a national symbol. We did not pick the name for that reason alone, but once we noticed it, we kept it on purpose. A reader abroad sees a neat technical name. A Ukrainian reader sees one more layer in it. The app is built by people from Ukraine, and many of the people who will use it speak Russian or Ukrainian while working in English.

Why the logo is a branch

We looked at a literal willow tree first and dropped it. A tree reads as an eco brand or a cosmetics brand, and it would not suit a tool for writing. We agreed on an abstract willow branch instead: a thin stem with a few leaves. The first sketches played with leaves shaped like speech bubbles, and with a letter V built from two thin branches. The shape has to survive being very small, because it also sits in the menu bar, where it is drawn as an outline when idle and filled while a session is running.

What the rename touched

A rename is more than a new title. macOS ties the permissions you grant (microphone, speech recognition, recording other apps’ audio) to the identity of the app, so changing the identity has a cost. We wanted to pay it once and early, before many people had installed the app. That is why the change was done in one pass instead of piece by piece.

The app does the same things as before: it types what you say into any text field, shows live subtitles with translation, and translates text under the cursor, with recognition and translation running on your Mac. You can read how that works in what leaves your Mac.