Voice Overlay Lifecycle When Wake-Word and Push-to-Talk Overlap on macOS

Voice Overlay Lifecycle (macOS)

Audience: macOS app contributors. Goal: keep the voice overlay predictable when wake-word and push-to-talk overlap.

Behavior

• If the overlay is already visible from a wake-word activation and the user presses the hotkey, the hotkey session takes over the existing text rather than clearing it. The overlay remains visible while the hotkey is held. On release: send if there is trimmed text, otherwise dismiss.
• Wake-word alone still auto-sends on silence; push-to-talk sends immediately on release.

Implementation

• VoiceSessionCoordinator (apps/macos/Sources/OpenClaw/VoiceSessionCoordinator.swift) is the sole owner of the active voice session. It is a @MainActor @Observable singleton, not an actor. API: startSession, updatePartial, finalize, sendNow, dismiss, updateLevel, snapshot. Each session carries a UUID token; calls with a stale or mismatched token are dropped.
• VoiceWakeOverlayController (VoiceWakeOverlayController+Session.swift) renders the overlay and forwards user actions (requestSend, dismiss) back through the coordinator using the session token. It never owns the session state itself.
• Push-to-talk (VoicePushToTalk.begin()) adopts any visible overlay text as adoptedPrefix (via VoiceSessionCoordinator.shared.snapshot()) so pressing the hotkey while the wake overlay is up preserves the text and adds new speech. On release, it waits up to 1.5s for a final transcript before falling back to the current text.
• On dismiss, the overlay calls VoiceSessionCoordinator.overlayDidDismiss, which triggers VoiceWakeRuntime.refresh(state:) so manual X-dismiss, empty-text dismiss, and post-send dismiss all resume wake-word listening.
• Unified send path: if trimmed text is empty, dismiss; otherwise sendNow plays the send chime once, forwards via VoiceWakeForwarder, then dismisses.

Logging

Voice subsystem is ai.openclaw; each component logs under its own category:

Debugging checklist

• Stream logs while reproducing a sticky overlay:

sudo log stream --predicate 'subsystem == "ai.openclaw" AND category CONTAINS "voicewake"' --level info --style compact

- Verify only one active session token; stale callbacks are dropped by the coordinator.
- Confirm push-to-talk release always calls `end()` with the active token; if text is empty, expect a dismiss without chime or send.

## Related

- [macOS app](/ai-agents/integrations/open-claw/docs/platforms/macos)
- [Voice wake (macOS)](/ai-agents/integrations/open-claw/docs/platforms/mac/voicewake)
- [Talk mode](/ai-agents/integrations/open-claw/docs/nodes/talk)