Home Assistant Voice Pe – 26.3.0

🚨 Home Assistant Voice PE 26.3.0 is live! 🚨

Big updates in this release—let’s break it down:

🎧 Media Playback Stability

No more audio/video hiccups! Expect smoother, rock-solid playback across devices—perfect for voice-triggered media or smart speakers.

🌐 Multiple Sendspin Servers

Now supports multiple Sendspin backends simultaneously. More redundancy, better failover, and improved scalability for larger setups.

⏱️ TTS Timeout Fix

Say goodbye to cut-off voice responses! Text-to-speech now waits properly—your AI replies play fully before moving on.

🌟 New Contributor Alert!

Shoutout to @akloeckner for their first PR (#558)—welcome to the crew! 🙌

✨ Bonus: The project is now officially sponsored by the Open Home Foundation—a huge vote of confidence in open, private-by-design voice control!

📦 Full changelog: [25.12.4 → 26.3.0](#)

Let’s make our homes smarter—privately and offline-capable. 🏠🗣️

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Ollama – v0.18.2: launch: fix openclaw not picking up newly selected model (#14943)

🚨 Ollama v0.18.2 is live! 🚨

This patch fixes a sneaky bug in OpenCLaW (Ollama’s model-launching engine) where switching models mid-session would not actually switch the active model — yikes! 😅

🔧 What’s fixed?

• Previously: Changing the primary model in GUI/CLI wouldn’t update active sessions — you’d keep running the old model, even if it looked like you’d switched.
• Now: Sessions properly refresh when the model changes — no more stale model confusion! ✅

🎯 Why it matters:

• Perfect for devs testing multiple models in one session (e.g., comparing Llama 3 vs. DeepSeek).
• Critical for demos or workflows where model switching is part of the flow — reliability restored!

🔗 PR #14943

📦 Verified by BruceMacD on Mar 18, 20:20 UTC

Ready to upgrade? `ollama update` && happy model-hopping! 🧠✨

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Ollama – v0.18.2-rc1: launch: fix openclaw not picking up newly selected model (#14943)

🚨 Ollama v0.18.2-rc1 is live! 🚨

Quick, focused fix in this release candidate — perfect for keeping your local LLM workflows smooth and reliable.

🔍 What’s New?

✅ Fixed `openclaw` model-switching bug — previously, if you changed the active model mid-session without restarting, `openclaw` would keep using the old (stale) model. Now it correctly picks up the new selection instantly!

💡 Why You’ll Care:

• 🔄 Makes dynamic model switching (e.g., testing Llama 3 vs. DeepSeek-R1) way more reliable in dev/test loops
• 🧪 Critical for tooling and integrations that rely on runtime model changes
• ⚡ Clean, minimal change — no side effects or breaking changes

👉 Grab the RC and give it a spin before final `v0.18.2` drops!

Let the team know if you spot anything weird 🐞➡️✅

#Ollama #LLM #LocalAI #DevTools

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Ollama – v0.18.2-rc0

🚀 Ollama v0.18.2-rc0 is out — and it’s bringing live web search!

This release candidate (not quite stable yet, but very promising) adds support for web search integration via the `openclaw` tool — likely enabling models to pull in real-time info from the web during inference. 🌐🔍

🔹 New Tool Registered: `openclaw` is now available as a callable tool — think of it like giving your local LLM a live browser.

🔹 Tool-Calling Boost: Aligns with the growing trend of models (like Llama 3.1) supporting function/tool calling — making Ollama even more dynamic and up-to-date.

🔹 Use Cases? Think: real-time Q&A, research assistants, news-aware chatbots — all running locally (or on your own server).

⚠️ Note: This is an `rc0`, so things may shift before the final `v0.18.2` lands — but it’s a huge step toward truly intelligent, always-current local AI.

Curious about how `openclaw` works? Or want to test it out? Let’s dive in! 🧪💡

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Ollama – v0.18.1

🚨 Ollama v0.18.1 is live — and it’s bringing seriously useful upgrades! 🚨

🔥 Web Search is BACK & fixed — no more broken links or silent failures.

🌐 New Web Fetch feature — Ollama can now pull in live web content (think docs, articles, news) to enrich its responses.

✅ Both features are ON by default — zero config needed! Just `ollama run` and go.

💻 Works locally too — even when running on your machine (as long as you’ve got internet access).

💡 Why you’ll love this:

• Real-time context for RAG pipelines
• Fact-checking on the fly
• Fresh info without retraining or API keys

Perfect for devs building local, context-aware apps — or just curious tinkerers who want smarter, up-to-date answers. 🛠️✨

Check it out: ollama.com

Need a quick demo or config tweaks? Drop a 🧠 below!

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Ollama – v0.18.1-rc1

🚨 Ollama v0.18.1-rc1 is here — and it’s bringing web smarts to your local LLMs! 🌐✨

🔥 What’s new?

✅ Web search is back & fixed! No more silent failures — Ollama can now reliably pull live results.

🌐 New `web fetch` tool — ask Ollama to retrieve up-to-the-minute web content and use it directly in responses.

⚡ Both features are ON by default — just update, and you’re ready to go (no config needed!).

💡 Why care?

This means your local models can now answer questions with real-time context — think news, docs, or live data — all without hitting external APIs. Perfect for building smarter, self-contained AI apps 🧠💻

📦 Release type: Release Candidate (`v0.18.1-rc1`) — ideal for testing and feedback before the stable drop!

Ready to test it out? 🛠️ Let us know how your web-aware Ollama experiments go! 🚀

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Ollama – v0.18.1-rc0: cmd/launch: skip –install-daemon when systemd is unavailable (#14883)

🚀 Ollama v0.18.1-rc0 is here — and it’s fixing a pesky containerization hiccup!

🔥 What’s new?

• 🛠️ `ollama launch openclaw –install-daemon` no longer fails in environments without systemd (like Docker, WSL, Alpine, or CI runners).
• ✅ Smart detection: Ollama now checks if systemd is actually available before trying to install the daemon.
• 🧪 Falls back gracefully to foreground mode when systemd isn’t present — meaning your local LLMs keep running, no matter the setup!

📦 Why it matters:

Perfect for devs testing in containers or minimal Linux setups — less friction, more inference! 🐳💻

👉 Try the RC and let us know how it plays in your envs!

#Ollama #LLM #AIEnthusiasts

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Ollama – v0.18.0

🚨 Ollama v0.18.0 is live! 🚨

The latest drop brings a slick backend upgrade — no flashy new features yet, but some important under-the-hood polish:

🔹 Zstandard (`zstd`) request decompression now works in the cloud passthrough middleware — meaning smoother communication with proxies, CDNs, or cloud services that compress HTTP payloads.

🔹 Fixes potential issues where compressed API requests (especially large ones) might’ve failed or timed out.

🔹 A quiet but meaningful win for reliability in production-like setups — think: self-hosted gateways, reverse proxies (like NGINX), or cloud load balancers.

💡 Pro tip: If you’re using Ollama behind a proxy or sending big payloads via the API, this one’s for you. Run `ollama pull` to upgrade and test it out!

🔗 Release on GitHub — fingers crossed the notes load this time 😉

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Ollama – v0.18.0-rc2

🚨 Ollama v0.18.0-rc2 is out — and it’s packing some sneaky performance upgrades! 🚨

🔥 What’s new?

• ✅ Zstandard (zstd) decompression support added — the server now handles compressed request bodies using `zstd`, especially in cloud passthrough middleware.

→ Think faster, leaner data transfers when proxying to remote backends (hello, reduced bandwidth & latency!).

• 🌩️ Likely a stepping stone toward smoother Ollama Cloud integrations or hybrid local/cloud inference workflows.

• 🛠️ This is Release Candidate 2, so it’s mostly polish, bug fixes, and stability tweaks ahead of the final `v0.18.0` drop.

💡 Pro tip: Try it out (if you’re feeling adventurous!) with:

“`bash

ollama pull ollama:rc

“`

…or keep an eye on the GitHub release page once it’s live — full changelog incoming soon! 🕵️‍♂️

Who’s testing first? 😎

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Ollama – v0.18.0-rc1

🚨 Ollama v0.18.0-rc1 is here — and it’s packing some serious upgrades! 🚨

🔥 Anthropic Model Fixes

• Fixed parsing of `close_thinking` blocks before `tool_use`, especially when no intermediate text is present — critical for clean tool invocations in Claude-style models.

🛠️ Tool Use & Function Calling

• Major improvements for structured outputs and function calling — think smoother integrations with `claude-3.5-sonnet` and similar models.

⚡ Performance & Stability Boosts

• Optimized context handling & reduced memory footprint.
• Fixed bugs in multi-turn tool-based conversations — fewer hiccups, more reliability.

💻 Platform Love

• Updated CUDA & Metal backends for faster inference.
• Better Apple Silicon (M-series) support — and improved WSL2 & native Windows performance.

CLI/API Tweaks 🛠️

• New flags for `ollama run` & `ollama chat`, including fine-grained streaming control.
• Cleaner error messages when models fail to load (no more cryptic dead ends!).

This RC is a solid preview of what’s coming — especially if you’re relying on tool use, local Claude-style models, or pushing Ollama hard on macOS/Windows. 🧪 Try it out and let us know what you think!

🔗 Download v0.18.0-rc1

#Ollama #LLMs #AIEnthusiasts 🤖

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