OpenClaw v2026.4.25: Voice replies added six TTS providers in one go; the plugin no longer does a full scan on startup

Aimpact message, April 27 (UTC+8). According to Beating monitoring by ???, the open-source personal AI assistant OpenClaw released v2026.4.25, with two biggest changes: voice replies upgraded from basic functionality to a full TTS platform, and the plugin system migrated from whole-disk scanning to a cold persistent registry.

On voice replies, new commands: /tts latest can read out the most recent reply; /tts chat on|off|default can toggle automatic voice within the current session. New TTS persona (role-based voice) supports overriding global voice settings separately by agent and by account. Providers were expanded by six at once: Azure Speech, Xiaomi MiMo, local CLI TTS, Inworld, Volcano Engine Seed Speech, and ElevenLabs v3. Voice message output on channels like WhatsApp and Feishu has also been adapted accordingly.

For the plugin system, this update includes an architecture-level adjustment. Previously, every startup required scanning all plugin manifest files to discover providers and capabilities; now installation metadata, capability queries, and provider discovery all go through a cold persistent registry (a pre-indexed read-only snapshot). The \openclaw plugins list\ command reads the snapshot by default and no longer triggers runtime module loading; \openclaw doctor --fix\ can refresh the index on demand. The direct effect is that CLI commands such as models list --all --provider run significantly faster in environments with many plugins.

Other updates: OpenTelemetry observability extended to model calls, token usage, tool loops, exec processes, context assembly, and memory pressure; new Prometheus scrape routes and GenAI semantic-spec metrics. Browser automation added iframe-aware role snapshotting, CDP readiness timeout tuning, and browser doctor --deep for deep diagnostics. Control UI added PWA installation support and Web Push notifications. On first launch, added a fully interactive TUI onboarding guide (Crestodian) and a context mode selector. More than 100 bug fixes, covering Windows/macOS/Linux/Docker installation, WhatsApp-linked device keep-alive, session reset, log rotation, and device pairing security, etc. (Source: BlockBeats)