OpenClaw 2026.4.25: Major TTS Overhaul, Plugin Registry Rewrite, and OpenTelemetry Across the Board

OpenClaw 2026.4.25 landed today as a pre-release, and it’s one of the most substantial updates in recent memory — touching TTS, plugin architecture, observability, browser automation, and the Control UI all at once.

TTS gets a full overhaul. The headline feature is /tts latest, a new read-aloud command with duplicate suppression for WhatsApp and session-scoped auto-TTS controls (/tts chat on|off|default). Per-agent voice overrides are now respected, and six new TTS providers join the bundled lineup: Azure Speech, Xiaomi, Local CLI, Inworld, Volcengine, and ElevenLabs v3. DeepSeek thinking/replay behavior is also fixed for follow-up tool-call turns.

Plugin registry moves to cold storage. Plugin startup and install paths now use a cold persisted registry, eliminating broad manifest scans at startup. This makes plugin update, repair, provider discovery, and install metadata far more deterministic — a significant quality-of-life win for users running many plugins.

OpenTelemetry everywhere. Observability coverage expands across model calls, token usage, tool loops, harness runs, exec processes, outbound delivery, context assembly, and memory pressure — all with bounded low-cardinality attributes. Contributors include vincentkoc, jlapenna, Lidang-Jiang, and oc-factus.

Browser automation gets safer and smarter. Safe tab URLs in agent responses, iframe-aware role snapshots, CDP-native fallback, cursor-clickable detection, headless one-shot launch, and deeper browser doctor probes for slow hosts improve both safety and reliability.

Control UI gains PWA support. The Control UI now supports PWA install and Web Push notifications for Gateway chat. Setup flows add Crestodian first-run repair, TUI setup, and context mode selection. The startup greeting is shorter too.

Install hardening is broad. Fixes cover Windows, macOS, Linux, Docker, bundled plugin runtime deps, Node service restarts, LaunchAgent token rotation, and mixed-version gateway verification.

See the full changelog on GitHub.