My hands don't work.So I built this.
YapToText turns your voice into polished text in any app on your Mac, and it does all of it on your Mac. Press one key, talk, and your words appear where your cursor is. Free, open source, built for accessibility first.
brew install --cask ryleighnewman/yaptotext/yaptotext
WHY IT'S DIFFERENT
100 percent on-device
Speech recognition and cleanup run locally. Your voice and your words never leave your Mac.
No feature gates
Every feature is available the moment you install it. No account, no subscription, no paid tier.
Accessibility first
Works alongside VoiceOver and Voice Control, and looks like it belongs on a Mac rather than like an assistive device.
Open source
Every line of code is public, so the privacy claims can be verified.
DICTATION THAT BEHAVES LIKE DICTATION
Say it the way you would to any dictation system, and it lands the way you meant it.
Spoken punctuation
Say question mark or exclamation point and the mark lands where you said it, with no stray period left behind. Mention a punctuation name mid-sentence and it stays a word.
Intelligent insert
Dictate into the middle of a sentence and the case, spacing, and punctuation adapt to the text around your cursor.
Auto mode
Each dictation is read and formatted by itself: emails get formatted as emails, casual messages stay as spoken, everything else is cleaned up. It listens to the app you are in and to requests like make that formal.
Conservative by design
It fixes what the mic misheard and never rewrites your voice, drops a sentence, or adds words you did not say.
EDIT ANYTHING BY VOICE
Select text in any app, hold your Quick Edit key, and say the change. Rewrite, shorten, fix tone, translate: it lands right where the selection was.
SPEAK HOWEVER YOU WANT
Whisper if you need to. Auto-amplify measures your voice against the room, not a fixed level, and lifts a quiet voice to full clarity. If your Mac's input volume is set low, the app tells you and can raise it. Background noise is removed before transcription.
Push-to-talk or toggle, pause and resume, cancel with Esc, silence auto-stop. One tap of the Right Command key starts everything, or remap it to any shortcut, down to a single bare key. Press 1 to 9 while dictating to pick a mode on the fly.
WHISPER-CLASS ACCURACY, BUILT IN
Ships with Whisper Large v3 Turbo for speech and a bundled cleanup model for polish, both inside the app. No downloads, no setup: fully offline from first launch. Cleanup fixes filler words, false starts, and punctuation on every Mac. Bring your own: any Whisper speech model or GGUF cleanup model drops into the model library.
Modes
Auto, Raw Transcription, Clean Up, Note, Email, Message, and Code built in. Create your own with custom instructions, and assign a default per app.
Dictionaries and commands
Dictionaries shape what the app hears, not just what it types. Say insert phone number and get your real number; say smiley face and get the emoji.
Never lose a word
Crash recovery rescues an interrupted dictation on next launch. Full history with audio playback, search, editing, and export.
Energy aware
The models follow your power source, full-size plugged in and lighter on battery.
LIVES IN YOUR MENU BAR
One click to start, a mode picker, your input source, and your recent dictations, all from the menu bar. Regenerate any past dictation or selected text as a different mode.
A floating live panel with a real waveform: expanded or compact, your position, size, and colors.
NOTHING LEAVES YOUR MAC
No analytics, no tracking, no accounts. The only network use is a model download you start yourself. Microphone is the one required permission. Accessibility lets the app type into other apps and read the text around your cursor; without it, your text goes to the clipboard. Read the privacy policy.
QUESTIONS
Is YapToText really free?
Yes. Every feature is available the moment you install it. There is no subscription, no account, and no paid tier. An optional tip jar exists for people who want to support the work.
Does my voice leave my Mac?
No. Speech recognition and cleanup run on your Mac. The app makes no network calls in normal use. The only network use is a model download you start yourself from the model library.
Which Macs does it run on?
Any Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Apple silicon is fastest; the bundled speech model transcribes a sentence in well under a second on an M-series Mac.
How do I dictate punctuation?
Say it the way every dictation system expects. Say question mark, exclamation point, comma, new line, or dot dot dot, and the mark lands where you said it. Mention a punctuation name in the middle of a sentence and it stays a word.
Can I install it without the App Store?
Yes, with Homebrew: brew install --cask ryleighnewman/yaptotext/yaptotext. That build downloads its speech model on first launch instead of bundling it.
Is it open source?
Yes. The complete source is public on GitHub under the GPL, so the privacy claims can be verified line by line.
MADE BY ONE PERSON WHO DICTATES FOR A LIVING
It is the way I write everything, including this page.