My hands don't work. So I built free speech to text for the Mac.
YapToText is a free, open source speech to text and dictation app for Mac that runs on your Mac and types into any app. Press one key, talk, and your words are typed into whatever app has your cursor, with the case, spacing and punctuation right. Whisper and a cleanup model do the work on your Mac, so nothing you say is sent to a server. It is on the Mac App Store for Apple silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later. One word: YapToText (yap to text). It is not Yaptxt and not Yap.
This app is completely free. You don't have to make an account. There are no subscriptions, no difficult downloads, and nothing is locked. You can also install it with Homebrew.
See it work
This is the real app at real speed, with nothing sped up. It is voice to text on a Mac the way I use it every day. Compare it with the other free speech to text apps for Mac, or transcribe an audio file with it.
One key, then talk
Tap Right Command, say the sentence, tap again. The panel shows your words as they form, thinks for a moment, and the finished text lands where your cursor was, in any app you can type in. The first dictation guide walks through it, and the keys and shortcuts page shows how to hold to talk instead or make any other key the trigger. If you came looking for the shortcut that starts Apple's own Dictation, the Mac dictation shortcut page finds it and shows how to change it.
Intelligent Insert
Put the cursor in the middle of a sentence and dictate. YapToText reads the words around the cursor first, so the first word comes out lowercase, one space goes where words would collide, and no stray period lands mid-sentence. It reads with a few invisible keystrokes, and some apps beep at one of them. The Intelligent Insert page shows how to quiet the beep or turn it off for one app.
Quick Edit
Select text in any app, tap Right Option, say the change and tap again. Make it sound more formal. Fix the grammar. The result replaces your selection, and exact requests like capitalize this skip the AI entirely. The Quick Edit page lists what you can ask for.
Dictation that behaves like dictation
Say it the way you would to any dictation system, and it lands the way you meant it.
A punctuation name of two or more words, like question mark, becomes the mark at the end of a clause, with no stray period left behind. The same words in the middle of a sentence stay words. One-word names like comma need the word insert first, so ordinary speech never fires a command by accident. The spoken punctuation page lists every one.
Auto mode
Auto mode reads each dictation and picks the treatment by itself. A letter with a greeting and a sign-off becomes an email, a quick message stays exactly as spoken, and everything else gets a light pass that fixes what was misheard. End with make that formal and it does that instead of typing it. The Auto mode page shows how it decides.
Conservative by design
Cleanup fixes what the mic misheard and leaves the rest alone. It is told never to drop a sentence or add anything you did not say, and a reply that grows well past what you said is thrown out for your raw words. Your wording, your tone, your profanity if that is how you talk. It is AI dictation that stays on your Mac.
Dictionaries and commands
Dictionaries shape what Whisper hears, not just what it types, and when you fix the same word twice the app offers to make the correction stick. Fill in your number once on the Commands page and insert phone number types it, and insert smiley face types the emoji. The dictionaries page shows how to teach it your names and terms.
Modes, on the fly
Raw Transcription, Clean Up, Note, Email, Message and Code Comment are built in, with Auto on top to choose for you. Press 1 to 9 while you talk to pick one. Rewrite any mode's instructions in plain language, make your own, and give each app a default. The modes page covers each one.
Built to hear quiet voices in loud rooms
The speech model, Whisper Large v3 Turbo running on your Mac, is only the last step. Most of the work happens before your voice reaches it, and after the words come back. The AI Models page lets you swap either model for another.
Whisper if you need to
A quiet voice is lifted relative to the room, not to a fixed level, so a voice that cannot project still gets heard. If your Mac's input volume is set low, the app says so and can raise it for you.
Noise, measured and removed
The room's noise floor is measured on every dictation, and steady noise is subtracted only when the ratio calls for it. Clean audio is never touched, and when the room or the fans are too loud to hear you, the app says so.
Decoding that adapts
Loud rooms switch the decoder to a deeper search. A loud word never clips. Long silences are compressed so the model does not drift, and a transcript that comes back shorter than what it heard gets a second pass.
Guards against nonsense
Repetition loops, invented speaker labels and pleasantries hallucinated from silence are caught and removed. If cleanup ever answers like a chatbot instead of tidying your words, the app throws it away and types what you said.
Tap to start and stop is the default, since it is easier on hands that cannot hold a key down, and hold to talk is there if you prefer it. The guide to dictation with carpal tunnel covers that choice, and how to type on a Mac without hands shows the setup I use with Voice Control. Space pauses, Esc cancels while you talk, and by default the words still go to History. Any key can be the trigger, down to a single letter, and the keys and shortcuts page covers each one. Whisper hears 29 languages, and it can detect which one you are speaking. By default the models stay loaded for two minutes after you use them, and the Energy page can change that or switch to lighter models on battery.
Lives in your menu bar
Click the capybara in the menu bar for Start Dictation, the mode and microphone pickers, and your three most recent dictations. Regenerate rewrites your last dictation or any selected text as another mode, and Insert last types your last dictation again. Transcribe file turns an audio or video file into text on your Mac. The Utility page does it too, next to a scratchpad. The menu bar guide explains what each color of his speech bubble means.
The floating panel shows a real waveform of your voice in one of three layouts: Expanded with your words as they form, Compact, or Mini. Drag it anywhere and it stays there, give it your own colors, and it collapses into the wave when you finish instead of blinking out. The floating panel page has every option.
Nothing leaves your Mac
Everything you say stays on your Mac. I did not want to rent my own voice, and I did not want my dictation leaving the machine, so I built the app that way from the start. There is no account, no analytics and no tracking. The only time the app uses the network is when you choose to download another model, and the App Store version already comes with both models inside. The microphone is the one permission it has to have. Accessibility lets it type into your other apps and read the text around your cursor, and without it your words go to the clipboard instead. The troubleshooting page walks through that fix. The code is public, so you do not have to take my word for any of this. The offline dictation guide explains what works with Wi-Fi off, and the privacy policy has the details.
Free, and the code is on GitHub.
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. The pricing page spells it out.
Is YapToText the same as Yaptxt or Yap?
No. Yaptxt and Yap (by Frigade) are unrelated products by other people. YapToText is this app: free, open source under the GPL, on the Mac App Store with the ID 6786382289, on GitHub as ryleighnewman/YapToText, made by Ryleigh Newman.
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.
Which Macs does it run on?
A Mac with Apple silicon running macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Intel Macs are not supported, and there is no iPhone, iPad or Windows version. The install page has the full requirements.
How do I dictate punctuation?
Say a name of two or more words, like question mark, new line or dot dot dot, at the end of a clause, and the mark lands there. One-word names need the word insert first, as in insert comma, and Whisper punctuates ordinary speech by itself. A punctuation name in the middle of a sentence stays a word. The spoken punctuation page has the full list.
Does it work with VoiceOver?
It is built to work alongside VoiceOver and Voice Control. Every state, from Listening to done, is announced even when no app window is focused, and the panel and menu bar controls carry accessibility labels. I have not run a full VoiceOver and Voice Control test pass yet, so I do not call it fully accessible. The accessibility page covers the setup.
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.
What does the name YapToText mean?
Yap to text: you yap, it types. One word, capital Y, T, and T. It is the name on the Mac App Store, on GitHub, and here, and there is no other spelling.
Made by one person who dictates every day
YapToText is how I write everything, so I feel every rough edge myself. Here is why I built a free, open-source dictation app.
Start here. Install YapToText, read what free means, or open the help pages and guides.
Compare. If you are weighing it against other dictation software for Mac, start with the side-by-side comparison or the best free dictation apps for Mac. There are pages for switching from Wispr Flow, superwhisper, MacWhisper, Dragon and VoiceInk, and Wispr Flow's pricing has a page of its own. What each of those apps shipped lately, by date, is in the dictation app updates log.
Fix something. If you came here because Mac dictation is not working, or to learn how to use the dictation built into your Mac, those guides start with Apple's own feature and say where YapToText fits, and there are guides to dictation in Word on a Mac and dictation in Google Docs on a Mac. If YapToText itself is the problem, start with its troubleshooting page.
If something breaks, open an issue on GitHub. Every one gets read.
The Mac App Store has version 1.5.3 (21), released September 29, 2026. The first version went on the App Store on July 22, 2026, and what is new lists every release. About YapToText has the facts for the record.