Hold a key. Speak. It's typed.
TalkingKey turns your voice into text in any macOS app. Hold ⌥ Right Option, talk, release — your words land right where your cursor is. Transcribed locally on your Mac. Nothing ever leaves the device.
Faster than reaching for the keyboard
No wake word. No always-on mic. You press the key, you're in control — release it and the text is in.
Press & hold
Hold Right Option anywhere in macOS — an email, your editor, a chat box. The mic starts recording.
Just talk
Say what you want written. A tiny menu-bar indicator shows it's listening. Take your time.
It's typed
Let go. Whisper transcribes on-device and pastes the text at your cursor. Your clipboard is restored right after.
Talk 3× faster than you type
The average person types about 40 words a minute — and speaks around 150. TalkingKey hands you that difference back, in every app, all day.
A 2,000-word email or spec becomes a few minutes of talking, not half an hour of typing.
Built like a native Mac tool should be
Small, fast, private. It does one thing extremely well and stays out of your way.
Private by design
Speech is transcribed locally with whisper.cpp. No accounts, no telemetry, no audio ever sent to a server.
Works in every app
Slack, Mail, Notes, VS Code, your browser. If you can type there, you can talk there.
100+ languages
Powered by Whisper large-v3-turbo. Dictate in your language — auto-detected or pinned in settings.
Push-to-talk
Hold to record, release to insert. No hot mic sitting open, no "hey" wake word listening in the background.
Native & lightweight
A menu-bar app, not an Electron box. No dock clutter, minimal memory, Metal-accelerated on Apple Silicon.
Clipboard-safe
Inserts via ⌘V and instantly restores whatever you had copied before. You'll never lose your clipboard.
What happens on your Mac, stays on your Mac
TalkingKey makes zero network calls for speech. There's no cloud transcription, no login, nothing to leak. Perfect for confidential work, legal, health, or anything you'd never paste into a web app.
Pay once. Own it.
No subscription, no per-word fees. Everything runs on your machine, so there's nothing to bill you for monthly.
- ✓ Unlimited local dictation
- ✓ 100+ languages, offline
- ✓ Works in every app
- ✓ Swappable Whisper models
- ✓ Licensed for one Mac
Good questions
Does my voice go to the cloud?
Never. Transcription runs entirely on your Mac using whisper.cpp. TalkingKey makes no network calls to convert speech, so it works fully offline and your audio never leaves the device.
Is it really a one-time purchase?
Yes. You pay once and own this version with free updates throughout v1. No subscription, no usage fees — because there are no servers to run, there's nothing to bill monthly.
Which Macs are supported?
macOS 26 (Tahoe) or newer on Apple Silicon. The Whisper engine is Metal-accelerated for fast, low-latency transcription.
Why isn't it on the Mac App Store?
To type into any app, TalkingKey needs a global hotkey and Accessibility permission — capabilities the App Store's sandbox forbids. So it ships as a notarized direct download instead, which is just as safe to install.
Which languages can I dictate in?
Over 100, via Whisper large-v3-turbo. You can let it auto-detect or pin a specific language in settings. The app interface itself ships localized in 11 languages.
Can I change the hotkey or model?
Yes. The push-to-talk key defaults to Right Option and is configurable, and you can swap the Whisper model to trade speed for accuracy in settings.
Stop typing what you could just say
Install TalkingKey and dictate into anything on your Mac in the next two minutes.