Native macOS push-to-talk app for anyone who dictates on a Mac: it turns speech into text in under a second and can live in the menu bar, Dock, or both. Push to talk, release to paste. Local transcription with optional cleanup via Apple Intelligence, GitHub Copilot, or an OpenAI-compatible API.
No browser. No Electron. No Python runtime. Just native Swift talking directly to the Apple Neural Engine. Every millisecond matters.
Hold the Fn key to record, release to transcribe. Natural as a walkie-talkie. No clicking, no UI.
Text appears at your cursor in whatever app is focused. Hold Option with your recording hotkey to copy instead, without pasting.
Audio is always transcribed on-device via CoreML. Apple Intelligence cleanup also stays local; cloud providers receive transcript text only when selected.
The encoder runs on Apple’s dedicated Neural Engine via CoreML. 190× realtime on M-series chips.
A compact borderless waveform follows your voice and clearly distinguishes Listening, Enhanced, Processing, and Done states.
Powered by NVIDIA Parakeet TDT v3 supporting English, German, French, Spanish, and 21 more European languages.
Optionally clean up transcripts using Apple Intelligence, GitHub Copilot, or an OpenAI-compatible API—fix grammar, remove filler words, and polish punctuation while preserving meaning, tone, and language.
Fast on-device cleanup on compatible Macs running macOS 26. No transcript text leaves your machine and there is no token cost.
The current lightweight default through GitHub Copilot CLI, with low reasoning effort. Standard-context rates: $0.10 input and $0.50 output per million tokens.
Choose Gemini 3.8 Flash, MAI Code 1.1 Flash, GPT-5.4 Mini, or Claude Haiku 5.5. See reference price tiers and use a bundled cleanup prompt or your own update-safe customization.
GitHub Copilot enhancement requires the GitHub Copilot CLI installed and authenticated; OpenAI-compatible providers use the configured endpoint. Enhancement can run only with Shift or for every recording, with Shift as a one-time bypass. Luna cleanup uses explicit low reasoning effort. Copilot requests allow up to 90 seconds for CLI startup and provider processing; failed cleanup retains the raw transcript for recovery. Reference rates were checked on October 9, 2026; GitHub pricing and account availability can change.
The local pipeline—from microphone to pasted text—completes before you finish lifting your finger. Enhanced Mode adds provider processing before paste.
Press and hold your configured hotkey. The mic activates instantly and the bottom waveform follows your voice. Add Option for clipboard-only output; when your hotkey is Right Option, add Left Option. Shift keeps its enhancement/bypass behavior. Purple feedback confirms when cleanup will run.
Let go of Fn. The audio buffer is passed to the Parakeet TDT model running on the Neural Engine via CoreML. Transcription finishes in milliseconds.
Auto-Paste inserts the final transcript at your cursor and restores your original clipboard, including an empty clipboard, unless you have copied something newer. Option selects clipboard-only output even with Auto-Paste off: the result replaces your clipboard without pasting, and the overlay confirms Copied. Pressing Option during recording keeps that choice even if Option is released first. Failed or cancelled processing does not change the clipboard.
OpenWritr stands on the shoulders of exceptional open-source work.
CoreML-optimized speech recognition framework by FluidInference. Provides the Parakeet TDT 0.6b v3 model compiled for Apple Neural Engine with ~190× realtime performance.
State-of-the-art 600M parameter ASR model using Token-and-Duration Transducer architecture. Non-autoregressive decoding for minimum latency. 25 European languages.
Hardware-accelerated inference on Apple Silicon’s dedicated Neural Engine. The encoder model runs entirely on the ANE for maximum throughput and minimal power draw.
Pure native implementation with strict concurrency safety. MenuBarExtra for the system tray, Core Audio for low-latency input-only capture, CGEventTap for global hotkeys.
Download the latest release, or build it from source. Requires macOS 14+ and Apple Silicon. The ASR model (~460 MB) downloads automatically on first launch.
# Download, move OpenWritr.app to /Applications, then open it # Grant Microphone + Accessibility permissions when prompted # Hold Fn to speak, release to paste # Build from source: see the README