Local dictation for macOS.

Hold a key, speak, release. Text appears where your cursor is.

No cloud. No account. No subscription.

Download Now How it works

Try Voxate — it’s local, no cloud, no account. Pretty wild, right?

0:00

The whole loop.

Hold a key.

Pick fn, right Option, or any key macOS lets you bind. Voxate listens only while you hold.

Speak.

A small pill appears at the bottom of the screen with the timer and live waveform. Cancel with Escape.

Release.

Voxate transcribes locally and pastes the text where your cursor was.

What it does / What it doesn't.

What it does

Global hotkey for hold-to-talk or toggle dictation
Local transcription via the bundled whisper.cpp backend
Pastes text where your cursor already is
Restores the clipboard after pasting
Switches to copy-only when the focused app changes mid-transcription
Lets advanced users swap the backend command

What it doesn't

No AI rewrite. No "make this professional." Voxate writes what you said.
No voice command mode. No "select all," no "send to Slack."
No macros, scripts, or workflow agents.
No transcript history. Audio and text are produced, used, and discarded.
No cloud sync, no account, no settings backup.
No Windows. No Linux. No web app.

Privacy

Your audio stays on your Mac.

Voxate records to a temporary local file, hands it to the bundled whisper.cpp backend, inserts the text, and discards the work product. There is no upload step in the app flow. The source is on GitHub — read it.

Read the source on GitHub

hold key
record temp audio
whisper.cpp local backend
paste at cursor
discard work product

Open source

Free and open. No accounts. No subscriptions.

Voxate is GPL-3.0 software. Build it from source — that's the install path, and the only one. No upsells, no telemetry, no login.

Install Voxate View source on GitHub

Free, today and forever
Audit every line on GitHub
Bundled whisper.cpp backend
Works offline after setup
GPL-3.0 licensed
No analytics. No tracker.