OpenDictation

Fast, private and secure dictation for macOS — powered by Mistral's Voxtral model, running entirely on your Mac.

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What is OpenDictation?

OpenDictation is a macOS dictation utility that transcribes your speech and inserts text wherever your cursor is — in any app, any text field. It runs the Mistral Voxtral speech-to-text model locally on your Mac. No cloud. No subscriptions. No data leaves your device.

How it works

1. Press ⌥ Space (or your custom hotkey)
2. Speak naturally
3. Press again to stop
4. Text appears where you're typing

That's it. Works in iMessage, your terminal, Slack, VS Code, Notes — anywhere you can type.

Features

• 100% local — Runs Mistral's Voxtral model on-device. Your audio is never sent anywhere.
• Any app, any field — Uses macOS accessibility APIs to inject text at your cursor position.
• Realtime transcription — Words appear as you speak.
• Menu bar + full app — Lives quietly in your menu bar with a full app available when you need it.
• Custom hotkey — Remap the trigger to any keyboard shortcut.
• 7 languages — English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Dutch, and Italian.

Privacy

OpenDictation is built with a strict no-data-collection policy:

• All speech processing happens on your Mac using the Voxtral model
• No audio or transcriptions are sent to any server
• No analytics, tracking, or cookies
• No account required
• Transcriptions are injected directly into your active app and never stored

Read the full privacy policy.

Requirements

• macOS
• Microphone access permission
• Accessibility permission (to insert text at your cursor)

Install

Two ways to get OpenDictation: download a pre-built DMG (easiest) or build it yourself from source.

Option 1 — Install the DMG (recommended)

1. Download the latest .dmg from this repository's GitHub Releases page.
2. Open the DMG and drag OpenDictation into your Applications folder.
3. First launch will be blocked. macOS will say "OpenDictation can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software." This is expected — the DMG is unsigned. Bypass it one of three ways:
   • Right-click OpenDictation in /Applications → Open → click Open Anyway in the dialog.
   • Or: open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the message about OpenDictation being blocked, and click Open Anyway.
   • Or, from Terminal: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/OpenDictation.app
4. Grant Microphone and Accessibility permissions when prompted (Accessibility is what lets OpenDictation paste text into other apps).
5. The first-launch onboarding will walk you through downloading the Voxtral model from Hugging Face (~4 GB, one time). After that, no data ever leaves your Mac.

Why isn't the DMG signed? Currently in the process of getting an Apple Developer account and notarizing the app, but in the meantime I wanted to make it available for early testers. The unsigned DMG is a temporary compromise — it just adds an extra click to bypass the security warning on first launch, but after that it behaves like a normal app. If you have any concerns or questions about this, please reach out!

Option 2 — Build from source

Requires macOS (Apple Silicon strongly recommended), Xcode 16+, and a free Apple ID for local code signing.

1. Clone the repo:

   git clone https://github.com/<your-fork>/opendictation.git
   cd opendictation

2. Open app/OpenDictation.xcodeproj in Xcode.
3. In the Signing & Capabilities tab, change Team to your own Apple ID team. The repo ships with the maintainer's team ID; your local build won't sign until you swap in your own.
4. Press ⌘R. Xcode will compile the Swift app and the bundled voxtral C helper (a Run Script phase invokes make mps automatically).
5. Grant Microphone and Accessibility permissions when prompted.
6. Onboarding will walk you through downloading the Voxtral model from Hugging Face (~4 GB).

Troubleshooting:

• "voxtral binary not found in app bundle" — the Run Script phase that builds the C helper failed. Run it manually to see the error: cd app/Vendor/voxtral && make mps.
• Accessibility permission seems missing after a clean build — macOS keys accessibility permission to a specific binary path. After a clean rebuild the path changes, so grant access again in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.

For deeper architecture notes and engineering conventions, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Mac App Store

A paid version with auto-updates and extra polish will also be available on the Mac App Store. The source here is and will remain Apache-2.0 — the App Store build exists purely as a convenience option.

A note on how this was built

OpenDictation was co-created with the help of AI coding assistants. Code, design decisions, and documentation in this repository were produced collaboratively between a human author and AI tools, then reviewed, tested, and committed by the human author. Mentioning it here so it's transparent — the project is open source and you can read every line yourself.

License

OpenDictation is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. It bundles a vendored copy of antirez/voxtral.c, which remains under its own MIT License — see NOTICE and app/Vendor/voxtral/LICENSE.upstream.