Hold Option
Hold the right Option key in any app. Tap it once to go hands-free.
100% on-device · Free forever
OnlyWhisper turns your voice into clean, polished text in any app. Hold Option, talk, let go. No cloud, no account, no subscription.
macOS 27+ · Apple silicon
Mail, Slack, Notes, your code editor or the browser. If there is a text field, OnlyWhisper can fill it.
How it works
No new app to learn. OnlyWhisper lives in your menu bar and is always one key away.
Hold the right Option key in any app. Tap it once to go hands-free.
Talk naturally in one of 30+ languages. Filler words and restarts are fine.
Clean, punctuated text lands right at your cursor. Press Escape to cancel.
Features
Every feature runs on your Mac's Neural Engine and GPU. No server in between.
Push-to-talk or hands-free, in every app. Fast, accurate speech recognition powered by Parakeet and Whisper.
um so yeah let's meet on tuesday at like three and uh please bring the the slides from last week
Let's meet on Tuesday at 3 PM. Please bring the slides from last week.
A local language model removes filler words, fixes grammar and formats lists without changing what you meant.
hey, can u send me the report asap
“Make it friendlier”
Hi! Could you send me the report when you get a chance? Thanks!
Select text and say what to change: “friendlier”, “shorter”, “as bullet points”.
Dictate in German and get English, or any other supported pair.
Launch moves to Monday
Anna updates the roadmap
Records microphone and system audio, tells speakers apart and pulls out decisions and action items.
Teach it names, brands and jargon once. They are spelled right every time.
Drop audio, video or a whole folder. Each recording becomes a text file next to the original.
Everything you dictated, searchable and ready to copy. Stored only on this Mac.
Privacy
Most dictation apps send your audio to the cloud. OnlyWhisper runs the whole pipeline locally: speech recognition, polishing and translation.
Speech and language models run on Apple silicon. Works in airplane mode.
No sign-up, no email, no login. Download it and start talking.
Audio and text are never sent anywhere. The app only goes online to download the models once.
Built on proven open-source models you can inspect yourself.
Comparison
OnlyWhisper does what cloud dictation apps do, without the subscription and without sending your voice anywhere.
| OnlyWhisper | Typical cloud dictation apps | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Subscription, often $10–15 per month |
| Where your audio is processed | On your Mac | On remote servers |
| Works offline | Yes | No |
| Use it without an account | Yes | No |
| Meeting transcription | Yes | Often a separate product |
| Transcribe audio and video files | Yes | Rarely |
Based on publicly available information about popular cloud dictation services. Details vary by provider.
Languages
Automatic language detection, or pin the language you use most.
FAQ
Yes. There is no trial, no subscription and no premium tier. You download it and every feature is yours.
A Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or newer) running macOS 27 or later. The speech and language models need a few gigabytes of disk space.
Yes. After the one-time model download during setup, everything runs offline.
Microphone to hear you, Accessibility to insert text into other apps, and Input Monitoring for the Option key shortcut. System audio is only used when you turn it on for a meeting.
OnlyWhisper checks for new versions automatically and installs them with one click. You can also check manually from the menu bar.
App Store rules don't allow apps to type into other apps or to use a global push-to-talk key. Distributing it directly keeps every feature. The app is signed and notarized by Apple.
The idea is similar: you speak and polished text appears. The difference is that OnlyWhisper processes everything on your Mac and costs nothing.
Download OnlyWhisper and dictate your first sentence in under a minute.
macOS 27+ · Apple silicon