A dictation app for Mac that keeps your voice on your Mac.

Koegaki waits in the menu bar. Wherever the cursor is, in Mail, Slack, Notes, a browser, a code editor, hold your shortcut and speak. When you release the key, the text is inserted right where you were typing. There is no window to switch to and, in almost every app, nothing to paste; if an app refuses the insertion, Koegaki leaves the text on the clipboard and tells you.

You choose the shortcut. Hold it to talk, or switch to toggle mode and press it once to start and once to stop, for longer stretches where holding a key would get in the way.

Koegaki transcribes with Parakeet Ultra · on-device (Apple Neural Engine). The model downloads once, on first launch, and after that dictation works with the network cable unplugged. When an app update brings a new speech model, that model downloads once, in the background, while the current one keeps working. That background download waits while your Mac is on a connection it treats as costly, such as an iPhone's Personal Hotspot or a network with Low Data Mode turned on. It also does not start while your Mac is on battery below 20 percent, and goes ahead once the Mac is plugged in. Your audio and the text it becomes are never uploaded, never stored on a server, and never seen by us.

That is the whole reason the app exists. Most dictation apps send your voice to a server because that is the easy way to build one. Apple Silicon is fast enough that it no longer has to be, and Koegaki uses the Neural Engine so transcription feels instant. A multilingual speech model and an optional cleanup model are separate downloads, and they run on your Mac too.

The Vocabulary page holds two lists. Custom words are the names, products and jargon you use, one per row, spelled exactly as you want them. When Koegaki hears one split into separate words, hyphenated, or with an apostrophe left out or changed, it writes your spelling, so “post hog” becomes PostHog.

A lone lowercase letter stays a word of its own unless your spelling keeps it apart or every word is a single letter, so “x code” stays as it is, while “X code” becomes Xcode and “a w s” becomes AWS. Koegaki also fixes the capitals of a name like GitHub or Freedom Terminal, so “github” becomes GitHub. A single word that is all capitals or capitalised only at its start, such as US or Swift, is never rewritten for case alone, so “tell us now” stays as it is. Custom words apply to terms written in Latin, Greek or Cyrillic letters.

Replacements turn a phrase you say into the text you choose, such as a short word for your email address. They run last, so where both lists match the same words, the replacement wins. Your spellings and your replacements are rules applied on your Mac, the same way every time. With the English speech model, the default, custom words also help Koegaki hear your names and terms, not just spell them: words on your list are recognised more often, and they still never leave your Mac. That help makes a word more likely to be heard, not certain, so for a word Koegaki still hears as something else, add a replacement.

An Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) running macOS 14 or later. Koegaki uses the microphone you already have; a headset or the built-in mic both work. There is nothing else to install.

Koegaki costs $30 once. There are no tiers and no add-ons: every feature is included, updates are free for life, and one licence covers the Mac, Windows and Linux versions on up to 10 of your own computers. Try everything free for 30 days first.