Press and speak
Parakey is a menu-bar utility, not a document manager. The default trigger is Right Option, with other hotkeys available from the menu.
Local push-to-talk dictation for Apple Silicon Macs.
Hold a key, speak, release. Parakey pastes the transcript at the cursor in about 100 ms using Parakeet TDT v3 through CoreML on the Apple Neural Engine.
brew install --cask rcourtman/parakey/parakey
~100 mskey release to pasted text
2.4 MBsigned release zip
~80 MBRAM while idle
0% CPUbetween dictations
One workflow
Built for one thing, not ten
Local speech recognition
Audio is captured in memory, transcribed locally, pasted, then discarded. Transcripts are not written to disk.
Native Mac stack
Swift, AVFoundation, CoreGraphics, AppKit, CoreML, and FluidAudio. No embedded browser runtime, interpreter, account, subscription, or cloud transcription endpoint.
Good fit
When Parakey is the right pick
Use Parakey when you want
Fast phrase-length dictation into whatever app already has focus; a local-only privacy model; a tiny notarised app; and a workflow that does not keep a transcript library.
Use something else when you need
Intel Mac support, macOS before Tahoe, batch file transcription, speaker labels, long-form transcript editing, cloud models, team features, or integrations with notes databases.
Why trust it
Evidence and install paths
BenchmarkedFluidAudio on the Apple Neural Engine is measured against the prior GPU path on the same WAV clips.
AuditableThe app is a single Swift source file plus release scripts and a public Homebrew Cask tap.
Private by designThe full network surface is documented: model download, update check, and user-triggered update apply.
Agent-readableInstall instructions, benchmark results, privacy facts, and comparison pages are available as plain HTML, Markdown, JSON, and text.