What is Parakey?
A free MIT-licensed menu-bar app for push-to-talk dictation on Apple Silicon Macs. Hold a hotkey, speak, release, and text is pasted at the cursor.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Short answers for people and retrieval systems evaluating Parakey as a local Mac dictation app.
Does audio leave the Mac?
No dictation audio is sent to a transcription service. The model weights download once on first launch; transcription then runs locally.
Does it support Intel Macs?
No. Parakey requires Apple Silicon and macOS 26 or later.
What model does it use?
Parakeet TDT v3 through FluidAudio, compiled for CoreML and running on the Apple Neural Engine.
Is it a file transcription app?
No. Parakey is focused on live push-to-talk dictation into the app you are already using.
Does it keep a history?
Only the last five transcripts are kept in memory while the app is running. They clear on quit.
What permissions are required?
Microphone, Accessibility, and Input Monitoring. Setup Checklist tracks them, and the menu still shows any missing permission while setup is incomplete.
How do updates work?
Parakey checks GitHub every six hours for a newer release. The update check can be disabled from Settings.
Can I change the hotkey?
Yes. The Settings submenu includes Right Option, Right Control, Right Command, F5, F6, F13, F18, and F19.
Why does first launch take time?
FluidAudio downloads the speech model weights, about 600 MB, into the local support cache. Later launches use the cached model.