Hold a key, speak, release. Presspeech transcribes locally, then pastes at the cursor or keeps a copy for manual paste when it cannot safely verify the destination. No account, subscription, telemetry, or cloud transcription.
macOS: released, signed, and notarised for Apple Silicon on macOS 14+. Windows: an unsigned prerelease for x64 PCs; Windows 11 is recommended.
On macOS, setup and settings begin in the menu bar. If the Presspeech item is hidden, reopen the app to show Setup Checklist and optionally keep it in the Dock.
Choose your platform
Choose the build that matches your computer
macOS — released
The signed and notarised Swift menu-bar app runs multilingual Parakeet TDT v3 through CoreML on Apple Silicon. The app zip is small; the 500–600 MB local model downloads on first launch.
The currently unsigned x64 installer is for evaluation on Windows 11 or a supported Windows 10 edition. The tray app uses CUDA Parakeet when available and selects a smaller Whisper CPU model on fresh PCs without usable CUDA.
The video below shows the macOS build with its default Right Option hotkey. On Windows, use the same hold–speak–release gesture with Right Alt by default; if that key acts as AltGr for your keyboard layout, Setup lets you choose F8 or another available key.
New in macOS 0.3
Say exactly what should happen
Voice shortcuts
Map a phrase you say to exact reusable text. No rewriting model, no cloud call, and no ambiguity about the result.
Spoken formatting
Opt in to deterministic English commands including “new paragraph”, “bullet point”, “comma”, and “open quote”; selecting the French Language Hint switches formatting to canonical French phrases.
Try Dictation
Both apps include a focused private scratchpad. Use the first-dictation guide to test the hotkey, then take the same workflow into another app.
macOS implementation
Built for one thing, not ten
Press and speak
Presspeech is a menu-bar utility, not a document manager. The default trigger is Right Option, with other hotkeys available from the menu.
Local speech recognition
Audio is captured in memory, transcribed locally, pasted, then discarded. Transcripts are not written to disk.
Native macOS stack
Swift, AVFoundation, CoreGraphics, AppKit, CoreML, and FluidAudio. No embedded browser runtime, interpreter, account, subscription, or cloud transcription endpoint.
Good fit
When Presspeech is the right pick
Use Presspeech when you want
Fast phrase-length dictation in everyday text fields, with a visible clipboard fallback when automatic delivery is unavailable; a local-only transcription model; and a workflow that does not keep a transcript library. The macOS app is released and notarised; the Windows app is available for people comfortable evaluating an unsigned prerelease.
Use something else when you need
Intel Mac or Windows on Arm support, macOS before 14 Sonoma, an installer accepted by managed Windows policies, 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 macOS app is a single Swift source file; the separate Windows implementation is readable Python. Release scripts and packaging metadata are public.
Private by designThe full network surface is documented: model download, update check, and user-triggered install/update downloads.
Agent-readableInstall instructions, benchmark results, privacy facts, and comparison pages are available as plain HTML, Markdown, JSON, and text.