Real-time, local-only, speech-to-text for macOS. Speak and watch your words appear in any app.
speekdemo.mp4
- Real-time transcription — text appears as you speak with live corrections
- Voice Activity Detection — only transcribes when you're speaking, ignores silence
- Menu bar app — runs quietly in your menu bar, always one click away
- Global hotkey — toggle with
Cmd+Shift+Afrom anywhere (configurable) - 100% local — all processing on-device via WhisperKit, nothing sent to the cloud
- Auto-corrections — diff-based typing automatically fixes text as the model refines output
Grab the latest Speek.dmg or Speek.app.zip from the Releases page.
Speek is unsigned, so on first launch you may need to right-click → Open, or allow it in System Settings → Privacy & Security.
- Open Speek — it appears as a microphone icon in your menu bar
- Grant permissions when prompted:
- Microphone — for audio capture
- Accessibility — for typing text into other applications (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility)
- Press
Cmd+Shift+A(or click the menu bar icon) to start transcribing - Speak — your words are typed in real-time into the focused app
- Press
Cmd+Shift+Aagain to stop
On first launch, Speek downloads the Whisper base.en model (~50MB). This is a one-time download stored in ~/Library/Application Support/Speek/Models/.
git clone https://github.com/jstruzik/Speek.git
cd SpeekOption A — Xcode:
Open Speek.xcodeproj, select your development team under Signing & Capabilities, and hit Cmd+R.
Option B — Command line:
swift build -c release| macOS | 14.0 (Sonoma) or later |
| Chip | Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) recommended |
| Permissions | Microphone + Accessibility |
Speek uses WhisperKit's AudioStreamTranscriber with Voice Activity Detection to capture and transcribe speech in real-time. A diff-based approach handles corrections — if the model revises earlier text, Speek backspaces and retypes the corrected portion so the final output is always accurate.
- WhisperKit — on-device speech recognition for Apple Silicon
- OpenAI Whisper — the underlying speech recognition model