Larynx

Think out loud.
Larynx writes it down.

Free dictation for the Mac. Talk the way you think, ums and restarts included, and get back what you meant, in 0.15 seconds. Nothing you say leaves your Mac.

Email it to me

Larynx is a Mac app. Open this page on your Mac to install it.

On an Apple Silicon Mac with macOS 15 or later, paste this into Terminal:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StopBanning/larynx/main/scripts/install.sh | zsh

It builds the app from source and opens it (a few minutes the first time), then walks you through three permissions. The speech model, about 600 MB, downloads once. Run it again to update.

Hold a key, speak, let go. The pill shows the words as you say them; the text lands where your cursor is.

It shows its work

0.15 sfrom letting go of the key to the text, the full pipelineThe speed test
0.87%of words wrong on 57 real dictations picked at randomThe benchmark
0 bytesof your voice sent anywhere: speech to text runs with the network blockedThe privacy test

Questions

Is it really free?

Yes. MIT licence, no account, no paid tier, no word limits and no ads. The code is on GitHub. The default speech model, Parakeet Ultra, is CC BY 4.0; the credits list every model and its licence.

Why does it need Accessibility?

To put your words where your cursor is: Larynx pastes into the app you're using and checks the text arrived. Input Monitoring lets it see the talk key, and the microphone hears you. To spell names right it also reads the text near your cursor when you press the key; that stays in memory for that one dictation, is never kept, and can be turned off. Details in PRIVACY.md.

Does it work offline?

Yes. After the speech model downloads once, everything runs on your Mac's Neural Engine. The privacy test above turns the network off and transcribes anyway.

Intel Macs?

No. Larynx needs an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer) with macOS 15 or later, because the speech model runs on the Neural Engine.

Windows?

Not yet. The cleanup engine already passes its tests on Windows and the speech model runs there; the app is planned.

Why is there no download button?

A signed download needs a paid Apple developer account. Until then the one line above builds the same app from source on your Mac.