Voice Dictation for Mac: On-Device and Offline

Why a dedicated dictation app

Your Mac already ships with dictation, so a dedicated app has to earn its place. The case for one is volume: when speaking becomes a primary way you put text into the machine — prompts to AI agents, long messages, terminal commands — the details start to matter. Where does the audio go, does the text land cleanly in every app, does it know your vocabulary, and does it work when the network doesn't.

Keebye's answers: on-device, everywhere your cursor is, yes via a custom dictionary, and yes — offline after a one-time model download.

When built-in dictation is enough

Honest answer first: macOS dictation is free, already installed, and fine for a lot of people. If you dictate occasionally — a short message here, a note there — the built-in feature is a perfectly reasonable place to start, and you should try it before paying anyone for a dictation app, including us.

Where a dedicated tool starts earning its keep is daily, high-volume use: a hold-to-talk hotkey you can hit from any app without thinking, a dictionary that knows your project's jargon, insertion that survives terminals, and cleanup that strips filler words before the text lands. If that list doesn't describe your day, keep your money.

How Keebye works

Hold Right ⌘ anywhere on your Mac, speak, and release — the transcribed text is inserted at your cursor in whatever app has focus. Tap instead of hold to toggle longer dictations; Esc cancels.

Speech-to-text runs on-device with your choice of three engines: Parakeet, the fast English-tuned default; an opt-in multilingual engine covering 25 languages; or Apple's native engine. After the one-time model download it works offline, and there is no telemetry.

Insertion is app-aware. Text arrives by paste or synthetic typing, with chunked typing for terminals so long text doesn't get mangled — and Keebye refuses to type into secure and password fields, on purpose. Cleanup is local too: fast rules strip filler words and fix punctuation, with an optional on-device LLM polish pass that is guarded against paraphrasing you. A custom dictionary handles your names and jargon, and history is text-only, local, and auto-deleted after 30 days.

Setup in two minutes

After installing, macOS will ask you to approve two permissions — Accessibility and microphone — and then you pick the hotkey: Right ⌘ out of the box, Fn or Right ⌥ if you'd rather. Launch-at-login keeps it always ready.

A minute in the custom dictionary — the names, products, and technical terms you say constantly — is what makes transcripts land right the first time.

Limits, honestly

Keebye transcribes in batch, on key-release: you speak, let go, and the whole passage arrives at once. If watching words appear live as you talk is what you want from dictation, Keebye isn't that — stick with the built-in feature.

The default model is English-tuned; multilingual coverage is an opt-in engine with exactly 25 languages, not hundreds. And Keebye is macOS only — there is no Windows version.