Getting started with Keebye

Keebye is a menu bar app. Onboarding opens with "Welcome to Keebye" and walks you through five steps while the default speech model downloads in the background. This page covers the same five steps.

Install Keebye

Open the Keebye DMG and drag Keebye into Applications, then launch it. Keebye runs in the menu bar only and has no Dock icon. It needs macOS 11.0 or later on an Apple Silicon Mac.

Sign in

Sign-in is required to dictate. The login window "Sign in to Keebye" offers "Continue with Google" and "Continue with Email". Keebye opens keebye.com in your system browser and brings you back to the app automatically once you finish.

Grant permissions

Onboarding asks for two permissions. Finish stays disabled until both are granted and the speech model has downloaded.

• Microphone: press "Grant microphone access". Keebye listens only while you hold your dictation hotkey.
• Accessibility: press "Open System Settings" and switch Keebye on. This lets Keebye watch your hotkey and paste text into any app. Keebye checks every 1.5 seconds and arms the hotkey as soon as access is granted, with no restart needed.
• Speech Recognition is only requested if you later pick the "Native (Apple Speech)" engine. Input Monitoring is never requested.

Pick your push-to-talk key

Choose one of Fn / Globe, Left ⌘, Right ⌘, Left ⌥, or Right ⌥. Right ⌘ is the default. You can change it later in Settings and the change applies live.

Dictate your first sentence

Click into any text field, hold your hotkey, speak, and release. The pill at the bottom of the screen shows "Listening…", then "Transcribing…", then "Inserting…", and the text lands where your cursor is.

• Hold the key for at least 400 ms and release to stop and insert.
• Tap the key (under 400 ms) to keep recording hands-free; tap again to stop and insert.
• Press Esc while recording to cancel. Nothing is inserted.

Frequently asked questions