Apace

On-device dictation for macOS — type at the speed of thought.

Hold a key, speak, release. Your words appear in any app — transcribed entirely on your Mac, with a live transcript in the notch. A voice command mode (in progress) lets you act on your voice, not just type.

Source-available, proprietary — not open source. The code is public so you can read, audit, and trust it. See LICENSE (PolyForm Strict 1.0.0).

Features

• System-wide dictation — global hotkey, push-to-talk / toggle / hybrid.
• On-device & private — no telemetry, no cloud round-trip; audio never leaves your Mac.
• Multiple engines — WhisperKit (CoreML), Parakeet, and Apple's SpeechAnalyzer, behind one boundary.
• Live notch overlay — a Dynamic-Island-style transcript and waveform while you speak.
• Command mode (in progress) — a spoken command that acts on your Mac, not just types.

Requirements

• macOS 14.0+ (Apple SpeechAnalyzer engine requires macOS 26+).
• Apple silicon recommended for on-device models.

Install

Download the latest signed & notarized DMG from Releases. (Coming with the first release.)

Architecture

A thin .app shell on top of one local Swift package (ApaceKit) with layered modules whose dependencies point strictly inward — a pure, framework-free domain at the centre, system services injected in as adapters. See docs/architecture.md and the decision records.

App shell  →  Features  →  ApaceCore (pure)  ←  Infrastructure adapters

Building from source

Building for personal use is permitted by the license; redistribution is not.

git clone https://github.com/Lyons800/apace-mac.git
cd apace-mac

swift build      # builds the ApaceKit modules
swift test       # runs the domain tests (no hardware required)

To build and run the app itself, generate the Xcode project with XcodeGen (the .xcodeproj is not checked in — see ADR-0006):

brew install xcodegen
xcodegen generate          # writes Apace.xcodeproj from project.yml
open Apace.xcodeproj       # then build & run the Apace scheme

Apace lives in the menu bar. Hold Right Option to dictate and release to insert the text; grant Microphone, Speech Recognition, and Accessibility access when prompted.

Security

To report a vulnerability, see SECURITY.md. Please do not open a public issue for security problems.

Contributing

External code contributions are not accepted under this license — see CONTRIBUTING.md. Bug reports and feature requests are welcome.