Steno 1.1

Steno 1.1 – meetings, sending with Return, and a notch that shows up where you are.

New: meetings

• Transcribe a conversation with timestamps: your microphone is "You", the sound of your Mac – Teams, Zoom, the browser – is "Others", renamable per meeting. Either source can be switched off. Spotify and Apple Music are left out, so music doesn't end up in the transcript.
• ⌃⌥N adds a note while the meeting runs. An empty note sets a marker, a leading "!" makes it a task. A screenshot taken with ⌘⌃⇧4 lands in the timeline at that moment.
• Or click the meeting display at the notch: the note field opens right below it, hovering shows buttons for a note and a screenshot.
• Dictating during a meeting – say, a quick reply in another chat – stays out of the transcript.
• Every meeting is a folder on your Mac: Protokoll.md, meeting.json and the images. By default in Steno's own folder, or in any place you choose in the settings. Audio is never saved.
• Only record when everyone involved agrees.

New in dictation

• Press Return while you are still recording: Steno pastes the text and sends it – handy for chat apps and AI assistants.
• With two displays, the overlay appears on the screen you are typing on.

Fixes

• The overlay could stay invisible after switching desktops (Spaces) – you only heard the sound. It now always appears on the current desktop.
• The overlay opens before the microphone starts, so it no longer lags behind the sound.
• The microphone opens only while recording. With AirPods as the default microphone, Steno uses the built-in one, so your headphones no longer drop into the low-quality headset mode.
• Changing the microphone could crash Steno. It now records from exactly the device you chose.
• A microphone that fails during a recording is now reported instead of silently producing an empty result.
• A Return pressed at the end of a dictation is never lost and only goes to the app it was meant for.
• Launch at login points at the installed app.

Update

Download Steno.dmg below and drag it to Applications, replacing the old version. Releases are signed with the same certificate, so your permissions stay in place. The first meeting asks once for permission to hear your Mac's sound.

Requires macOS 14.2 or later on Apple silicon (for hearing the Mac's sound in meetings).

Steno 1.0

Steno 1.0 – free, open-source dictation for macOS. Hold a key, speak, and your words appear wherever you type. Transcribed on your Mac by OpenAI Whisper: no cloud, no account, no subscription.

Highlights

• Hold ⌥ (or another key of your choice) to dictate, double-tap for hands-free mode
• Whisper Large v3 Turbo on the Apple GPU – a sentence is usually ready in under a second; long dictations of several minutes work too
• Personal dictionary that corrects names and terms automatically
• Notch overlay, or a floating bubble on Macs without a notch
• German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Swiss German or automatic
• Searchable history (optional), clipboard is restored after pasting, nothing leaves your Mac

Install

1. Download Steno.dmg below and drag Steno to Applications.
2. Open Steno. macOS blocks the first launch because Steno is not distributed with a paid Apple Developer ID. Close the message, then click Open Anyway in System Settings › Privacy & Security.
3. The setup assistant handles the microphone, Accessibility and the model download.

Requires macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon. Every release is signed with the same certificate, so permissions survive updates.