Speak. It types. A macOS menu bar app that turns your voice into text — right where your cursor is. No cloud, no subscriptions, no data leaving your Mac.
Built on OpenAI's Whisper running locally via whisper.cpp.
- 100% private — Everything runs on your Mac. Your audio never leaves the device.
- Works everywhere — Text appears wherever your cursor is: emails, code editors, Slack, browsers, terminal. Any app.
- One hotkey — Press your shortcut, talk, done. No window switching, no copy-pasting.
- Actually fast — Whisper runs natively on Apple Silicon. A 30-second recording transcribes in under 2 seconds with the right model.
- Free and open source — No subscriptions, no monthly fees. LLM post-processing is optional and uses your own API keys.
Two ways to dictate
- Batch — Record everything, then transcribe at once. Great for long thoughts.
- Live — See your words appear in real-time as you speak.
16 languages Auto-detects or you choose: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Dutch, Polish, Turkish.
Pick your model 21 Whisper models from Tiny (32 MB) to Large v3 Turbo (1.6 GB). Download and switch from within the app. Quantized versions (Q5, Q8) give you a good balance of speed and accuracy.
LLM post-processing Optionally pass transcribed text through an AI model to correct, reformat, or translate. Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, or Claude Code (no API key needed if you already have it installed).
Per-app tones Define custom AI instructions per application — formal in email, casual in Slack, technical in your IDE. URL-pattern matching for browsers.
Text replacements Substitutions applied after transcription: "arroba" → "@", "hashtag" → "#", or anything you define.
Keyboard shortcuts Assign any key combination for record and cancel-recording from Settings → Atajos. Live key-cap feedback while pressing, 3-second hold-to-confirm.
And more
- Auto-stops when you go silent (configurable timeout)
- Sound feedback on start and stop
- Searchable transcription history
- Download the latest
Tildo-x.x.x-arm64.zipfrom the Releases page - Unzip and drag
Tildo.appto your/Applicationsfolder
Tildo isn't notarized, so macOS will block it on first launch. Pick the method for your macOS version:
macOS 15 Sequoia
- Double-click
Tildo.app— macOS shows a "cannot be opened" dialog. Click OK. - Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down.
- You'll see "Tildo was blocked" — click Open Anyway, then Open to confirm.
macOS 14 Sonoma or earlier
Right-click (or Control-click) Tildo.app → Open → click Open in the dialog. Done.
Any version — Terminal (fastest)
xattr -cr /Applications/Tildo.appThen double-click the app normally. You only need to do this once.
Tildo needs two permissions to work:
Microphone — macOS will ask automatically on first launch. Click Allow.
Accessibility — needed to type text into other apps.
- Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility
- Toggle Tildo on
Without Accessibility, Tildo still transcribes — the text just won't be typed automatically. You can paste it manually with ⌘V (set Output to Clipboard in Settings).
1. Build the whisper.cpp framework
git clone https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp
cd whisper.cpp
cmake -B build -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES="arm64"
cmake --build build --config ReleasePackage it and place it in Frameworks/:
xcodebuild -create-xcframework \
-library build/src/libwhisper.dylib \
-headers include/ \
-output Frameworks/whisper.xcframework2. Build
bash build.sh
open Tildo.appOr open Package.swift in Xcode.
3. Download a model
On first launch, go to Settings → Modelos:
| Goal | Model | Size |
|---|---|---|
| Fastest | Base Q5 | 60 MB |
| Balanced | Small Q5 | 190 MB |
| Best accuracy | Large v3 Turbo Q5 | 574 MB |
- whisper.cpp — C/C++ port of OpenAI Whisper
- SwiftUI — Native macOS UI
- AVFoundation — Audio capture
- CoreGraphics — Keystroke simulation
MIT