Claude Code Voice (macOS)

Adds native speech-to-text to Claude Code's /voice command using Apple's SFSpeechRecognizer. Claude-native languages are proxied to Anthropic's voice server, while unsupported languages (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.) are transcribed locally with Apple STT. No API keys, no binary patching — survives Claude Code updates.

Quick install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dr-data/claude-code-voice/main/setup.sh | bash

Requirements

• macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel)
• Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install)
• Claude Code with /voice support

Demo

Usage

After install, restart Claude Code:

1. /voice to enable voice mode
2. Hold Space to record
3. Speak
4. Release — transcript appears

First run: macOS will prompt for Speech Recognition permission — click Allow.

Switching languages

Type /config in Claude Code to change the language. The voice server picks it up immediately — no restart needed.

Supported languages

Language	/config value	Backend
English	en (default)	Anthropic
Spanish	es	Anthropic
French	fr	Anthropic
German	de	Anthropic
Japanese	ja	Anthropic
Korean	ko	Anthropic
Portuguese	pt	Anthropic
Italian	it	Anthropic
Russian	ru	Anthropic
Hindi	hi	Anthropic
Indonesian	id	Anthropic
Polish	pl	Anthropic
Turkish	tr	Anthropic
Dutch	nl	Anthropic
Ukrainian	uk	Anthropic
Greek	el	Anthropic
Czech	cs	Anthropic
Danish	da	Anthropic
Swedish	sv	Anthropic
Norwegian	no	Anthropic
Hebrew	he	Apple STT
Arabic	ar	Apple STT
Chinese (Mandarin)	zh	Apple STT
Cantonese (Hong Kong)	yue or zh-hk	Apple STT

Any language supported by Apple's SFSpeechRecognizer works — the 20 natively supported languages are proxied to Anthropic's server for best quality.

Cantonese setup

1. In Claude Code, run /config and set the language to yue (or zh-hk, cantonese, 廣東話, 粵語 — all work).
2. Download the Cantonese speech model on macOS so Apple STT can work offline:
   • System Settings → Keyboard → Dictation
   • Enable Dictation, then open the Language dropdown
   • Click Add Language… and select Chinese (Cantonese)
   • macOS will download the on-device model (~100–200 MB)
3. Once downloaded, restart Claude Code and hold Space to speak in Cantonese — transcription runs fully on-device.

Token usage and local processing

• Claude-native languages (shown as Anthropic in the table): audio is proxied to Anthropic for transcription, so this path uses Claude's voice backend and may consume tokens/usage.
• Apple STT languages (shown as Apple STT): transcription is done on your Mac with SFSpeechRecognizer, so speech-to-text itself is local.
• In both cases, once text is inserted into Claude Code, your normal chat usage still applies.

How it works

Claude Code has an undocumented VOICE_STREAM_BASE_URL env var that redirects its voice WebSocket. This project runs a native macOS app on localhost:19876 that acts as a smart router:

• Native languages (20) → proxied to Anthropic's voice server with OAuth token from Keychain
• Other languages → transcribed locally via Apple's on-device SFSpeechRecognizer

┌──────────────┐     audio chunks      ┌──────────────┐
│ Claude Code  │ ────────────────────▶ │ voice-server │
│ /voice + ␣   │ ◀──────────────────── │   (local)    │
└──────────────┘       transcript       └──────┬───────┘
                                               │
                                 ┌─────────────┴─────────────┐
                                 │                           │
                      native Claude language        other language
                                 │                           │
                                 ▼                           ▼
                       Anthropic voice STT          Apple on-device STT

Everything is a single Swift binary — WebSocket server, proxy, and speech recognition combined. No external runtimes needed.

Uninstall

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dr-data/claude-code-voice/main/uninstall.sh | bash

Project structure

├── setup.sh              # One-command install
├── uninstall.sh           # Full uninstall
└── scripts/
    └── server.swift       # WebSocket server + proxy + Apple STT (single file)