Hold fn, speak, release. Your words appear at the cursor. On-device dictation for macOS.
Download Parrot.dmg, drag Parrot to Applications, and open it. Turn on Parrot when macOS asks for Accessibility and the microphone. The first start downloads the speech model (about 150 MB).
Or from a terminal, which also installs the parrot command:
curl -fsSL https://perroquet.xyz/install.sh | shRequires macOS 14+ on Apple Silicon. Parrot is signed and notarized, so permissions survive updates, and it updates itself: it checks once a day, and Check for Updates… in its menu checks now. Upgrading from the command-line version: open the new app once and it replaces the old install.
- Click into any text field.
- Hold
fnand speak. A small pill at the bottom of the screen shows the mic is live. On a keyboard wherefndoes nothing (Logitech and most third-party keyboards), choose another key under Hotkey in Settings…: left or right Option, Command, Control, or Shift. The change applies from the next press. - Release. The transcript is pasted at the cursor, usually within 200–300 ms, and your clipboard is restored.
Choose Launch at login in Settings… to start Parrot with your Mac. A tap shorter than 0.3 s, or a hold with another modifier, is ignored, so shortcuts on the hotkey still work. If fn is mapped to input source or emoji, parrot doctor shows how to fix it.
To dictate in another language, choose a multilingual model in Settings (⌘, from the menu), then either one Language or Automatic. Automatic detects which of the languages under Languages each dictation is in, and never picks one you haven't listed. The list starts as your Mac's languages.
Add your names and technical terms to ~/.config/parrot/dictionary, a plain-text table of each word and what the model writes instead, and Parrot spells them your way. Open Dictionary File in Settings opens it. Edits apply on the next dictation. See docs/dictionary.md.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
parrot |
Run in the foreground (^C to quit) |
parrot setup |
One-time setup: permissions and model download |
parrot doctor |
Check permissions, and the fn key setting when the hotkey is fn |
parrot install --launch-at-login |
Start Parrot at login |
parrot install --cli |
Link /usr/local/bin/parrot to Parrot.app |
parrot install --uninstall |
Stop launching at login and remove logs |
parrot models list |
List available models |
parrot --model whisper-large-v3-turbo |
Larger, multilingual model |
parrot --hotkey right-option |
Use another key for this run only; Settings… changes the saved key |
parrot --no-overlay |
Hide the recording pill |
parrot --inject-mode type-unicode |
Type instead of paste (leaves the clipboard alone) |
WhisperKit runs Whisper on the Apple Neural Engine via CoreML, AVAudioEngine captures the mic, a CGEventTap watches the hotkey, and a synthesized ⌘V pastes the result. Nothing leaves your Mac, and logs never contain what you said. See docs/architecture.md.
swift build -c release && swift test
scripts/dev-install.sh # build, sign, install Parrot.app, link the CLI