Parrote

Speak naturally, type perfectly.
A native macOS push-to-talk dictation app — hold a key, speak, and your words are transcribed, cleaned up, and pasted into any app. All running locally on your Mac.

Download • Website • Install • Build

---

How It Works

1. Hold your trigger key (default: Right Option) and speak
2. WhisperKit transcribes your speech on-device
3. Ollama (optional) improves the text — fixing grammar, punctuation, and formatting
4. The result is pasted into whatever app you're using

Everything runs locally. No cloud services, no subscriptions, no data leaves your Mac.

Parrote works without Ollama — you'll get raw Whisper transcriptions. Install Ollama to get polished output.

Features

• Push-to-talk — hold a key to record, release to transcribe
• 100% local — WhisperKit for STT, Ollama for text cleanup, nothing leaves your machine
• Works everywhere — result is pasted into any app via clipboard
• Menu bar app — lives in your menu bar, out of the way
• Customizable hotkey — Right Option, Caps Lock, Fn, or any key you prefer
• Dictation history — searchable history with copy, re-process, and audio playback
• Microphone selection — pick any input device from the menu bar
• Optional LLM cleanup — Ollama improves transcriptions; works without it too
• Recording indicator — floating panel shows recording state with cancel/confirm controls

Requirements

• macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later
• ~1.5 GB disk space for the Whisper model (downloaded on first launch)
• (Optional) Ollama — for LLM-powered text improvement

Installation

1. Download Parrote

Download Parrote.zip from the latest release, unzip, and drag to /Applications.

2. Open the app (unsigned app workaround)

Since Parrote is not notarized, macOS will block it on first launch. To open it:

1. Right-click (or Control-click) Parrote.app and select Open
2. Click Open in the dialog that appears
3. Alternatively, run in Terminal:

   xattr -cr /Applications/Parrote.app

You only need to do this once.

3. Grant Permissions

The onboarding flow will guide you through granting:

• Accessibility — needed for global hotkey detection
• Microphone — needed for recording your voice

4. (Optional) Install Ollama for smarter output

Parrote works out of the box with raw Whisper transcriptions. For cleaner results (better grammar, punctuation, formatting), install Ollama and pull a model:

ollama serve
ollama pull gemma3:12b

You can toggle this on/off in Settings > LLM > "Skip text processing".

Usage

Action	Default Key
Hold to record, release to stop	Right Option
Press to start, press to stop	Caps Lock (if configured)

• Look for the waveform icon in the menu bar
• Open Parrote Home from the menu bar for settings, stats, and history
• Configure your trigger key, LLM model, and system prompt in settings
• Select your preferred microphone from the menu bar

Building from Source

Requires Xcode 16+ and XcodeGen.

# Install XcodeGen
brew install xcodegen

# Clone and generate project
git clone https://github.com/shubham-web/parrote.git
cd parrote
xcodegen generate

# Build
xcodebuild -project Parrote.xcodeproj -scheme Parrote -configuration Debug build \
  -derivedDataPath /tmp/ParroteDerivedData \
  BUILD_DIR=/tmp/ParroteDerivedData/Build/Products

# The built app is at:
# /tmp/ParroteDerivedData/Build/Products/Debug/Parrote.app

Tech Stack

Component	Technology
UI	SwiftUI + AppKit hybrid
Global Hotkeys	CGEventTap
Audio Recording	AVAudioEngine
Speech-to-Text	WhisperKit (on-device)
Text Cleanup	Ollama (local LLM)
Persistence	JSON + FileManager

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open issues and pull requests.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes
4. Push to the branch
5. Open a Pull Request

License

MIT © 2026 Shubham