Features
Dictation, voice notes and the original, together
Talki is built around one rule: your recording is saved before anything else happens. Everything below follows from that.
01 · Capture
Start talking in under a second
Talki lives in the menu bar with a small floating control in the lower right corner. It shows a live level while you speak and quiet dots when the room is silent.
⌘ ⇧ Space
Starts and stops dictation from any app, in both editions.
Fn push-to-talk
Recording starts as you press Fn. Hold for at least 350 ms and release to finish, or tap to keep recording and tap again to stop.
Sound cues
Optional start and stop sounds, so you know the microphone is live without looking.
5 minutes per recording
Long enough for a message or a thought. Add another recording to the same note to keep going.
02 · Provenance
Three layers, never mixed
Most dictation tools give you one block of text. Talki keeps what you said, what the model heard and what you made of it as separate things.
Original recording
Saved to your library first. Replay it any time, or run it through another model later.
Original transcript
Exactly what the provider returned, with the provider and model recorded next to it.
Edited text
Your dictionary replacements, optional AI cleanup and your own edits. Changing it never touches layers 1 and 2.
03 · Notes and projects
A library that grows with your work
Dictation results and voice notes land in a chronological library on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded to keep it.
- Record a voice note, or write a text note by hand.
- Add voice to an existing note; every earlier recording stays attached.
- Assign notes to projects and filter the library by project.
- Search across notes and transcripts.
- Replay the original audio of any note.
- Export a note as Markdown.
- Move notes to Trash and restore them; permanent deletion asks first.
04 · Personal dictionary
Names and terms, spelled your way
Add up to 1,000 whole-term replacements for product names, people and jargon. Edit, disable or remove any term. Replacements apply to edited text; the recording and the original transcript stay untouched.
Learned corrections
If you fix a word right after Talki pastes it, Talki can suggest the correction. It looks only at the inserted fragment in that same field for up to two minutes, never at the rest of the field or your keystrokes. Similar spelling fixes can apply automatically; anything else stays a suggestion until you accept it.
05 · Providers
Pick the engine for each job
Speech recognition and text cleanup are separate choices. Switching providers never deletes audio.
Apple on-device
Talki requests on-device recognition only. If your language is not available on-device, the recording stays saved and Talki tells you why.
OpenRouter
Paste your own OpenRouter key; it is stored in the macOS Keychain. Choose a speech model and, optionally, a cleanup model. OpenRouter bills your account directly.
Managed models
Transcription and cleanup through Talki's service, without a key, within a monthly allowance shown before you subscribe.
06 · Recovery
Built for the moment something fails
Networks drop, models time out, a language is not installed. Talki treats each of these as a state you can act on.
- A failed transcription keeps the audio and offers a retry with another model.
- Paid requests are never retried automatically.
- Work interrupted by a quit or crash becomes recoverable at the next launch, without being billed again.
- A damaged library file is preserved and blocks writes instead of being replaced with an empty one.
- If the destination field changed or is secure, the text stays on the clipboard. Talki never presses Return for you.
07 · Editions
Mac App Store and direct download
The App Store edition runs in Apple's sandbox, which limits how an app can watch the keyboard and type into other apps. The direct edition keeps those workflows. Each edition has its own library.
| Capability | Mac App Store | Direct download |
|---|---|---|
| Global shortcut and floating control | Yes | Yes |
| Fn push-to-talk | No | Yes, with Input Monitoring |
| Result | Copied to the clipboard | Pasted into the original field, with Accessibility |
| Learned corrections | Manual dictionary | Yes |
| Apple on-device speech | Yes, default | Yes |
| Your OpenRouter key | Yes, after you allow cloud processing | Yes |
| Talki Plus | Planned | Planned later |
| Status | In preparation | Available: 0.2.0 for Apple silicon |
08 · Specifications
The short version
| Requires | macOS 14 Sonoma or later |
|---|---|
| Recording length | Up to 5 minutes per recording |
| Languages | Depends on the provider and the languages installed on your Mac |
| Storage | Local library on your Mac |
| Export | Markdown |
| Dictionary | Up to 1,000 terms, 1 to 80 characters each |
| Account | Sign in with Apple, Google or an email code; keeps your plan across Macs |
| Analytics | Optional, off by default, no content |
09 · Next
What we are building
These are plans, not features you can use today. We will mark each one live on this page when it ships.
iCloud text sync
Notes, projects and the dictionary in your private iCloud database, free. Audio stays on the Mac where it was recorded.
Talki Plus
Managed transcription and cleanup models with a monthly allowance, sold in the Mac App Store.
iPhone, Windows, Android
Mac comes first. Each platform needs its own way to reach the microphone and the text field.