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Guide

Use your own OpenRouter key

With an OpenRouter key, Talki can send recordings to the speech model you choose and, if you like, clean up the text with a separate language model. You pay OpenRouter directly.

Updated · 1 min read

Why use a key

  • Choose a speech model for your language, such as a Whisper model.
  • Pay per use to OpenRouter instead of a subscription.
  • Keep Apple on-device speech as a free fallback.

Create a key

  1. Sign in at openrouter.ai and add credit to your account.
  2. Create an API key. If OpenRouter offers a spending limit for the key, set one.
  3. Copy the key. Treat it like a password.

Add it to Talki

  1. Open Talki Settings and choose OpenRouter as the provider.
  2. Paste the key into the personal key field. Talki stores it in the macOS Keychain. It never appears in exported notes or in Talki's logs.
  3. Choose a speech model. Optionally turn on cleanup and choose a separate text model to tidy punctuation and filler words.
  4. In the App Store edition, allow cloud processing when Talki asks. You can withdraw this permission in Settings at any time; while it is off, Talki does not contact OpenRouter.

What leaves your Mac

When you dictate with OpenRouter, the recording is sent from your Mac to OpenRouter and the provider behind the model you chose. If cleanup is on, the transcript is sent to the text model. Their privacy policies and prices apply. Cleanup also sends text to OpenRouter when recognition itself ran on-device.

The original recording stays in your library either way.

Costs and failures

Each request is billed to your OpenRouter account. Talki records the cost when OpenRouter reports it and never guesses one when it does not. Talki never retries a paid request on its own: if a request fails, the recording is kept and you decide whether to retry.

Turn it off

Switch the provider back to Apple on-device, or clear the key in Settings. Your notes and recordings stay either way.