Talk to your agents like they're sitting next to you.
Closetalk is push-to-talk dictation for your Mac. It types what you say into Claude Code, ChatGPT, Slack, or anything else with a cursor.
Runs on your Mac
Whisper runs on the Neural Engine. Nothing you say goes to a server.
Your exact words
No AI rewrite. It drops "um" and "uh" and keeps everything else.
Hold right ⌘
Talk while you hold it. Let go, and the text lands at your cursor about a second later.
Free, no account
No sign-up, no subscription, no word limit. The code is open source.
Free for Apple Silicon Macs on macOS 14 or later. Needs about 3 GB of disk.
Free, because it runs on the chip you already paid for.
Dictation apps that send your voice to a server have to pay for that server, so they charge monthly or cap your words. Closetalk runs OpenAI's Whisper model on your Mac's Neural Engine instead. There's no server to pay for, and nothing you say leaves the machine.
- Model
- Whisper large-v3 turbo
- Where it runs
- Your Mac's Neural Engine
- Network use
- One 1.5 GB model download on first launch
- Account
- None
- Price
- Free, MIT licensed
Hold, talk, let go.
- Hold right ⌘. A soft chime means the mic is live.
- Say the prompt. Talk the way you would to someone next to you.
- Let go. A second chime, and about a second later the text is at your cursor.
Rename the Export button to Download and move it next to Share
Questions
How is this different from Wispr Flow or Superwhisper?
Wispr Flow transcribes your voice in the cloud, and its free plan has a weekly word limit. Superwhisper's free plan includes Whisper models, and its paid plan adds cloud and local AI models. Closetalk runs a large Whisper model on your Mac and types exactly what you said, with no word limit and no paid plan.
Why does the first launch take so long?
Closetalk downloads the 1.5 GB model, then macOS compiles it for your Neural Engine. On an M1 Max that took about 11 minutes. It happens once. After that, Closetalk is ready a few seconds after launch.
Which apps does it work in?
Anywhere you can type: Terminal, VS Code, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Slack, your browser. It pastes at your cursor and puts your clipboard back two seconds later.
What permissions does it need?
The microphone, so it can hear you, and Accessibility, so it can see the right ⌘ key and paste. Audio stays in memory while you dictate and is never written to disk.
Will my keyboard shortcuts still work?
Yes. Right ⌘C, ⌘Tab and the rest work as usual, and a quick tap does nothing.
Nothing happens when I hold right ⌘ in Terminal or iTerm.
Turn off Secure Keyboard Entry in that app's menu. While it's on, macOS hides keystrokes from every other app, Closetalk included.
Does it work on Intel Macs?
No. It needs a Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or later) running macOS 14 or later.
Is it really free?
Yes. There's no paid tier. The source is on GitHub under the MIT license.
Try it on your next prompt.
Download for MacFree for Apple Silicon Macs on macOS 14 or later. Needs about 3 GB of disk.