Sayso
A native dictation app for the Mac. Hold Right Option anywhere, talk, let go, and the cleaned-up text is typed into whatever app has focus.
- Role
- Built for my own use, with AI coding tools
- When
- 2026
- Platform
- macOS 26 and later
- Access
- Not distributed
Right ⌥ hold to talkOn device speech engine0 servers
In short
- The question
- Could I write as fast as I talk, without sending my voice to anyone’s server?
- My part
- Built for my own use, with AI coding tools.
- The decision that mattered
- Everything runs on the Mac. Apple’s on-device speech engine does the listening and on-device Apple Intelligence trims the filler words. No account, no API key, no cloud.
- What I made
- A menu bar app. Hold the key and a small pill shows it is listening. Let go and the text lands at the cursor.
- What came of it
- A working app on my own Mac. It is not distributed, so there is nothing to download.
How it works
Hold the key and a small floating pill shows that it is listening. Let go, and the text is pasted at the cursor with the previous clipboard put back. Double-tap to keep the mic open for hands-free dictation. Escape cancels.
The details
A dictionary keeps names and terms spelled my way. It reads what is already next to the cursor, so it adds the missing space after existing text and lowercases when it is continuing a sentence.