Introducing TongueType
I just launched my first macOS app called TongueType. It's voice dictation that runs entirely on your Mac. Hold a key, speak, release, and your words appear wherever your cursor happens to be.
I build small, simple, stable software. TongueType fits that description, and it scratches an itch I've had for a while.
Why I made it
I type fast, but I often think faster than I type. When an idea is fully formed in my head, the bottleneck is my fingers. macOS has had built-in dictation forever, but I never liked relying on it. Accuracy aside, I didn't love the idea of my voice taking a trip to a server and back just to write a sentence.
There are many dictation apps in the wild, but I want one that's privacy focused, doesn't send data to the cloud, doesn't charge a monthly subscription, and gets out of the way.
TongueType uses OpenAI's Whisper model running locally on Apple Silicon. Nothing is uploaded. Nothing is logged. There's no account to create. Zero telemetry. Your voice never leaves your Mac.
How it works
The whole interaction is one key. By default it's the Right Option key, because it's sitting right there and your thumb isn't doing anything important. Hold it, talk, let go. The transcribed text is inserted at your cursor…in your editor, your email, a chat box, a search field, anywhere text goes.
You can also drop in an audio or video file — WAV, MP3, MP4, MOV — and get a transcript back. Handy for meeting recordings and voice memos.
A few things I sweated the details on:
- A grace period so a quick accidental tap doesn't start recording.
- Double-tap to latch for when you want to keep talking without holding the key down.
- Cancel phrases — say "scratch that" at the end and the whole thing gets discarded. You will use this more than you expect.
- Spoken symbols — say "new line" or "question mark" and you get the symbol, not the words.
- Post-processing — for common terms that seldom get dictated properly.
TongueType speaks twelve languages and includes automatic detection, so you don't have to tell it which one you're using.
How I actually use it
Building the app was one thing. Using it every day turned out to be another. A couple months in, it's quietly worked its way into most of what I do at the keyboard:
- Prompting LLMs. Talking to an AI assistant is conversational by nature, and typing out a long, detailed prompt is tedious. Speaking it isn't. I get more context into a prompt because I'm not rationing my words to save my fingers.
- Email. Replies that used to sit in my drafts now get spoken out in a single pass. I still read them before sending, but the blank-page friction is gone.
- Code comments and commit messages. The parts of coding that are just writing. It's faster to explain why a change exists out loud than to stop and type it.
- Direct messages. Quick replies in chat without breaking flow. Hold the key, say it, done.
The common thread: TongueType is best wherever the thinking is already done and the only thing left is getting words out. That's a surprising amount of my work day.
A fun personality
TongueType is minimal and fun. It lives in the menu bar. The recording overlay is small and out of the way, and you can configure its position on screen. There are twenty accent colors including Rainbow Mode. None of these extras were necessary, but all of it was fun to build and, turns out, it makes the app feel like it's yours.
Accessibility
I want to call this out specifically. Voice dictation isn't only a convenience. For some people it's the difference between using a computer comfortably or not. If typing is painful or difficult for you, TongueType is built to be a genuine alternate input method, not an afterthought. That mattered to me, and it shaped a lot of the decisions above.
Pricing
TongueType is free to try, and the free tier includes every feature. You get 30 minutes of live dictation each month and short file transcriptions.
If you want unlimited, TongueType Pro is a one-time $19.99 purchase that covers up to five Macs and unlocks unlimited dictation and full-length file transcription. No subscription. Buy it once, keep it forever.
Requirements
TongueType needs macOS 14 or later on an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer). The local model is the whole point, and that's what makes it run so well.
If any of this sounds useful, give it a try at TongueType.app. It's free to start, and I'd genuinely like to hear what you think.
Update: I've since released a second macOS app, ColorCopy, a minimal menu bar color picker built on the same principles: small, private, and no subscription. If TongueType sounds like your kind of app, that one might too.