Yap – OSS on-device voice dictation for macOS with no model to download
Hey HN! I wanted to share this OSS project I've been working on. It's called Yap and its a small menu-bar app for macOS that does voice to text for any input. You'll set a hotkey, press it, talk, press it again, and the text gets pasted into whatever field you were in. Everything runs locally and never leaves your computer. Fully OSS and MIT licensed. With macOS 26, Apple recently added two new APIs, SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriber, that do streaming on-device speech to text using models the OS ships and manages. So the app ships no model of its own and loads nothing before the first…
Yap – OSS on-device voice dictation for macOS with no model to download launched on July 27, 2026 with 104 votes, #398 of 24,623 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.
In plain words
Yap is a macOS menu-bar app that converts speech to text entirely on-device using Apple's built-in speech recognition APIs. Users set a hotkey, press it to record, speak, then press again to paste the transcribed text into any input field. The open-source tool requires no model downloads and keeps all audio local, never sending data elsewhere. It leverages macOS 26's SpeechTranscriber and SpeechAnalyzer APIs for fast, accurate transcription without external dependencies or costs.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Free, open source voice dictation for macOS. On-device transcription with Apple's Speech framework. No cloud/no API keys/no account. - FrigadeHQ/yap
Blazing-fast voice dictation for macOS that works anywhere you can type. Press a shortcut, talk, press it again. Your words land in whatever text field you were using. No account, no API key, no audio leaving your machine. Yap lives in your menu bar and waits for a shortcut. Trigger it and a small window appears near the bottom of the screen with a live waveform and a running preview of what you have said so far. Press the shortcut again and the text gets pasted into the app you were already working in. Every transcript is saved locally, so you can go back and copy something again later. The default shortcut is ⌘⇧D . You can rebind it, or set a single modifier key instead. Tapping right…from github.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey HN! I wanted to share this OSS project I've been working on. It's called Yap and its a small menu-bar app for macOS that does voice to text for any input. You'll set a hotkey, press it, talk, press it again, and the text gets pasted into whatever field you were in. Everything runs locally and never leaves your…
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SpokeMar 2026 · usespoke.app · ▲102Dictate into any Mac app by holding a key. Spoke runs fully on-device using local AI — no cloud, no account, no subscription. $9.99 one-time.
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