Quack: dictation that stays on your Mac

Built for the way you already work.

No account, no cloud, nothing to set up. Quack sits in your menu bar and waits for you to hold a key.

Never leaves your Mac

Speech recognition runs on the Neural Engine. Your audio and text stay on your Mac, offline or not.

See it as you talk

Words appear in a pill at the bottom of your screen while you speak. When you press fn again, the finished text lands in the app you’re using.

Finish with your voice

Say Send it to press Return, or Trash what I said to throw the dictation away. Change your mind mid-sentence with sorry or I mean, and Quack types only the correction. Esc cancels.

Control API

Anything can quack.

Other programs can start Quack, stop it, and take the words.

Your app

{"op":"start"} Meet at the north gate.

Quack

Meet at the north gate.

Any app

control.sockquackctlquack:// Control API docs

Dictionary API

Teach it your project.

Point an agent at a folder. It adds the names Quack would get wrong.

import { createClient } from "@trpc/client"
import { invoke } from "@tauri-apps/api"
import { create } from "zustand"

// Rolled out with kubectl once the
// pgvector migration has landed.
export const deploy = async () => { … }

Dictionary+0

tRPCtee r p c
Tauritory
Zustandzoo stand
kubectlcube control
pgvectorp g vector

quackctl add kubectl --heard-as "cube control"

Install it

Open Quack.dmg and drag Quack into Applications.
The file is in your Downloads folder.
Open Quack from Applications.
macOS asks whether you want to open an app downloaded from the internet. Choose Open. It only asks once.
Allow Microphone and Accessibility.
Quack asks for both. The microphone lets it hear you, and Accessibility lets it type into other apps.
Wait for the speech model.
The first time it opens, Quack downloads its speech model, about 215 MB, and shows the progress at the top of your screen. When it says Quack is ready, you can start talking.

Talk to it

Press fn: Press it to start talking, and press it again when you’re done. Quack listens hands-free in between.
Send it: Said at the end, presses Return after typing, so your message sends.
Trash what I said: Throws away what you just said.
Monday, sorry, Thursday: Types only the correction. No wait, I mean, and actually make that work too, and scratch that drops the sentence before it.
esc: Cancels while you’re talking.