Voice & Text
Talk, and your Mac types it
Dictation that runs entirely on your Mac and pastes into the app you were already using. Notchy keeps your voice off the internet, free.
On-device, not “private-ish”
Recognition is forced to Apple's local model. Not a setting you have to find — the network recogniser is never used, so there is nothing to upload and nothing to trust.
Straight into the field you left
Stop talking and the text lands where your cursor was. No holding window, no “copy transcript” button, no second app to tab through.
You can see it listening
The notch grows a live activity with a running word count while the mic is open — proof it is hearing you, and a thing you can't forget about.
Then clean it up, on-device too
Dictated a rambling paragraph? Send it through AI clipboard rewriting to proofread or tighten it, still without leaving your Mac.
Everything Notchy does, for free
- Fluid Dynamic Island animations on the Mac notch
- Command palette (⌃⌥K) — every action one keystroke away
- Knock — double-tap a modifier key to open the notch
- AI usage tracker (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot)
- Detach any tab into a menu-bar popover
- Now Playing music controls (Apple Music & Spotify)
- Time-synced karaoke lyrics under the notch
- Mac clipboard history shelf (password-manager safe)
- Searchable clipboard — filter by text, file name, or OCR'd words
- On-device OCR — copy a screenshot, get its text (Apple Vision)
- Window snapping — drag a window to the notch to tile it
- App Launcher — pin apps to the notch, open with one tap
- Text snippets — TextExpander-style pastes from the ⌘K palette
- One-tap screen capture to clipboard + shelf
- Color eyedropper — sample any pixel, hex auto-copied
- System-wide mic mute for every meeting app at once
- Keystroke HUD for demos & screencasts (secure-input safe)
- Keyboard cleaning lock with countdown island (⌘⎋ unlocks)
- Menu-bar icon hiding — Bartender-style separator & chevron
- Live CPU / memory / network stats flyout
- Open GitHub PR count in the notch (Keychain-stored token)
- iPhone-style call island — Answer/Decline FaceTime on the notch
- Notch Terminal — real VT100/xterm shell in a PTY, its own tab
- Privacy Indicator — pill when any app's camera or mic goes live
- Caps Lock HUD — brief island on every toggle
- Full Charge island with adjustable threshold + low-battery sound
- Alt HUD styles — edge-pinned bar or circular gauge off the notch
- Audio-reactive Now Playing visualizer (real FFT of system audio)
- Custom closed-notch idle animation — drop in your own Lottie JSON
- Drag-and-drop file drop shelf — persists across relaunches
- Zip & unzip files right from the shelf
- Image converter (HEIC, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PDF) + video → GIF
- Run Apple Shortcuts with one tap
- Screenshots auto-staged on the shelf, ready to drag
- Download finished alerts with Reveal in Finder
- USB drive mount island with one-tap Eject
- Apple Reminders quick capture & due list
- macOS Pomodoro notch timer & stopwatch — streaks + 7-day chart
- Resizable expanded panel (width & height, live preview)
- System HUDs (volume, brightness, battery)
- Audio output switcher (speakers, AirPods, monitor)
- AirPods connection manager & battery
- Magic Mouse, Keyboard & Trackpad battery + low-battery alerts
- Quick notes & Calendar widgets
- Camera Mirror (check your appearance)
- Keep Awake (caffeine toggle)
- Teleprompter (Cuely) for Zoom calls
- Focus-aware alerts & native haptic feedback
- Lock screen widgets & hide-the-notch mode
- 133 languages, fully localized
- Native SwiftUI, tuned for Apple Silicon
Mac dictation — FAQ
Does my voice get uploaded anywhere?
No. Notchy pins recognition to Apple's on-device speech model, so the audio is transcribed locally and never leaves your Mac. There is no account, no API key and no server in the loop — which is also why it keeps working with the Wi-Fi off.
Where does the text end up?
In whatever app had focus. Stop dictating and the transcript is pasted straight into the field you were typing in — a Slack message, a commit message, a search box. Nothing to copy across.
How do I start and stop it?
Same trigger for both: run “Dictate Text” from the ⌘K palette or bind a hotkey. While the mic is open the notch carries a live chip with a running word count, so you can always see that it is listening and that it is hearing you.
Does it stop on its own if I walk away?
Yes, twice over. Two and a half seconds of silence ends the session and pastes what it heard, and a two-minute ceiling closes a forgotten one. An open microphone is never left running quietly in the background.
Is it a free Whisper or SuperWhisper alternative?
For everyday dictation, yes — offline, private and free. Dedicated transcription apps go further on batch file transcription and custom models. Notchy covers the case where you want to talk instead of type, right now, into the app in front of you.
Which languages work?
Whichever ones your Mac has an offline speech model for — Notchy follows your system language rather than forcing English, so dictating German into an English recogniser can't happen. If your language has no local model, Notchy says so instead of quietly sending audio away.