Say it. It lands where your cursor is.
A black pill in the Mac menu bar. Click, speak, and your words are transcribed on the machine, shown as they arrive, and typed into whatever field you are in, then checked that they got there. Run a coding agent, and it talks back through your headphones.
Three moves
Speak
Click the pill, or hold it to push-to-talk. Transcription runs on your Mac with whisper.cpp or Parakeet. Nothing is uploaded.
Read
Your words collect in a buffer; the pill shows the latest line. Right-click to open the box, fix a word, take as long as you like. Nothing expires on a timer.
Send
Send types the text into the app and field your cursor is in and presses Return, then reads the field back to check it landed. If it did not, the text stays and the pill says so.
Your agent talks back
Dictation stops at typing. Run a coding agent, Claude Code today, and its replies are spoken through your headphones by a neural voice that runs on the Mac. The pill's switches control it: voice on or off, replies Brief, Normal or Full, and Stop. Installing it is one command, a Claude Code plugin, and the pill grows its extra row of switches only while the plugin is present.
The agent is optional. Without one, the pill is a local dictation tool with the same guarantees.
What must never happen
Five rules, each backed by code and pinned by a test. Break one and the change is wrong, whatever else it improves.
- A spoken word is never lost
- Every piece has a file from the moment it exists, and every hand-over keeps the old copy until the new one is confirmed. Send writes to the day's log before the buffer clears.
- The microphone is never open without something on screen saying so
- The pill writes a heartbeat every 3 seconds; the listener quits if it stops. No indicator, no microphone.
- A turn never lands in the wrong field, and Return is never pressed on nothing
- The target field is read back after the paste. Return is pressed only if it holds the text; if the text is still there afterwards, the pill says “typed but not sent”.
- An edit never erases a piece that arrived while it was being typed
- New speech lands under your text and is kept, even if you press Esc.
- Nothing is transcribed while the mute switch says muted
- Audio is dropped at the source, and the buffer refuses it as a second gate.
£14 a year. Your Mac. Both directions.
£14 a year
A sixth of what the subscription dictation apps charge. Cancel any time; everything stays local.
Local
Transcription and the agent's voice both run on the machine. No audio leaves it; there is no server to send it to.
Talks back
Dictation tools type. This one also speaks the reply.
£14 / year
- Signed and notarised build
- 7 days free first, then £14 a year · cancel any time
- Source on GitHub under GPL-3
- macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon
Questions
Does any audio leave my Mac?
No. Transcription runs locally with whisper.cpp or NVIDIA Parakeet, and the agent's voice is synthesised locally too. No server receives your audio, and there is no account in the app.
What does “verified delivery” mean?
After pasting, the app asks the target field for its contents. Return is pressed only if the text is there; then the field is read again, and “typed but not sent” is reported if the text is still in it. An app that exposes no readable field is trusted, and the turn is logged as unverified, with the sent log and Bring back behind it.
Do I need a coding agent?
No. Without one it is a local dictation tool with the same guarantees. Talking back requires Claude Code today; other agents are not supported yet.
Which Macs?
macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon.
Why does it ask for Accessibility?
It types into the app your cursor is in and reads that field back to verify the text landed. Accessibility is the permission for both. Nothing else is read.
Which languages?
You pick the model. whisper large-v3-turbo is multilingual, about 99 languages. Parakeet v3 covers 25 European languages and is faster.
How big is the download?
The app is small. On first run it downloads one speech model: Parakeet v3 (640 MB) or Whisper large-v3-turbo (550 MB). Both are stored under Application Support and can be swapped later.
Is it a subscription?
Yes: £14 a year, 7 days free first, cancel any time. The source is GPL and you can build it yourself for nothing.
Can I get a refund?
The first week is free: cancel before it ends and nothing is charged. After that, a full refund within 14 days of any charge, no questions asked. Email support@gettalkbar.com with the receipt or the licence key; the refund is issued through Stripe within a few days, the subscription is cancelled and the key stops validating. The source stays free under the GPL either way.
Where is the source?
On GitHub under GPL-3. The paid build is the same code, signed, notarised and updated.
Bluetooth headsets?
Playback works through them. The microphone uses the Mac's built-in mic by default, because opening a headset's mic drops it to phone-call quality.