Support & FAQ

1. Download SpeechButton from the App Store or our website
2. Open the app — it appears as a microphone icon in your menu bar
3. Grant microphone permission when prompted
4. Grant accessibility permission (System Settings > Privacy > Accessibility) — needed for auto-paste
5. Hold Right Command and speak — text appears at your cursor

• macOS 14 Sonoma or later
• Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, M4) — required for Neural Engine
• Intel Macs are not supported
• ~200 MB disk space for the app and models

Click the microphone icon in the menu bar > Settings > Hotkey. You can assign any modifier key (Command, Option, Control, Fn) or key combination. The default is Right Command (hold to talk, release to transcribe).

SpeechButton supports 25 languages with the Parakeet V3 model and 99 languages with Whisper. Top languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Turkish, Polish, Czech, and more. The app auto-detects the language you're speaking.

When enabled, SpeechButton automatically presses Enter after pasting the transcribed text. Useful for chat apps (Slack, iMessage), terminals, and AI assistants where you want to send the message immediately after dictation. Toggle it in Settings.

VAD (Silero V4) detects when you pause speaking and sends the transcribed text immediately — you don't have to wait until you release the key. Text appears progressively as you talk.

Free: 15 minutes of transcription per day. All features included — same models, same languages, same privacy.

Pro ($7.99/month): Unlimited transcription. No daily limit. Cancel anytime.

Both plans are 100% local. Your voice never leaves your Mac.

No. All speech recognition happens entirely on your Mac using the Apple Neural Engine. Your audio is processed in memory, never written to disk, and never transmitted anywhere. SpeechButton works fully offline.

No. SpeechButton collects no data of any kind — no analytics, no crash reports, no device identifiers, no usage statistics. Read our full Privacy Policy.

1. Check Accessibility permission: System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility > SpeechButton ✓
2. Check Microphone permission: System Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone > SpeechButton ✓
3. Make sure your cursor is in a text field before holding the hotkey
4. Try restarting the app (click menu bar icon > Quit, then reopen)

• Speak clearly and not too far from the microphone
• Reduce background noise
• Try Whisper Large-v3-turbo model in Settings for better accuracy
• For non-English languages, Whisper models generally perform better than Parakeet

Some apps capture keyboard shortcuts before they reach SpeechButton. Try changing the hotkey in Settings to a different key combination.