Dictate Is a Download Now
Dictate used to require Xcode and a build step. Now it is a notarized download you drag to Applications. Same on-device pipeline, no terminal.
2026-07-15
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Dictate used to require Xcode and a build step. Now it is a notarized download you drag to Applications. Same on-device pipeline, no terminal.
Dictate now installs like a normal Mac app: download a notarized disk image, drag it to Applications, and hold Fn to start talking. No Xcode, no build step, and the same on-device pipeline that keeps your voice on your machine.
A few days ago I wrote about Dictate, my on-device dictation app for the Mac. Hold Fn, talk, release, and the words paste into whatever app has focus. Recognition runs locally with Apple's SpeechTranscriber, so nothing you say leaves the machine.
There was one catch. To run it, you had to clone the repository and build it in Xcode 26. That is fine for developers and a wall for everyone else.
So I packaged it. Dictate is a download now.
The app is the same. The way you get it is different.
It ships as a 4.2 MB disk image, signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Gatekeeper opens it without the "unidentified developer" warning, and you never touch a terminal. Download, open the disk image, drag Dictate to Applications, launch it. On first run it asks for Microphone, Speech Recognition, and Accessibility, and then you are dictating.
Getting there was the boring kind of work. A hardened runtime, an entitlements file for the microphone, a Developer ID signature, a round trip through Apple's notary service, and a stapled ticket so the app verifies even when you are offline. None of that is interesting to read about. All of it is the difference between "clone this repo" and "here is a download."
Everything from the first post holds. Filler words get stripped on-device. Cleanup is a setting, from off, to Apple Intelligence, to your own API key. If a cleanup step ever fails, the raw transcript gets inserted anyway, because dictation that eats your words is worse than no dictation.
My favorite part is still that it learns. Fix a mistranscribed word after it pastes and Dictate notices through the Accessibility API. Once it sees the same fix twice, it starts applying it for you. Password fields are never read.
The download is here, for macOS 26 and up. It is free, it is open source, and it is built on a Swift package called VoiceKit that does the on-device speech work. If it mishears you, tell me what it got wrong.