Hold to Talk

Hold a key, speak, and your words appear right where you're typing. Instant speech-to-text that lives in your Mac's menu bar.

Download for Mac

macOS 14+ (Sonoma) · Free · 4 MB

Hold to Talk is a Mac app.
Come back on your Mac to download it.

How it works

Three steps. Zero friction.

Step 01

Hold the key

Press and hold the Fn (Globe) key on your Mac. Recording starts instantly.

Step 02

Speak naturally

Talk at your normal pace. Handles accents, jargon, and fast speech with ease.

Step 03

Text appears instantly

Release the key and transcribed text is pasted right where your cursor sits.

Features

Fast, quiet, stays out of the way.

Blazing fast

~300ms transcription. You release the key and the text is already there.

Auto-paste

Text appears right where you're typing. No copying, no switching windows. Just speak and it's there.

Custom vocabulary

Teach it your jargon, names, and technical terms. Your custom word list guides transcription for better accuracy.

Menu bar app

Lives in your menu bar. Always one key press away, never in the way. No dock icon, no windows to manage.

Works everywhere

Any text field in any app. Slack, VS Code, your browser, email, notes — if you can type there, you can speak there.

Stop typing. Start talking.

Free, fast, and built for people who think faster than they type.

Download for Mac

macOS 14+ (Sonoma) · Free · 4 MB

Getting started

Open the DMG and drag Hold to Talk into your Applications folder.
Launch the app. You'll see a waveform icon appear in your menu bar.
Grant Microphone permission when the system prompt appears.
Grant Accessibility permission so the app can paste text for you. Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility and toggle Hold to Talk on.
Hold Fn and speak. Release to transcribe and paste. That's it.

Tip: If the Fn key isn't triggering recording, open System Settings → Keyboard and set "Press Globe key to" to "Do Nothing". To use a different hotkey, click the menu bar icon → Settings → Input tab.