Yap

Yap is a voice dictation app for Mac. Press a shortcut, speak, and the text lands in whatever field you're using, from your terminal to your browser. It's built by Frigade, MIT licensed, and free.

Transcription runs on your machine through Apple's Speech framework. Audio never leaves your Mac. There's no account to create, no API key to manage, and no telemetry.

• One shortcut: press to start, press to stop. Use a key combination or a single modifier key.
• Pastes anywhere: works in any app where you can type.
• Local history: transcripts are saved on your Mac, searchable, and easy to copy again.
• Works offline: dictate without a connection once macOS has the speech model for your language.

The Frigade team uses it to prompt coding agents, write emails, and send Slack messages. They wanted dictation that stayed on their own computers and worked in the tools they already use. So they built it and released the source.

Yap needs macOS 26 (Tahoe) on Apple Silicon. If you're comparing options, Superwhisper is a paid alternative in the same space, and VoiceInk is another open source dictation tool to look at.

It does one job, and stays out of the way.