Introducing Gabble: free, local dictation for Mac

I'm Gjorge, and today I'm releasing Gabble. It is a dictation app for the Mac. You hold a key, say what you want to write, let go, and the text lands in whatever app you were in. It is free, and the speech recognition runs on your Mac.

This is version 0.1. It is a beta. Here is what it does, what it does not do, and why it costs nothing.

What does Gabble do?

It turns speech into text in any Mac app, on your own machine.

The basic loop:

1. Click into a text field anywhere: Mail, Slack, your editor, a browser.
2. Hold Right Option and talk.
3. Release. The text is pasted where your cursor is.

For longer dictation, tap the key quickly and it keeps listening until you tap again. Esc cancels. Gabble pastes through the clipboard and then puts back what was there before. If Right Option does not suit you, Settings lets you pick Right Command, Right Control or Fn.

It needs two macOS permissions. Microphone, for the obvious reason. And Accessibility, so it can see the dictation key while another app is in front and paste into that app.

What happens to my voice?

It stays on your Mac. Recognition runs through Core ML with a model you download once from Hugging Face. The audio is held in memory. It is never written to disk and never uploaded. There is no account, so there is nothing to tie a recording to even if there were one.

The default model is NVIDIA's Parakeet v3, which covers 25 European languages and is about 480 MB. If you need another language, there are OpenAI Whisper models too, up to Large v3 Turbo with 99 languages at about 646 MB.

Whisper Base, Small and Distil Large v3 are in there as well. Whisper vs Parakeet has the published accuracy numbers and how to choose.

What makes the text come out clean?

Modes do. A mode decides how raw speech becomes text.

The default is Clean. It removes ums and repeated words and fixes capitals and spacing. It runs on the device and involves no AI. Verbatim gives you exactly what you said.

Then there are AI modes: Polished, Email, Message, Notes and Developer. You can also write your own with a custom prompt. Per-app rules pick one automatically, so Mail gets Email, Slack and Messages get Message, Xcode, VS Code and Terminal get Developer, and Notes gets Notes. You can edit those rules.

AI cleanup is off by default, and I want to be exact about it. When you turn it on, you choose the provider: Ollama running on your own Mac, or your own Anthropic or OpenAI-compatible API key, stored in the macOS Keychain. Only the transcript text is sent. Audio never is. Until you set a provider, the AI modes fall back to Clean.

With AI cleanup on, you also get command mode. Select some text, hold Shift with the dictation key, say "make this shorter", and the selection is rewritten.

What else is in 0.1?

A handful of things that make daily dictation less annoying.

• Dictionary. Preferred spellings for names and jargon, with "heard as" replacements for the versions the model gets wrong. With Whisper models it also biases recognition. Guide here.
• Snippets. Say a trigger phrase, get a block of text.
• Spoken commands. "New line", "new paragraph", "bullet point", "open quote", "close quote", "open paren", "close paren".
• History. Searchable, with copy and export. You choose retention: forever, 30 days, 7 days, or don't save.
• Files. Drop an audio or video file and get a transcript.
• Home. Words dictated, words per minute, time saved and your day streak.

What does Gabble not do yet?

A fair amount, and you should know before you download it.

• No live text. The words appear after you stop speaking, not as you talk.
• Apple Silicon only. No Intel Macs. macOS 14 or later.
• Mac only. No Windows and no iOS.
• No meeting recording and no speaker labels. The Files tab transcribes a file you give it. It does not join your calls.

If one of those is a requirement for you, another app is the better choice right now, and the comparison page will point you to it. It also covers the other free and local options, because Gabble is not the only one.

It is also a 0.1. Expect rough edges.

Why is it free?

Because it is a beta, and because your dictating does not run up a bill on my side.

The second part is the real reason it can be free. Cloud dictation services pay for server time on every sentence you speak. Gabble has no server doing that. Your Mac runs the model. The model files come from Hugging Face. If you use AI cleanup, it runs on your Ollama or your API key. There is no usage bill on my side that grows with every user.

So there is no account, no word limit and no trial clock. I am not making promises in this post about what happens after the beta. What you download today is free and works without talking to me at all.

I have also written up what dictation subscriptions cost over three years if you want the numbers on the alternatives.

Is it actually faster than typing?

For most people, yes, by about 3x on raw speed, not the 4x or 5x you may have seen. The sources are in is dictation really 4x faster than typing?.

How do I try it?

1. Download Gabble and open it.
2. Grant Microphone and Accessibility.
3. Let the default model download.
4. Hold Right Option and say something.

If you are new to dictating on a Mac, how to dictate on a Mac is the place to start, and how to dictate into any Mac app covers the per-app setup.

Then tell me what broke. It is a beta, and that is what it is for.

Frequently asked questions

What is Gabble?

Gabble is a free Mac dictation app. You hold a key, speak, and it pastes the text into the app in front, using a speech model that runs on your Mac.

Is Gabble really free?

Yes. Version 0.1 is a free beta with no account, no word limit and no payment details.

Which Macs does Gabble run on?

Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later. It does not run on Intel Macs, Windows or iOS.

Does Gabble send my voice to the cloud?

No. Audio is transcribed on the Mac, held in memory, never written to disk and never uploaded. The speech model is downloaded once from Hugging Face.

Does Gabble use AI to rewrite my text?

Only if you turn it on. AI cleanup is off by default. When enabled, it sends the transcript text, never audio, to Ollama on your Mac or to an API key you provide.

What does Gabble not do?

It does not record meetings, label speakers, or show text live while you speak. There are no Windows, iOS or Intel versions.