Mac dictation, verbatim by default

Talk to your Mac.
It types what you said.

Hold a key, speak, let go. Your words land at the cursor in your editor, the terminal, Mail or Slack, punctuated and not rewritten. Polish is there when you want it.

Try it for 14 days See how it works

No credit card · macOS 14.0+ · Then $19/mo or $179/yr

See how it works with Claude Code, Cursor & the terminal →

Said aloud

“Run npm test dash dash watch. Then run N P X prisma migrate. The use effect hook fires twice. Open slash users slash jesse slash developer. We shipped version one point eight point three seven.”

Halopen typed

Run npm test --watch, then run npx prisma migrate. The useEffect hook fires twice. Open /Users/jesse/developer. We shipped version 1.8.37.

Real output from Halopen 1.8.48 in Verbatim mode, measured October 19, 2026: a synthetic voice reading our test script, with nothing edited afterward.

On a phone?

Halopen is a Mac app.

Which makes this the wrong device to install it on. Give us an address and the download link will be waiting on your Mac.

One email with the link. Nothing else unless you ask.

Verbatim by default

It won’t correct you.

A lot of dictation now runs your words through an AI that tidies them on the way to the page. Halopen doesn’t. Your grammar, your slang, your half-finished thought arrive the way you said them.

Want the tidy version? Switch on Polish for that app, and it’s your call every time.

Halopen output, unedited

“It works just as good, me and him went to the store, I could care less, we was running late, I should of checked it first, there's three files left, I'm gonna refactor the parser, this is real important, um, I think the, the config is wrong, irregardless of the deadline, who did you give it to? It don't matter.”

· me and him · we was — grammar left alone
· could care less — idiom kept
· gonna · irregardless — your words, not better ones
· um, the, the — kept in Verbatim; Polish removes it

Same test run as above: a script written to tempt an editor, read by a synthetic voice.

Read the manifesto — the small idea behind a careful tool.

Native

Swift menu-bar app
On‑device

option on Apple Silicon
14 days

no card needed
Verbatim

by default

The shape of it

Three things, done with care.

Most dictation tools optimize for novelty. Halopen optimizes for the way the keyboard already feels under your hands — and joins it.

01

A hotkey, not a gesture.

Hold fn, speak, release. The exact tempo of the keyboard you already use. No floating windows, no toolbars, no “Open Halopen”.
02

Your words, not a rewrite.

Halopen types what it heard, punctuated, and leaves your sentence alone. When it mishears a name or a term, add it to your personal dictionary once, and Halopen passes it to the transcription model as a hint.
03

Native, in the Mac sense.

Built in Swift. Lives in the menu bar. Ready from your configured hotkey. Wakes the moment you press the key. Goes back to sleep when you let go.

Live preview

A whisper-light caption.

Words appear above the recording pill as you speak — on-device, so you can read what was heard before letting go. The transcription that lands at your cursor is more accurate; the caption is your conversation with the machine.

Spell a name out loud mid-sentence to correct it — M-E-R-I-A lands as Meria, not as the spelling.

Long form

No word limits.

Hold the key for a sentence or a long thought — up to ten minutes per take. Release between thoughts; the next hold lands at the cursor and continues exactly where the last one stopped.

Your Mac writing workflow

Mail. Notes. Terminal.

Text lands directly at the cursor — not a clipboard, not a notification. Password fields and password managers stay off-limits by design.

Privacy

Choose where speech is processed.

Use cloud recognition, or on-device recognition on Apple Silicon, where speech is processed on your Mac. Privacy details.

Quiet by design

No Dock icon. No nag.

Halopen lives in the menu bar by design. No popover begging for attention, no second window.

Recovery

The take that didn’t land is still there.

If focus jumps to another app before your text lands, Halopen keeps the transcript. If the network drops mid-transcription, it keeps the audio — replayable from the menu bar when you’re back online. Nothing is pasted behind your back; you decide when it goes in.

Snippets

Say “sig.” Get your full signature.

Dictate a short trigger — any word you choose — and it expands to the full text before it lands at your cursor. A signature, a standing reply, a block of boilerplate. Set it once in Settings; it fires every time.

Pricing

Try it for two weeks. Pay when it earns its keep.

Every account starts with a 14-day trial, no credit card. Pro is $19/month or $179/year for unlimited — two weeks of real work is how you find out.

Dictate without limits · $19/mo Save $49 · Annual at $179/yr

Or try Halopen for 14 days, no card.

Common questions

Things people ask before they download.

Do I need a card to try it?

No. Every account starts with a 14-day trial, no credit card. Two weeks of your real work is the honest way to find out whether it's worth paying for.

Does my audio leave the Mac?

Cloud recognition sends audio to a transcription service. On-device recognition processes speech locally on Apple Silicon after a model download. Account checks, updates, diagnostics and your destination app have separate behavior. Read the privacy page for context and retention details.

Does it work in every app?

It types into the Mac text fields you write in: editors, the terminal, Mail, Slack, notes and the browser. macOS blocks typing into password fields, and some remote-desktop windows and custom text boxes can refuse it, so try your own apps during the trial.

How accurate is it?

Judge it on your own voice: that is what the trial is for. Halopen types what it heard and leaves your grammar alone. Names and jargon land right more often once you add them to your dictionary. Like any dictation, it depends on your microphone and the room.

We would rather be verified than believed.

Halopen is young and independent, so there’s no wall of testimonials. Instead, here are claims you can check from your own Mac in about a minute.

It is signed and notarized by Apple.

Not a self-signed binary you have to right-click past.

$ spctl -a -vvv /Applications/Halopen.app accepted source=Notarized Developer ID
It is native Swift, not a browser in a costume.

One universal binary. No helper processes, no bundled Chromium.

$ file /Applications/Halopen.app/Contents/MacOS/Halopen Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures [x86_64] [arm64]
Two frameworks ship with it. You can list them.

Sparkle for updates and Sentry for crash reports, which you can switch off in Settings.

$ ls /Applications/Halopen.app/Contents/Frameworks Sentry.framework Sparkle.framework
On-device speech recognition runs on your Mac.

After a one-time model download, recognition runs on your Mac and the audit log marks each take as local. Sign-in, licensing and update checks still go online. Privacy details.

And the limits

macOS only; a Windows version is in development and is not something you can download today. Vocabulary biasing works in cloud mode and not yet in on-device mode. A single hold runs up to ten minutes. It cannot type into a field with macOS Secure Input active — password fields, and Xcode switches it on intermittently — because the OS blocks synthetic keystrokes there for every app on the platform; Halopen can report the app holding Secure Input. Check recovery if text did not arrive. It is a young app, built by one person, and the trial is fourteen days precisely so you can find its edges before you pay for it.

The cursor is waiting.

Pro is unlimited at $19/mo or $179/yr. Or start a 14-day trial, no card.

Dictate without limits · $19/mo Start your 14-day trial

Apple Developer ID signed · Apple-notarized · macOS 14.0+

Talk to your Mac. It types what you said.