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Halopen

Download

Halopen, on your Mac.

One disk image, Apple Silicon and Intel together. Signed and notarized by Apple.

Download Halopen 1.0.0

.dmg · 165 KB · macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later

Universal binary

Apple Silicon & Intel

One file. Halopen runs natively on M-series Macs and on the last generation of Intel Macs.

macOS 14 Sonoma+

Modern only

We support the current and previous macOS versions. Older systems don’t have the AVAudio and Accessibility APIs we depend on.

Signed & notarized

Trusted by Gatekeeper

Halopen is signed by our Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple. The first launch will not prompt for “unidentified developer”.

Setup

Three minutes, three clicks.

Halopen needs three permissions to do its job. macOS will guide you through each one. The first launch is the only one that takes setup.

  1. 01

    Open the disk image, drag to Applications.

    Standard macOS install. Halopen lives in ~/Applications or the system /Applications — either is fine. Eject the disk image when you’re done.

  2. 02

    Allow Microphone & Accessibility.

    On first launch you’ll see two macOS prompts: Microphone (so we can hear you) and Accessibility (so we can place text at your cursor in any app). A third — Speech Recognition — appears only if you enable live preview later.

    Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility and toggle Halopen on.

  3. 03

    Free the function key.

    In System Settings → Keyboard, set “Press 🌐/fn key to” to Do Nothing. Otherwise macOS opens the Emoji picker every time you start a dictation.

    If your keyboard doesn’t have a function key, switch the hotkey to Right ⌥ or Ctrl + ⌥ in Halopen’s menu.

  4. 04

    Speak.

    Click into any text field. Hold the function key, talk, release. A small halo at the bottom of the screen shows the audio is being heard; the text appears at your cursor when you let go.

For the security-minded

Verify the download.

After downloading, you can confirm that Halopen is signed by our Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple: 

# Verify Apple Developer ID signature
codesign -dv ~/Downloads/Halopen-1.0.0.dmg

# Verify Apple notarization
spctl -a -t open --context context:primary-signature \
  ~/Downloads/Halopen-1.0.0.dmg

The signature should report TeamIdentifier=36D97ZTP6J. Notarization status should print accepted.