Voice Typing for Mac
Type with your voice anywhere on your Mac: hold a key, talk, and Harker types what you said at your cursor — free, unlimited, and on-device.
Download FreeYou can say a sentence in two seconds that takes twenty to type. macOS has voice input built in, but it's a fixed pipeline: one model, no offline guarantee, and a raw transcript that lands take-it-or-leave-it. Most third-party voice typing apps answer that with a subscription, a word cap, or a cloud round-trip for your audio.
How Harker helps
Harker is a voice typing layer for the whole Mac. Press the global shortcut (Cmd+Shift+Space by default) or hold a key to talk, and what you say is typed at your cursor in whatever app is frontmost: email, docs, Slack, your editor, an AI prompt box. No dictation window, no copy-paste step.
The typing is powered by local Whisper models running on your device, so the free tier is genuinely unlimited: no word caps, no trial clock, no account. It works fully offline, transcribes 100+ languages with automatic detection, and you pick the model tier — nano for speed, large for accuracy on names and jargon.
When you want the output cleaner than you said it, Premium ($7/month, or $69/year — $5.75/month) adds AI writing styles, smart formatting, grammar correction, and translation. Only the transcribed text goes to the cloud for those; your audio always stays on your Mac.
Voice typing on a Mac
Voice typing on a Mac means speaking instead of using the keyboard: your words are transcribed and typed at the cursor for you. Harker does this system-wide with local Whisper models — press a shortcut, talk, and the text lands in any app — free, unlimited, offline, and without your audio leaving the device.
How do I turn on voice typing on a Mac?
macOS has built-in dictation you can enable under System Settings > Keyboard. For voice typing that works offline, lets you choose the transcription model, and types directly into any app, install Harker: set a global shortcut, speak, and the text appears at your cursor.
Is there a free voice typing app for Mac?
Yes. Harker's free tier does unlimited voice typing on macOS with local Whisper models, with no word cap, no trial period, and no account. It transcribes 100+ languages and works with no internet connection. The metered free tiers to compare it against: Wispr Flow caps its free tier at 2,000 words per week, Typeless at 8,000 words per week, and Dictro at 10,000 words per week.
What's the difference between voice typing and dictation?
In practice they're the same thing: you speak, software types. "Dictation" is the older word; "voice typing" emphasizes that the words land directly where you'd have typed them. Harker does both jobs — it transcribes your speech and pastes it at your cursor in any app.
Does voice typing on a Mac work offline?
Harker's voice typing runs entirely on your device, so it works with no internet connection at all. Only the optional Premium AI features need a connection, because they process the transcribed text in the cloud.
How it works
- 1
Set your shortcut
Pick a global keyboard shortcut, or keep the default Cmd+Shift+Space. Harker waits in the background until you call it.
- 2
Speak
Talk naturally in any app. Local Whisper turns your voice into text on your device, even offline.
- 3
Your words are typed
The text is pasted at your cursor, right where you were typing.
Harker has been a game changer in my dev process. It's the perfect companion for AI driven workflows, and I was able to launch Pawcaso Studio in record time with it's help!
Cody Mahan
Founder, Pawcaso Studio
My favourite part about Harker compared to all the other voice-to-text tools is that it's built for privacy... everything stays locally, and my thoughts and brilliant ideas are not floating around in the cloud somewhere.
Tara Thompson
Questions
Start speaking instead of typing
Free, unlimited, and private. No account required.