Flowy

Minimal local speech-to-text for macOS.
Hold a global hotkey → speak → words appear at the cursor as you talk.
Fully offline. No telemetry. No account. No subscription.

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Install

1. Download the latest .dmg
2. Drag Flowy.app into your Applications folder
3. Right-click → Open on first launch (Gatekeeper bypass for unsigned apps — one-time only)
4. Follow the setup wizard to grant Microphone, Speech Recognition, and Accessibility permissions

Default hotkey: ⌥ Space (Alt+Space). Configurable in Settings.

Requires: macOS 13 Ventura or later, Apple Silicon

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Features

Feature	Detail
Local only	Uses macOS on-device Speech Recognition — no API keys, no cloud
Live push-to-talk	Hold a global hotkey while speaking; text streams into the focused window from partial recognition results
Voice punctuation	Say "period", "comma", "new line", "new paragraph", and related commands to insert punctuation and line breaks
Guided onboarding	First-launch wizard walks through all required permissions
Autosave settings	Changes save automatically — no Save button
Custom dictionary	Word-substitution map applied after every transcription
Auto-stop on silence	VAD detects when you stop speaking and stops recording
History	Browse and copy your last 20 transcriptions
Autostart	Optional launch at login

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Gatekeeper

Flowy is not yet signed with an Apple Developer certificate, so macOS blocks the first open.

Fix (one-time): Right-click Flowy.app → Open → Open

Alternatively: System Settings → Privacy & Security → scroll to Security → Open Anyway.

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Permissions

The setup wizard guides you through each permission on first launch:

1. Speech Recognition — required for transcription
2. Microphone — required for recording
3. Accessibility — required for keystroke injection into other apps (falls back to clipboard if not granted)

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Build from source

Requires Xcode Command Line Tools:

xcode-select --install

make build      # release build → target/release/bundle/macos/Flowy.app
make relaunch   # build + kill + relaunch
make dmg        # package distributable DMG
make check      # compile-only (no launch)

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Configuration

Settings save automatically. The config file lives at:

~/Library/Application Support/flowy/config.json

{
  "hotkey": "Alt+Space",
  "autostart": false,
  "dictionary": {},
  "inputDevice": null,
  "maxRecordingSecs": 60,
  "vadEnabled": true,
  "vadSilenceSeconds": 0.6,
  "historySize": 20
}

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Architecture

Pure Swift · AppKit + SwiftUI · no Electron · no web layer

Global hotkey (Carbon RegisterEventHotKey)
       │
   AppModel (@MainActor)
       │
   AVAudioEngine + SFSpeechRecognizer partials (on-device)
       │
   dictionary substitution + spoken punctuation
       │
   StreamingInjector partial reconciliation ──► focused app
   (fallback: NSPasteboard)
       │
   final pass: amendments / optional local rewrite / translation
       │
   final reconciliation or clipboard fallback

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License

MIT