Screen context off
Ping Robbie Ambrose about the cube API server logs in content view dot swift.
3 names guessed from the sound alone
Talk. It types. Spelled right.
Press both Shift keys and speak. YapScribe glances at your screen so names and jargon come out right, and types into whatever you are writing in. The screenshot never leaves your Mac.
macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon · 7-day free trial
How it works
Two keys, a sentence, done.
No window to switch to, no transcript to copy out. The shortcut is a chord you already have under your fingers.
- 01
Press both Shift keys
In almost any app, in whatever field already has your cursor. No window to find, no menu to open.
- 02
Say the sentence
Out loud, at normal speed, with the false starts and the corrections you would say to a person.
- 03
It lands in the field
Punctuated, tidied, and in the app that had focus — a second or two after you stop talking.
There is a quieter beat between the second and the third. YapScribe takes one screenshot, reads it with macOS OCR on your Mac, and releases the image — which is how the names already on your screen come out spelled right.
Screen-aware accuracy
It spells the room you're in.
Names, filenames and jargon come from the pixels already in front of you — read on this Mac, and the screenshot never leaves it.
You said · raw speech
move the swift ui view into content view dot swift and ping ravi ambrose about the cube apee server logs
YapScribe wrote
Move the SwiftUI view into ContentView.swift and ping Ravi Ambrose about the kube-apiserver logs.
- 4 corrections from screen
- polish: on this Mac · 0 corrections from the cloud
- uploaded: 0 B
The difference
Screen context on. Screen context off.
One sentence, one voice, one model. The only thing that changes is whether the app is allowed to look at what is already on your screen.
An illustration, not a recorded dictation.
Screen context on
Ping Ravi Ambrose about the kube-apiserver logs in ContentView.swift.
3 names read off the screen, on this Mac
The screenshot itself never leaves your Mac, on any setting.
screenshot: in memory · OCR: on-device · uploaded: 0 B
Your call
Your Mac, your keys, or our cloud.
Speech-to-text is always the local model on your Mac. The only question is where the text goes afterwards to be tidied up — and you answer it.
Local only
IncludedNothing leaves this computer.
- Polishing off, or a model you run yourself on the same Mac.
- On macOS 26 and later, with Apple Intelligence switched on, Apple Intelligence’s own model can do the polishing here — no download, no key, and no network request at all. Its cost is accuracy: it is the least accurate polish YapScribe offers.
- Speech, screen reading and polishing all happen here.
- Works on a plane, with the Wi-Fi off.
Bring your own key
IncludedYour provider, your key, your bill.
- Paste an API key from the model company you already pay.
- Your text, your saved words, anything you wrote for that app on the Apps tab and the terms read off your screen go to them, and to nobody else.
- Or point it at an endpoint you run yourself.
YapScribe Cloud
$10 a packMetered credits, no subscription.
- 100,000 words of cloud polishing per pack. Buy one when you want one.
- Your text passes through our server to a model provider and comes back.
- Nothing is stored on the way: not the text, not the terms, not the result.
Switch between them whenever you like. The app says in one sentence where your words are going before they go. What the model built into macOS trades away for sending nothing is measured on bring your own key.
The price
$29. Once. Not $144 a year.
0 of 20 claimed at $29
- A $12-a-month habit, after two years
- $288
- and still running
- YapScribe, after two years
- $29
- paid once, at the start
What you get
The small things, which are the whole thing.
Dictation is not hard to demo and hard to live with. These are the parts that decide which one it is.
Names it learned from your screen
The colleague in the thread, the service in the logs, the file in the tab. YapScribe reads them off the screen you are already looking at and spells them the way they are spelled there.
A wordlist that is never "corrected"
Save a term once. Nothing downstream is allowed to tidy it into a different word.
The right tone for the app you are in
A Slack message is not an email and neither is a legal paragraph. In Xcode and the Terminal it does not rewrite you at all — a helpful rewrite of a shell command is a broken shell command.
Whisper. It still works.
Quiet speech gets its levels fixed before the model hears it — on your Mac, with nothing to switch on. Dictate in a shared office or next to a sleeping child; normal speech is left at its level.
Five seconds to fix a name
The result stays up, editable. Click into it and the countdown stops until you are done.
What you actually said, kept
History holds the finished text and the raw transcript behind it. No audio is kept.
Updates that just arrive
Sparkle, signed, in the background. A licence includes a year of them.
Built for macOS 27
New Mac, two more options. Old Mac, the same app.
Apple ships a speech model and a language model inside macOS 26 and later, and YapScribe will use both if you ask it to. Neither is the default, neither is required, and the accuracy number below was measured on macOS 27.
Apple Speech, on macOS 26 and later
The speech model that is already inside macOS. No download from YapScribe.
- Free and quick — it is part of the system, so there is no download and no wait at launch.
- It listens in your Mac’s own language. It cannot tell languages apart the way Whisper does, so a dictation in another language — Turkish, say — comes out wrong rather than switching. Whisper takes the dictation instead only when your Mac’s language is one Apple does not cover.
- It gets technical jargon wrong about three times as often as either Whisper model, and it cannot be nudged with your screen’s words the way Whisper can — though your saved words are still applied afterwards.
- YapScribe still downloads a Whisper model to fall back on, and uses it whenever Apple’s cannot take a dictation.
- It is never the suggestion. The app’s model card lists it third, with the language it will listen in and these same costs, and you pick it or you do not.
Apple Intelligence polish, on this Mac
Polishing by the model built into macOS. Nothing leaves this Mac, and there is nothing to install, run or pay for — but it is the least accurate polish YapScribe offers.
- It tidies punctuation and grammar and removes most fillers, but it does not fix mid-sentence corrections ("Tuesday, no, Wednesday"), which the cloud models do, and when it is wrong it can drop words. Read what it wrote before you send it.
- Nothing leaves this computer: not your audio, not your screenshot, not the words read off your screen, not the words you have saved, not what you typed on the Apps tab, and not your text.
- YapScribe makes no network request for a dictation at all — the model is already here, there is nothing to download and nothing to pay for.
- It needs macOS 26 or later and Apple Intelligence switched on. Below macOS 26 the option is not there at all, rather than there and apologetic.
Every other Mac
On macOS 14 to 25, and on Macs without Apple Intelligence, YapScribe works exactly as before: local Whisper on the Neural Engine and your choice of polish.
- The minimum is macOS 14 Sonoma and is not moving. Nothing above is required to use YapScribe, and nothing above is switched on for you.
- Whichever of these is running, your voice is transcribed on your Mac and the audio is never uploaded.
What each of these sends — which is, in both cases, nothing — is in the Trust ledger below — one column for the polish, one footnote for the speech model. Speech models has the Apple Speech row in full.
Trust ledger
Exactly what leaves your Mac.
Not a policy — a table. The same sentences the app itself shows you in Settings before it sends anything, written out for all four ways you can set it up.
| What | Local only | Apple Intelligence | Bring your own key | YapScribe Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The screenshot itself | Never leaves your Mac | Never leaves your Mac | Never leaves your Mac | Never leaves your Mac |
| Reading the screen | On this Mac | On this Mac | On this Mac | On this Mac |
| The words read off your screen | Held in memory, then released | Held in memory, then released | Sent to your provider, with the correction request | Sent through YapScribe to a model provider |
| Your saved and learned words | Applied here, sent nowhere | Applied here, sent nowhere | Sent to your provider, with the correction request | Sent through YapScribe to a model provider |
| What you typed on the Apps tab | Applied here, sent nowhere | Applied here, sent nowhere | Sent to your provider, with the correction request | Sent through YapScribe to a model provider |
| The transcribed text | Stays on your Mac | Stays on your Mac | Sent to your provider, on your own API key | Sent through YapScribe to a model provider, and back |
| Your voice | Transcribed here. Never uploaded | Transcribed here. Never uploaded | Transcribed here. Never uploaded | Transcribed here. Never uploaded |
| Stored on YapScribe’s servers | Nothing | Nothing | Nothing. Our servers never see it | Nothing. Not the text, not the terms, not the result |
| A network request for a dictation | None, or one to your own Mac that no other computer can see | None at all. The model is already here | One, to the provider you chose | One, through YapScribe to a model provider |
The screenshot itself
- Local only
- Never leaves your Mac
- Apple Intelligence
- Never leaves your Mac
- Bring your own key
- Never leaves your Mac
- YapScribe Cloud
- Never leaves your Mac
Reading the screen
- Local only
- On this Mac
- Apple Intelligence
- On this Mac
- Bring your own key
- On this Mac
- YapScribe Cloud
- On this Mac
The words read off your screen
- Local only
- Held in memory, then released
- Apple Intelligence
- Held in memory, then released
- Bring your own key
- Sent to your provider, with the correction request
- YapScribe Cloud
- Sent through YapScribe to a model provider
Your saved and learned words
- Local only
- Applied here, sent nowhere
- Apple Intelligence
- Applied here, sent nowhere
- Bring your own key
- Sent to your provider, with the correction request
- YapScribe Cloud
- Sent through YapScribe to a model provider
What you typed on the Apps tab
- Local only
- Applied here, sent nowhere
- Apple Intelligence
- Applied here, sent nowhere
- Bring your own key
- Sent to your provider, with the correction request
- YapScribe Cloud
- Sent through YapScribe to a model provider
The transcribed text
- Local only
- Stays on your Mac
- Apple Intelligence
- Stays on your Mac
- Bring your own key
- Sent to your provider, on your own API key
- YapScribe Cloud
- Sent through YapScribe to a model provider, and back
Your voice
- Local only
- Transcribed here. Never uploaded
- Apple Intelligence
- Transcribed here. Never uploaded
- Bring your own key
- Transcribed here. Never uploaded
- YapScribe Cloud
- Transcribed here. Never uploaded
Stored on YapScribe’s servers
- Local only
- Nothing
- Apple Intelligence
- Nothing
- Bring your own key
- Nothing. Our servers never see it
- YapScribe Cloud
- Nothing. Not the text, not the terms, not the result
A network request for a dictation
- Local only
- None, or one to your own Mac that no other computer can see
- Apple Intelligence
- None at all. The model is already here
- Bring your own key
- One, to the provider you chose
- YapScribe Cloud
- One, through YapScribe to a model provider
- Nothing from your screen is ever written to disk — the screenshot and the words read from it are held in memory for one dictation and then released.
- There is a fifth set-up: an endpoint you run yourself, somewhere other than this Mac. It behaves like the “bring your own key” column, with your own server as the destination — not YapScribe, and not a model company.
- The Apple Intelligence column is macOS 26 or later, on a Mac with Apple Intelligence switched on. Every other column works on every Mac YapScribe runs on, which is macOS 14 Sonoma and later.
- On macOS 26 and later you can put Apple’s own speech model in front of Whisper: it is already inside macOS, so there is no download from YapScribe, and the row above is unchanged either way — your voice is transcribed on your Mac and never uploaded. The costs of choosing it are on the speech models page.
- The app says which of these is happening, in one sentence, in Settings, before it sends anything.
- Our servers hold your account and licence — an email address, the licence itself, and for each Mac a salted hash of its id plus what the device list shows you: its name, model, macOS version and YapScribe version — as well as your orders and usage as numbers. Never anything you dictated. The privacy page is this footnote in full.
Questions
The ones people ask first.
If yours is not here, the answer is probably in the Trust ledger above.
- Does the screenshot ever leave my Mac?
- No, in every set-up. The screen is read on your Mac by macOS, the image is held in memory for one dictation and then released, and it is never written to disk and never put into any request. When you have cloud polishing on, a short list of words read off the screen travels with your text so that names come out spelled right — the picture itself does not.
- Which Macs does it run on?
- Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14 Sonoma or later. There is no Intel build: the speech model runs on the Neural Engine, which Intel Macs do not have.
- Do I need macOS 26 or 27?
- No. On macOS 14 to 25, and on Macs without Apple Intelligence, YapScribe works exactly as before: local Whisper on the Neural Engine and your choice of polish. macOS 26 and later add two options you can take or leave — Apple’s own speech model, which needs no download from YapScribe, and Apple Intelligence polish, which sends nothing anywhere. Neither is the default and neither is required.
- Do I need an account to download it?
- No. The download asks for no account and no card. The seven-day trial starts when you sign in inside the app, which is also what ties the trial to you rather than to the machine.
- Is this a subscription?
- No. You pay once. A licence covers two Macs and includes a year of updates; after that year the app keeps working for ever and newer builds need an optional $19 update pass. A Power licence is $79 and covers three Macs.
- Does it work offline?
- Speech to text and your wordlist do, always — both run on your Mac. Polishing runs offline too if you have it switched off, pointed at a model running on your own machine, or — on macOS 26 and later — using the Apple Intelligence model built into macOS. Point it at a cloud provider and that step needs the network, which is the one trade you are making.
- What happens when a tier sells out?
- The next price on the ladder starts selling. The rungs are $29, then $39, then $49, then $59, and the last one is where it stays. A tier only ends when that many licences have actually been bought and paid for. There are no countdowns and no timers on this site.
- Can I get a refund?
- Yes, within fourteen days. The seven-day trial exists so that you can answer the question before paying rather than after.
Stop spelling names for a machine.
Download it, talk to it for a week, and decide. No card, no account to get the build — the trial starts when you sign in inside the app.
Apple Silicon · macOS 14 or later · screenshot uploaded: 0 B