Support
Wave Speak turns your voice into text on your Mac. Dictate into any text field, or drop in a recording and get a transcript back. Everything runs on your device.
Need help, found a bug, or have an idea? Email [email protected]. I read every message.
Quick start
- Dictate anywhere. Press your dictation hotkey (default: ⌥ + .), speak, then stop. Your transcript lands on the clipboard. Press ⌘V to paste it into email, chat, your editor, anywhere you would type.
- Transcribe a file. Open Wave Speak's Transcriptions window, drag in an audio or video file, and pick your output: plain text, or SRT / VTT subtitles (sentence or word level). Subtitle output is available with the Whisper and Parakeet models; Qwen3 saves plain text.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really private and offline?
Yes. All speech recognition runs on your Mac, and all three models are built into the app, so it works with no internet connection at all. Nothing you say or transcribe is ever sent anywhere. See the Privacy Policy for details.
Which languages does it handle?
The default model (Whisper) handles 99 languages and can switch between them mid-sentence, including mixing English and Mandarin in a single sentence. For the most accurate results on fast, mixed English and Chinese speech (and for Cantonese), switch to the Qwen3 model in Settings → Models. The full per-model list is in Supported languages below.
Accuracy depends on the language and the model you pick. The most widely spoken languages do best; less common ones can be rougher. If a specific language matters to you, try it during the 14-day free trial before you buy.
How do I paste automatically instead of pressing ⌘V?
The App Store version places your transcript on the clipboard and prompts you to press ⌘V. This is a requirement of the App Store's security sandbox.
Why isn't the hotkey or microphone working?
Wave Speak needs Microphone access. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone, turn on Wave Speak so it can hear you, then quit and reopen Wave Speak.
The dictation hotkey needs no other permission. If it doesn't fire, set a new one: open Wave Speak's Settings, click Change… next to the hotkey, and press a modifier plus a key, for example ⌥ + . (Option and period).
Can I use my own hotkey?
Yes. Open Wave Speak's Settings and click Change… next to the hotkey to record your own key combination — a key plus a modifier like ⌘, ⌥, ⌃, or ⇧ — and choose hold-to-talk or tap-to-toggle.
What audio and video formats can it read?
23 formats, including mp3, m4a, wav, aac, flac, mp4, mov, and more.
How do I make it spell names correctly?
Add them to Hot Words in Settings (names, brands, or jargon you use) and Wave Speak will favour the right spelling. Hot Words work with the Whisper and Qwen3 models; Parakeet doesn't support them.
How much does it cost after the trial?
Wave Speak is free to try for 14 days. After that, a single one-time purchase unlocks it for good. No subscription.
Requirements
- Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer)
- macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
- About 4 GB of free disk space (the three speech models ship inside the app, so there is nothing to download later)
Supported languages
Coverage depends on the model you pick, and accuracy varies by language: the most widely spoken languages are the most accurate.
Whisper (default, built in)
99 languages, with automatic detection and mid-sentence switching.
Show all 99
Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Assamese, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Basque, Belarusian, Bengali, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Latin, Latvian, Lingala, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Malagasy, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Mandarin, Maori, Marathi, Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian, Nynorsk, Occitan, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Shona, Sindhi, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tajik, Tamil, Tatar, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh, Yiddish, Yoruba.
Parakeet (fastest)
English plus 24 other European languages. No Chinese, and no mid-sentence switching.
Show all 25
Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese (European), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian.
Qwen3 (most accurate, best for Chinese)
30 languages plus 22 Chinese dialects (including Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Hokkien), with mid-sentence English and Chinese switching. The best choice for Chinese, heavy accents, and noisy audio.
Show all 30
Arabic, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Malay, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese.
Supported file formats
Wave Speak reads 23 formats (for video files, it uses the audio track):
wav, aiff, aif, caf, flac, mp3, aac, m4a, m4b, ogg, oga, opus, ac3, eac3, ec3, amr, awb, 3gp, 3g2.
mp4, m4v, mov, webm.
Open source models
Wave Speak's speech recognition is powered by three open source models. Credit to their creators, and the license each is released under:
- Whisper Large v3 Turbo by OpenAI, under the MIT license. Built into the app.
- Parakeet 0.6B v3 by NVIDIA, under CC BY 4.0. Wave Speak uses a CoreML build of this model. Built into the app.
- Qwen3 ASR 1.7B by Alibaba, under the Apache 2.0 license. Built into the app.
Show the MIT license text
Whisper Large v3 Turbo is built into Wave Speak under the MIT License.
Copyright (c) 2022 OpenAI
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Contact
Email [email protected] with questions, bugs, or feature requests. Telling me your macOS version and which Mac you have helps me help you faster.