1 second
Typical time from the moment you stop talking to your words on screen.
Speak. Your words appear a second later.
kotoba turns your voice into text in any app on your Mac: emails, messages, documents, notes and prompts. It is fast, light, private, and free to download.
Download for macOS
macOS 26 or later. 6.5 MB.
- No account
- Open source
- Native Mac app
Speak in any app. The text appears where you type.
Light, private, and a fraction of the price.
Everything you want from dictation, without the account, the notetaker or the monthly bill.
$0.10
an hour of speech, paid to the provider you choose. The app itself is free. Wispr Flow Pro is $12-15 a month.
85%
of technical terms spelled exactly right in our test. Wispr Flow got 50%.
9× lighter
kotoba is a native Mac app: about 80 MB in Activity Monitor. Wispr Flow used 748 MB in a third-party test.
No account. No telemetry. No notetaker.
Your audio goes only to the speech service you choose. Your history and dictionary stay on your Mac.
- Keys stay in the macOS Keychain
- No kotoba server between you and your words
- Open source, so anyone can check
Wherever you type, just talk.
Write emails, answer messages, draft documents and give your coding agent long prompts, at the speed you speak.
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Write
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Chat
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Browse
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Terminal
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Code
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AI
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And any other text field on your Mac.
Talk the way you like
- Tap to start and stop, or hold. Any key you like.
- Say “press enter” to send in one step.
- Esc cancels, with 5 seconds to undo.
Names and terms, spelled right
- Your dictionary: names, products, jargon.
- Fix a word once, and kotoba learns it.
- Bring your Wispr Flow dictionary in one click.
Your words, unless you ask
- Pastes what you said, and your clipboard comes back.
- Cleanup when you ask: prose in Mail, commands kept in Terminal.
- Polish makes it shorter and clearer, with 8 seconds to undo.
Never lose a word
- Offline? It finishes when you are back.
- Search, replay and paste any past dictation.
See how much you say
- Words per minute, streak and time saved.
- What each speech model costs you.
What kotoba does not do.
In 2026 other dictation apps added meeting recorders, rewrites and smaller word limits. kotoba left them out.
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Does not:
Rewrite your words by defaultIt pastes what you said.
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Does not:
Bundle a meeting notetakerOne job: your voice, typed.
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Does not:
Make you sign upNo account, no kotoba server.
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Does not:
Send analytics or crash reportsOnly a daily update check.
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Does not:
Run a web browser insideNative, about 80 MB.
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Does not:
Cut you off mid-thoughtNo time limit. A nudge at 10 minutes.
Exactly what leaves your Mac.
kotoba is a cloud app: your speech is transcribed by the service you choose. This is the whole list.
Stays on your Mac
- Keys In the macOS Keychain.
- History, audio and dictionary On disk, in Application Support.
- Learning from edits Reads the field for a moment after a paste. Never password fields.
- No account No analytics, no crash reports.
Leaves your Mac
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Your audio, when you stop or pause
The speech service you choose
With your own key. On OpenRouter, only endpoints that keep no data. Grok has none, and kotoba tells you.
A long dictation goes in parts, at your pauses while you speak, so your text comes sooner.
On the recommended route, a short clip of silence or noise when you start wakes the service. None of your audio, each billed as 1 second.
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Text, only if you ask
The cleanup or Polish model
Off by default. Polish runs on endpoints that keep no data.
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Once a day
An update check
You can turn it off.
How it compares.
From each app’s own pricing pages and docs.
| kotoba | Wispr Flow | Superwhisper | Aqua Voice | Apple Dictation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Yes: Free app, speech about $0.10 an hour | $12-15 a month | $8.49 a month, or $249.99 once | $8-10 a month | Yes: Free |
| Native Mac app | Yes: Swift, about 80 MB | No: Electron, 748 MB | Not stated | Not stated | Yes: Part of macOS |
| No meeting recorder | Yes: One job | No: Notetaker in every plan | No: Meetings since 3.0 | Not stated | Yes: None |
| Your own API key | Yes: Yes | No: No | Partly: Pro only | No: No | Not needed |
| LLM rewrites | Yes: Only when you ask | Auto Cleanup, 4 levels | Modes with an LLM | Custom instructions | None |
Where kotoba falls short: English only, online only, a paid speech key, no local models, and macOS 26 or later.
Pay for the speech you use.
The app is free. Speech to text costs cents an hour, and you pay that to your provider.
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Your own key
The whole app, free and open source. Bring a key for the speech service you choose.
$0 forever
- Every feature, no limits from us
- Speech costs about $0.10 per hour of audio, paid to your provider
- No account
Download for the Your own key planA busy month: 2 hours of speech, about 14,600 words
- For comparison, Wispr Flow Pro costs $15 per month, or $12 per month billed yearly. Sources.
Why “kotoba”.
言 to say
葉 leaves
言葉, kotoba, is Japanese for word, words, language. It is written with the characters for saying and for leaves: words are what grows from speech.
やまと歌は、人の心を種として、よろづの言の葉とぞなれりける。
Japanese poetry has the human heart as its seed, and grows into countless leaves of words.
Questions.
Something missing? Ask on GitHub.
What do I need?
A Mac with macOS 26 or later, a microphone, and a key for a speech service. Setup asks for the microphone, then Accessibility, then an OpenRouter key. There is no account.
What does it cost?
The app is free and open source, with every feature. With your own OpenRouter key, speech costs about $0.10 per hour of audio (a promotional price until 2026-12-31).
Why does it need Accessibility?
So it can hear your shortcut in every app and paste your text. To learn from your edits, it reads the field you pasted into for a short time after the paste. It never reads password fields.
Does it change what I said?
No. kotoba pastes the transcript as it comes back, after your own replacement rules. Cleanup, which removes filler words and fixes punctuation, is off until you press its shortcut or turn it on for code apps or writing apps.
What is Polish?
An LLM rewrite of your last dictation, shorter and clearer, for a long prompt you want tidied. It runs only when you press its shortcut, replaces the text in place or copies it, and you have 8 seconds to undo. View Changes in History shows what it changed, word by word.
What leaves my Mac?
Your audio, to the speech service you pick, when you stop; a long dictation goes in parts at your pauses while you speak. A short clip of silence or noise when you start, to wake that service, never your audio. Text for cleanup or Polish, only when you ask for them. A daily update check, which you can turn off. Nothing else: see Privacy above.
Does it work offline?
No. Speech runs in the cloud, so kotoba needs a network connection. If the network drops, it keeps your audio and retries when the connection is back.
Which languages?
English only for now.
Can I bring my Wispr Flow dictionary?
Yes. If Wispr Flow is installed, setup offers to import your dictionary, with the corrections Wispr learned.
Why is it not in the Mac App Store?
The App Store sandbox blocks the global shortcut and the paste. kotoba is signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and updates itself.