Hold a key. Speak. It's typed.
Tick is a private voice-to-text utility for macOS. Transcription runs on your Mac, then the text is pasted into whatever app you're typing in. No account, no subscription.
$ brew install --cask deepanshumishraa/tap/tick
How it works
01holdPress and hold your hotkey, speak, release. Tick transcribes the moment you let go.
02lockDouble-tap the hotkey for hands-free dictation. Tap once more to finish.
03pasteText is cleaned up and pasted at your cursor, in any app.
Walkthroughs new in 1.1
Show an AI agent the problem instead of describing it. Tick records your screen while you talk, then hands the agent numbered keyframes and a timestamped transcript.
01startPress ⌥⇧S. Change it in Settings → Hotkey.
02showTalk and click around. Hold ⇧ and drag to draw, ⇧-click to drop a numbered pin, ⌘Z to undo, esc to cancel.
03pastePress ⌥⇧S again. A contact sheet of keyframes and the transcript are pasted into the agent in front, in Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or any chat box.
[Tick walkthrough · 0:15 · Safari]
- #1 (0:00) [start] "So this is the deploy page."
- #2 (0:04) [clicked] "Retry does nothing when I click it."
- #3 (0:09) [drew] "And this count is wrong."
- #4 (0:12) [pin 1]
Keyframes are taken when you click, draw, or the screen changes. Speech is transcribed on your Mac. Needs Screen Recording permission.
Models streaming in 1.2
Parakeet Unified transcribes while you hold the key, so the text is ready when you let go. If that stream fails, comes back empty, or takes more than 1.5 seconds, Tick transcribes the whole clip instead.
languagessizespeed
parakeet unifiedenglish730 MBstreamsbest for english
parakeet v3multilingual650 MBfastestbest multilingual
parakeet v2english650 MBfastest
whisper large v3multilingual1.5 GBslow
whisper basemultilingual140 MBmedium
whisper tinymultilingual73 MBfast
Models download once and run on your Mac. Your audio never leaves it.
Details
privateTranscription runs on your Mac. Audio is never uploaded.
formattingOptional AI cleanup with an on-device Qwen3 model, or Groq if you add an API key.
dictionaryTeach it names and jargon. It also learns from your corrections.
historyPast transcripts, stored on your Mac.
nativeWritten in Rust with GPUI. Lives in the menu bar, stays out of the way.