Loqui

A quiet macOS menu-bar dictation app. Press a shortcut, speak, and clean text appears wherever your cursor is — transcribed 100% on-device.

No account. No subscription. No server. Your voice never leaves your Mac.

Install

Download the app — the easiest path. Signed and notarized by Apple, so it just opens:

→ Download the latest release

Open the DMG, drag Loqui to Applications, and you're done. It updates itself from there.

Or build it from source (no Apple Developer account needed)

You need macOS 15+ and Xcode (free from the App Store). Then:

git clone https://github.com/jameslaws/loqui.git
cd loqui
./install.sh

That builds Loqui, assembles a proper .app, signs it ad-hoc, installs it to /Applications, and launches it. No developer account, no certificates, no Xcode project to open — the script handles everything.

Two things differ from the downloaded build:

• Auto-updates are off. The update feed serves the Apple-signed build, which won't install over an ad-hoc-signed one. Re-run ./install.sh to update.
• Permissions reset when you rebuild. An ad-hoc signature changes every time the binary does, and macOS ties permission grants to that signature — so you'll re-approve Accessibility after each rebuild. (If you do happen to have an Apple Development certificate, install.sh uses it automatically and this stops happening.)

Permissions

macOS asks for two things the first time you dictate. Both are required, and neither sends anything anywhere:

Permission	Why Loqui needs it
Accessibility	To notice your shortcut key anywhere in the system, and to paste the finished text at your cursor
Microphone	To hear you. Transcription runs entirely on-device

If the shortcut doesn't respond, grant Accessibility manually at System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility, then toggle Loqui off and on.

Features

• On-device transcription — Apple's SpeechAnalyzer on macOS 26+, SFSpeechRecognizer fallback below that
• One configurable global shortcut — tap to toggle, or hold for push-to-talk
• Auto-paste at the cursor, with a clipboard fallback
• On-device cleanup: filler-word removal, capitalization, punctuation, and a custom spelling dictionary
• Local transcription history with retention you control, plus a menu "Recent" list
• Dictation stats — words, pace, time saved
• Auto-update via Sparkle

Privacy

The privacy claim is specific, and you can check it against the source:

• Transcription is on-device. Loqui uses Apple's local speech frameworks. No audio and no text is ever uploaded — there is no server to upload it to.
• The only network request Loqui ever makes is Sparkle's update check against the appcast at https://jameslaws.github.io/loqui/appcast.xml, which is served by GitHub Pages from docs/ in this repository — so you can read the exact feed your copy is checking. Nothing else in this codebase opens a connection; grep for URLSession and you'll find zero hits.
• No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no account. Sparkle's optional system profiling is off.
• Your dictated text is stored locally, in plain text, at ~/Library/Application Support/Loqui/history.jsonl — that's what powers the History window and the Recent menu. Retention is yours to set in Settings, including off, which stops Loqui writing it at all. Deleting history in the app deletes it from disk.
• Stats are separate and contain no text — just timestamps, word counts, and durations, in dictation-log.jsonl.
• Diagnostic logs never contain what you said. ~/Library/Logs/LoquiVoiceKey.log records events and word counts only.

Security model

Loqui asks for real power, so here's exactly what it does with it:

• It installs a CGEventTap to watch for your shortcut key system-wide. The tap only inspects key events for a modifier + keycode match against the shortcut you configured — it does not record, store, or forward keystrokes. This is what the Accessibility permission is for, and it's why a dictation app can't avoid asking for it.
• It is not sandboxed. A sandboxed app can't install a global event tap or paste into another app, which is the entire feature. That's also why Loqui is a Developer ID direct download rather than a Mac App Store app.
• It requests exactly one entitlement: com.apple.security.device.audio-input. See loqui.entitlements.
• Releases are signed with an Apple Developer ID, notarized by Apple, and stapled, and updates are EdDSA-signed through Sparkle. The signing keys are not in this repository.

Found a security problem? Please read SECURITY.md — don't open a public issue.

Uninstall

./uninstall.sh            # removes the app, asks before deleting your data
./uninstall.sh --purge    # removes everything, no prompt
./uninstall.sh --keep     # removes the app, keeps your history and stats

If you installed the DMG, drag Loqui to the Trash and delete ~/Library/Application Support/Loqui.

Requirements

• macOS 26 or later for the best engine; runs back to macOS 15 on the fallback recognizer
• Apple Silicon or Intel

Development

./make-app.sh        # debug build → assemble + sign → install to /Applications → launch
./install.sh         # release build, the same path users take

Loqui is a plain SwiftPM package — there's no .xcodeproj. Open the folder in Xcode, or build from the terminal.

Maintainer release path (needs a paid Apple Developer account):

./release.sh         # universal build → Developer ID sign → notarize + staple → appcast

See CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.

License

Loqui is free software under the GNU General Public License v3.0 — see LICENSE. You can use it, study it, change it, and share it; if you distribute a modified version, it has to stay open under the same terms.

Copyright © 2026 James Laws.