Voice is Local

Your voice doesn't need to leave your Mac.

Voice is Local types what you say, transcribes your meetings, and reads articles to you in a natural voice. All of it runs on your Mac. It's free, with no account and no subscription.

Download for Mac 1.0.4 · 26 MB
Needs
macOS 27 or later, on Apple Silicon
Signed
by Bjola Software Inc., notarized by Apple
Homebrew
brew trust --cask orlenko/tap/voiceislocal
brew install --cask orlenko/tap/voiceislocal
SHA-256
5f777ec79513c4eec0856e31aeada10945fd6ccaaca994fb83f34b6b04f93fa9
The Voice is Local icon: an open book on a cream tile. The left page holds three sound-wave bars and the right page three lines of text, in red, yellow and teal.

You've been paying to send your voice away.

Online dictation and meeting tools charge by the month, and everything you say goes to their servers, run by companies you have never met.

You don't need either. A modern Mac can turn speech into text, tell speakers apart, and read a long article aloud in a voice that sounds like a person, on its own, for free. Voice is Local puts that in one app.

Dictation

Hold a key and talk.

Hold Right Option, say what you mean, and let go. Your words are typed into the app in front of you, in most apps. Recognition is Apple's on-device speech, in the languages it supports, English and French among them.

Meetings

Record the meeting, keep the transcript.

Start a recording from the menu bar: a call, with your microphone and everything the Mac plays, or a meeting in the room. When you stop, you get a transcript with the speakers labelled, by speaker models that run on your Mac.

Reading

Turn a long read into a listen.

Paste a link to an article or a long post, or drop in a PDF or a Word document. Voice is Local makes one audio file, read in a natural voice on your Mac. Share it to your iPhone with AirDrop and listen on the road.

Natural voices in English and French, plus Apple's own voices. The file is M4A.

Where your voice goes.

Nowhere. The app has no server side and uses no cloud services for voice or text. Nothing you say, record or have read to you is uploaded.

Stays on your Mac

  • Your recordings, transcripts, dictation history and readings.
  • What the app learns from you, like corrections and speaker names.

Not in the app

  • No account.
  • No analytics.
  • No telemetry.

Downloaded to your Mac

  • Speech models from Apple.
  • Speaker models from Hugging Face, and natural voices if you choose them.
  • The web page you ask it to read.

Questions.

Is it really free?

Yes. No trial, no account, no subscription. The source is free software under the GNU GPL, version 3. If it saves you a subscription and you'd like to give something back, you can buy the author a coffee (CA$3.99, or any amount you choose). It's optional, and the app stays free.

What do I need?

A Mac with Apple Silicon and macOS 27 or later. Voice is Local uses Apple's newest on-device speech recognition, and it has only been built and tested on macOS 27.

Which languages does it speak?

Dictation and meetings work in the languages Apple's on-device speech recognition supports, English and French among them. Natural reading voices speak English and French, and Apple's own voices are there too.

Is there an iPhone or Windows version?

No, Voice is Local is a Mac app. The audio files it makes play on an iPhone, though.

How do I check the download?

In Terminal, run shasum -a 256 VoiceIsLocal-1.0.4.dmg and compare the result with the SHA-256 next to the Download button. The app is signed by Bjola Software Inc. and notarized by Apple.

Can I install it with Homebrew?

Yes. Homebrew loads casks from other taps only once you trust them, so run both brew trust --cask orlenko/tap/voiceislocal and brew install --cask orlenko/tap/voiceislocal. It installs the same signed app into Applications, links the voiceislocal command, and brew upgrade picks up new versions. To remove the app with your meetings and settings, run brew uninstall --zap --cask voiceislocal.

What's new in 1.0.4?
  • Dictation into Rex. Dictation now types into Rex the way it does in other terminals, instead of falling back to Copy Result.
  • Read the selection aloud. ⌃⌥⌘R in any app reads the selected text aloud with your Reading voice and speed. It plays as soon as it's made, and you can stop it from the menu bar menu. Settings › Reading turns it on or off.
  • Show Text. A reading now keeps its text, and its row has Show Text so you can see it and copy it.
  • Cleaner deep transcripts. The deep transcription pass after a meeting no longer starts passages with speaker names that nobody said.

1.0.3 was never released. Its changes are part of 1.0.4.

What's new in 1.0.2?
  • The app updates itself. It asks once before checking, then offers each new version. Earlier versions can't, so download the newest version once by hand.
  • Natural voices read technical text the way people say it: versions, paths, units and abbreviations.
  • A Pronunciations list (Settings › Reading › Pronunciations, or voiceislocal pronunciations set WORD "say as") makes every voice say names and jargon your way.
  • A passage is read again with an Apple voice only when that version is clearly better.
Who makes it?

Bjola Software Inc., a small, independent software company in British Columbia, Canada. How it started: Look Ma, No Ums, on the Bjola blog.

Free, and it stays on your Mac.

Download for Mac 1.0.4 · 26 MB

Buy the author a coffee Optional. CA$3.99, or any amount.