ParrotAbout
Parrot is a native Mac dictation app. Press a hotkey, talk, and your words appear where your cursor is.
Lives in a browser
Most dictation tools are web apps. You record in one tab, copy from another, paste into a third. Parrot runs natively and pastes directly where you're typing.
Slow, fussy, or locked-in
Many tools feel laggy, need constant connectivity, or gate the good stuff behind a subscription. Parrot is fast, fully local, and free for life on your Mac.
Your audio, their servers
Most tools upload your audio to process it. Parrot runs fully on-device — nothing leaves your Mac, ever.
Parrot sits in your menu bar. A global hotkey starts recording from any app. The transcription is pasted at your cursor - no copy-paste, no switching windows.
Transcription and cleanup run entirely on your Mac — free for life. Snappy enough for daily work, private by design.
An optional cleanup pass fixes grammar, removes filler words, and applies your custom vocabulary and writing style. The output reads like you wrote it, not dictated it.
In local mode, History, settings, vocabulary - all stored in a local SQLite database. Your audio never leaves your Mac.
What we believe
We don't want your audio or transcripts. Local mode keeps everything on your Mac — nothing is ever sent to our servers.
Local mode is free for life — no word caps, no trial that expires, no feature paywall for the daily dictation loop.
Press a hotkey, talk, see your words. No browser tabs, no copy-paste dance, no learning curve. The best tool is the one you don't have to think about.
Parrot pastes into any app - email, Slack, your IDE, medical records, legal docs. One tool for everything, not a different integration for each workflow.
Built by
Software engineer focused on native macOS apps, on-device AI, and local-first software. Built Parrot after fighting with cloud dictation tools that were slow, leaky, or paywalled. Parrot is the dictation app I wanted to use every day - fast, private, and free.
I write Parrot in Rust (Tauri) and TypeScript, and I publish guides on voice dictation, Whisper, and local-first software on the blog.
Journey
Early 2025
Started as a personal script to transcribe voice memos. Glued together a transcription engine and a clipboard hack.
Mid 2025
Rebuilt it as a Mac app. Added global hotkey, auto-paste, and support for multiple transcription providers.
Late 2025
Added cleanup engine with custom vocabulary and writing style. Introduced fully on-device local mode.
Early 2026
Launched publicly with local mode — on-device transcription and cleanup, custom vocabulary, dictation history, and the onboarding wizard. Free, for life.
Spring 2026
Shipped a draggable HUD orb, dictation history with grouping and quick-copy, and steady polish across the app based on early-user feedback.
Summer 2026
v0.2 — much snappier dictation, sharper accuracy, live transcript preview, smarter vocabulary, and simpler setup.
On the roadmap
Cross-device sync, Windows support, and multi-lingual transcription.