Looped Whisper

A free, open-source, Mac-only voice transcription utility for developers. It runs local open-source Whisper models (bring your own model) — no cloud transcription. It lives in the menu bar, is driven by global hotkeys, and the transcribed text is copied to the clipboard and pasted at your cursor.

Apple Silicon, macOS 14+. Transcription is powered by WhisperKit (CoreML).

Features

• 🎙️ Local transcription — Whisper models run on-device via WhisperKit; works offline after the model is downloaded.
• 🧠 Bring your own model — pick tiny → large-v3; auto-downloaded & cached.
• ⌨️ Global hotkeys — push-to-talk (hold) and start/stop toggle, configurable.
• 🌐 fn / Globe key support — hold-to-talk or double-tap-to-toggle (see caveats).
• 📋 Auto clipboard + paste at the cursor.
• ⚡ Realtime mode — live caption as you speak.
• ✨ LLM cleanup — optionally fix typos/punctuation via an Anthropic or OpenAI-compatible API key (stored in Keychain).
• 📖 Vocabulary — bias recognition toward your names / jargon / identifiers.
• 🔒 Launch at login, menu-bar agent (no Dock icon).

Install

Apple Silicon, macOS 14+. Install with Homebrew:

brew install --cask loopedautomation/tap/looped-whisper

Or download the notarized .dmg from the Releases page and drag the app into Applications.

Build & run

# Build a runnable .app bundle (handles SPM deps: WhisperKit, KeyboardShortcuts)
make build            # or: ./scripts/build-app.sh release
open build/LoopedWhisper.app

# Or run with logs in the terminal:
./build/LoopedWhisper.app/Contents/MacOS/LoopedWhisper

First launch:

1. Grant Microphone when prompted, and Accessibility (for paste). Grant Input Monitoring only if you want the fn/Globe hotkey. All are in Settings → Permissions.
2. In Settings → Model, pick a model (tiny/base are fastest). The first use downloads the model.
3. In Settings → Hotkeys, set your push-to-talk and toggle shortcuts.

fn / Globe key

The fn/Globe key can't be a normal registered hotkey, so it's handled by a passive event tap (needs Input Monitoring). macOS maps double-tap fn to Dictation by default — set System Settings → Keyboard → "Press 🌐 to" → Do Nothing to avoid conflicts. Some non-Apple keyboards don't emit an fn event; keep a standard shortcut as a fallback.

LLM rewrite

In Settings → Rewrite, enable cleanup, choose Anthropic (default, e.g. claude-haiku-4-5-20251001) or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, and paste an API key. The key is stored in the macOS Keychain. On any API error or timeout the raw transcript is used instead.

Tests

swift test

Changesets

Changelog and versioning are managed with changesets. When you make a notable change, record it:

pnpm changeset            # write a changeset (pick the bump level + summary)

On push to main, the Changesets workflow opens a "Version Packages" PR that consumes the pending changesets. Merging it bumps package.json and regenerates CHANGELOG.md. To preview locally:

pnpm install
pnpm changeset version    # updates CHANGELOG.md + package.json version

Then tag the matching vX.Y.Z release to trigger the signed/notarized build.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.