inlaut

A tiny macOS menu bar app for dictation that never leaves your Mac. Hold a key combination, speak, let go — the text appears in whatever text field has the cursor.

inlaut is free and open source (GPL-3.0). It is a local alternative to cloud dictation apps such as Wispr Flow, and to Superwhisper or MacWhisper if dictation into any app is all you need: no account, no subscription, no AI rewriting. Website: inlaut.de (German) and inlaut.de/en; a sourced comparison of Mac dictation apps lists where each one recognises speech and what it costs.

• Local only. Speech is recognised on this Mac. No account, no cloud, nothing stored.
• German and English, also mixed. Uses Parakeet Ultra, a post-training of NVIDIA Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3, as Core ML on the Neural Engine through FluidAudio. It handles technical terms and anglicisms far better than the recogniser built into macOS and writes ß. A 10-second dictation is text in well under 0.1 s on an M3; two minutes take about one second.
• Light. The model (≈ 630 MB, downloaded and checksum-verified once on first start) stays loaded at about 50 MB of app memory and loads in 0.2 s, so dictation starts the moment you press the key. Speech recognition does no work while idle and the microphone is only open while you dictate.
• Replacements. Fix what the recogniser keeps getting wrong ("Dum" → "DAM").
• Fallback. Apple's on-device recogniser (SpeechAnalyzer) is prepared independently and used until Parakeet is ready. macOS may need to download its language assets. Selecting Apple releases the Parakeet model from memory once any current dictation finishes.
• Updates. Sparkle checks daily for signed releases, with download and installation started by the user. Automatic checks can be disabled in Settings. No dictation data or system profile is sent.

Design

The app and website use the Sprachimpuls / Petrol & Mint brand kit, with native system typography and light/dark appearances. See design/README.md for the source assets and reproducible integration.

Download

Download inlaut 0.3.0 (German disk image) for Apple Silicon and macOS 26 or later. Open the DMG, drag inlaut onto the Applications folder, then open inlaut from Applications. You can eject the disk image after copying. Both the app and the DMG are Developer ID signed and notarized by Apple.

Or with Homebrew:

brew install --cask tobymarks/tap/inlaut

Setup downloads the speech model (around 630 MB) and guides you through microphone and Accessibility permissions. Release notes and checksums.

Build

Requires Xcode 26+ and XcodeGen.

xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -project Inlaut.xcodeproj -scheme Inlaut -configuration Debug -derivedDataPath build build
open build/Build/Products/Debug/Inlaut.app

project.yml signs with the maintainer's team; change DEVELOPMENT_TEAM and CODE_SIGN_IDENTITY for your own builds.

Tests

xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -project Inlaut.xcodeproj -scheme Inlaut -configuration Debug \
  -destination 'platform=macOS,arch=arm64' -derivedDataPath build test

Tests use a private pasteboard and simulated input events: no microphone, actual keyboard events, or personal recordings. GitHub Actions builds and tests on an Apple Silicon macOS 26 runner without signing credentials. Real microphone/hotkey behavior still needs a manual check.

Releases and updates

Debug uses Apple Development signing; Release uses Developer ID with Hardened Runtime and a secure timestamp. Sparkle 2.10.0 is pinned in project.yml. Debug builds do not start the updater.

• Packages: public GitHub Releases at tobymarks/inlaut.
• Signed version feed: https://inlaut.de/updates/appcast.xml, served with the static Cloudflare website.
• Ed25519 signing key: login Keychain, Sparkle account de.tobymarks.inlaut. Only the public key is in the project. Keep an encrypted backup of the private key outside this repository; losing it complicates future updates. Sparkle's generate_keys -x can export it when needed.
• No release credentials are required for CI. Signing and notarization run on the maintainer's Mac.

One-time notarization setup, in your own Terminal:

xcrun notarytool store-credentials Inlaut \
  --apple-id YOUR_APPLE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL --team-id 7V4K87652E

Replace YOUR_APPLE_ACCOUNT_EMAIL with the email address of your Apple Developer account (no typographic quotes). Follow the interactive prompts using that account and an app-specific password created at account.apple.com. Do not put passwords in scripts, shell arguments, issues, or chat. An existing profile can instead be supplied as NOTARY_PROFILE=profile-name.

Build and notarize:

scripts/release.sh prepare    # archive + Developer ID export; verifies nested signatures
scripts/release.sh notarize   # submit to Apple, require Accepted, staple and check Gatekeeper

The second step also packages the stapled app, signs the Sparkle ZIP and feed, and builds, signs and notarizes the drag-to-install DMG. The script refuses to package an app without a valid notarization ticket. The pinned Python packaging tools live in build/dmg-venv/; they are not included in the app.

• Sparkle ZIP, signed feed and SHA256SUMS: build/release/updates/<version>-<build>/.
• DMGs, separate .dmg.sha256 checksums and notarization logs: build/release/downloads/<version>-<build>/. Inlaut-<version>.dmg is German (folder “Programme”), Inlaut-<version>-en.dmg English (folder “Applications”); the app inside is identical.

To add a DMG for an already exported and stapled app, run scripts/release.sh dmg. This leaves the existing ZIP and signed feed untouched, keeps any completed DMG and only builds a missing language. For an unpublished app, scripts/release.sh package repeats packaging after successful app notarization. Never regenerate or replace a published archive. The DMG is kept outside Sparkle's input directory so it cannot produce a duplicate update entry.

For each release, increase both MARKETING_VERSION and CURRENT_PROJECT_VERSION in project.yml; Sparkle compares the build number. Add release notes either as release-notes/<version>.html (one HTML fragment, embedded in the signed feed) or, from 0.2.0 on, per language as release-notes/<version>.de.html and <version>.en.html (full HTML documents with <meta charset="utf-8">). Per-language notes become signed sparkle:releaseNotesLink entries with xml:lang pointing at https://inlaut.de/updates/notes/; Sparkle shows the one matching the app's language. Build from the exact source commit that the release tag will reference.

Publishing order:

1. Test recording, hold/toggle, 🌐, paste into a native app and a browser, cancel, and Settings on the exported app. For later releases, also test updating from the previous public version using a separate installation.
2. Create a GitHub Release for the matching source tag. Upload Inlaut-<version>.dmg, Inlaut-<version>-en.dmg, their .dmg.sha256 files, Inlaut-<version>.zip and SHA256SUMS. Download both public packages and verify their checksums and notarization. The DMG is the website download; the ZIP is retained for Sparkle updates.
3. Copy the generated appcast.xml to site/public/updates/appcast.xml without editing it (the feed itself is signed). It keeps earlier entries and their version-specific GitHub URLs. Copy per-language notes from the staging directory (Inlaut-<version>.<lang>.html, not the files in release-notes/: generate_appcast adds a comment before signing) unchanged to site/public/updates/notes/.
4. Point the download links in site/public/index.html (German DMG) and site/public/en/index.html (English DMG) at the public images, then deploy the site with cd site && npx wrangler deploy. Update the download links under “Download” in this README too. Then update version and both checksums in the Homebrew cask (tobymarks/homebrew-tap, Casks/inlaut.rb).
5. Verify the live download link, DMG and feed before announcing the release. The package step produces the signed feed; do not deploy an unsigned template to released clients.

The DMG layout is defined in scripts/dmg-settings.py; scripts/render-dmg-background.swift renders the brand artwork at 1x and 2x. scripts/validate-dmg.py mounts the image read-only and checks the exact app payload, code signature, notarization ticket, /Applications link and Finder layout. Visually inspect the mounted image on a Retina display before publishing.

Useful references: Sparkle setup, Sparkle publishing, Apple notarization, dmgbuild layout settings.

Numbers

The site has no tracking, so the only public numbers are GitHub's: release downloads, stars and repo traffic. GitHub keeps no download history and only 14 days of traffic. scripts/metrics.py appends a daily snapshot to metrics/snapshots.jsonl (gitignored) and scripts/metrics.py --report prints the history. On the maintainer's Mac a LaunchAgent (de.tobymarks.inlaut.metrics) runs it every morning. DMG downloads are new installs, ZIP downloads are Sparkle updates and so roughly the active users of the previous version; both include bots and our own tests.

Permissions

• Microphone — asked on the first dictation.
• Accessibility — needed to paste into other apps (the text goes on the clipboard, a ⌘V is sent, and your previous clipboard comes back). Without it the text stays on the clipboard for a manual ⌘V.

The global shortcut uses Carbon hot keys and needs no permission.

spike/

Measurements that led to the engine choice. eval_takes.py records the maintainer's own German, English and mixed takes; the Core ML comparison (Parakeet Ultra, v2, v3 and a Core ML export of primeline through FluidAudio against the sherpa-onnx models) is summarised in issue #5. The first comparison (on technical German, Whisper-turbo-german made the fewest errors but needs ~2 GB and invents text from noise; Parakeet came close at half the memory and speed; Apple's recogniser failed most technical terms and ignores custom vocabulary): Apple SpeechAnalyzer against parakeet-primeline (sherpa-onnx) and whisper-large-v3-turbo-german (MLX), on the same recordings. try_parakeet.py reuses local_stt.py from winidi/dictate (MIT).

Contributing and security

Bugs, ideas and pull requests are welcome; CONTRIBUTING.md says how. Please report security problems privately as described in SECURITY.md.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE. Model and library licenses: THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

The inlaut name, logo, app icon and menu bar glyphs are not covered by the GPL; see design/LICENSE-ASSETS.md.