Talkis

Talkis is a lightweight macOS voice-to-text app built with Tauri.

It sits in a small floating widget, listens while you hold a hotkey, sends audio to Whisper for transcription, cleans up the text with GPT-4o mini, and pastes the result into the active app.

What it does

• Hold Command + Space to start recording
• Release the hotkey to stop and process the audio
• The recognized text is pasted automatically into the current app
• A second press during recording locks the recording mode
• The settings window lets you choose language, microphone, API key, and text cleanup style
• Recent recordings are saved in local history

macOS only

Talkis is currently designed for macOS.

The app relies on:

• microphone access
• accessibility permission for automatic text pasting
• a global hotkey

Setup

Before first use, make sure you have:

1. macOS
2. an OpenAI API key
3. microphone access enabled
4. accessibility access enabled for Talkis

1. Open the settings window

When the app starts, it opens the settings window automatically.

If it is hidden, click the floating widget to open it again.

2. Grant permissions

On first launch, Talkis asks for:

• Microphone access - required for recording
• Accessibility access - required to paste the final text into other apps

Without accessibility permission, speech can still be processed, but automatic paste may not work correctly.

3. Add your OpenAI API key

Open the Subscription tab and paste your OpenAI API key.

Right now Talkis works with your own API key only.

The key is used for:

• whisper-1 for speech recognition
• gpt-4o-mini for text cleanup

How to use

Basic flow

1. Focus any app or text field where you want to insert text
2. Hold Command + Space
3. Start speaking
4. Release the hotkey when finished
5. Wait a moment while Talkis processes the audio
6. The cleaned text is pasted automatically

Locked recording mode

If you want to speak longer without holding the keys:

1. Press and hold Command + Space
2. While recording is active, press the hotkey again
3. Recording becomes locked
4. Press the hotkey once more to stop and process

Settings you can change

• Recognition language
• Input microphone
• Text cleanup style
• OpenAI API key

Text styles

Talkis supports several cleanup styles for the final text. The exact labels may evolve, but the idea is simple:

• Classic - neutral cleanup for everyday dictation
• Business - cleaner and more formal phrasing
• Tech - better suited for technical language and terms

History

The Main tab stores recent recordings locally so you can:

• review previous results
• copy text again
• delete individual entries
• clear the full history

History is stored locally on your machine.

Privacy

• Audio is sent to the API endpoints you configure for transcription and cleanup
• By default, Talkis uses OpenAI endpoints
• Your API key is stored locally in the app settings
• Talkis does not require a Talkis account

Advanced configuration

Talkis supports custom compatible endpoints for:

• Whisper transcription
• chat completion / cleanup

If these fields are left empty, the app uses the standard OpenAI API.

Troubleshooting

Nothing gets pasted

• Check that Talkis has Accessibility permission in macOS System Settings
• Make sure the target app allows normal paste input
• Try again in a standard text field like Notes

The microphone list is empty

• Grant microphone permission in macOS
• Reopen the settings window
• Reconnect your audio device if you use an external microphone

The hotkey does not trigger

• Make sure another app is not using the same shortcut
• Restart Talkis after changing macOS permissions

Build fails on external drives with ._* files

macOS can create AppleDouble metadata files on some external volumes. If Tauri fails while reading files like ._default.json or ._default.toml, remove them:

find . -name '._*' -delete

This repository also uses .cargo/config.toml to keep Cargo build artifacts off the external drive.

Development

If you want to run the project locally:

bun install
bun run tauri dev

Useful commands:

bunx tsc --noEmit
bun run build:release:macos
bun run logs
bun run logs:clear

GitHub releases

The repository includes a GitHub Actions workflow at .github/workflows/release.yml.

• The canonical release process is documented in docs/release/rule.md
• Before every release, refresh README.md and create a release review file from docs/release/review-template.md
• Push a tag like v0.1.8 to build and publish a GitHub Release
• Or run the workflow manually and provide a tag like v0.1.8
• The current workflow publishes all currently supported release artifacts, which is macOS only right now
• Windows and Linux are listed in the matrix but intentionally disabled until platform-specific support is added
• For macOS release builds, move Talkis.app to Applications before granting Accessibility access

Optional macOS signing/notarization secrets:

• APPLE_CERTIFICATE
• APPLE_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD
• APPLE_SIGNING_IDENTITY
• APPLE_ID
• APPLE_PASSWORD
• APPLE_TEAM_ID

Without these secrets, the workflow can still produce unsigned macOS release artifacts.

Tech stack

• Tauri v2
• React
• TypeScript
• Rust
• OpenAI Whisper
• OpenAI GPT-4o mini

Status

Talkis is an active work in progress. Expect rough edges while the interaction model and onboarding continue to improve.