100% local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS. Hold Control to record, release to transcribe and paste. No cloud APIs, no data leaves your machine.
Download the latest release — macOS 14.0+, Apple Silicon (M1+)
- Hold Control to talk — release to transcribe and paste into any text field
- Runs entirely on your Mac — models run locally via Apple Silicon, nothing is sent anywhere
- Smart cleanup — local LLM removes filler words and handles self-corrections
- Menu bar app — lives in your menu bar, no dock icon, launches at login
- Customizable — edit the cleanup prompt, pick your mic, toggle features on/off
Ghost Pepper uses open-source models that run entirely on your Mac. Models download automatically and are cached locally.
| Model | Size | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Whisper tiny.en | ~75 MB | Fastest, English only |
| Whisper small.en (default) | ~466 MB | Best accuracy, English only |
| Whisper small (multilingual) | ~466 MB | Multi-language support |
| Parakeet v3 (25 languages) | ~1.4 GB | Multi-language via FluidAudio |
| Qwen3-ASR 0.6B int8 (50+ languages) | ~900 MB | Highest multilingual quality, macOS 15+ required |
| Model | Size | Speed |
|---|---|---|
| Qwen 3.5 0.8B (default) | ~535 MB | Very fast (~1-2s) |
| Qwen 3.5 2B | ~1.3 GB | Fast (~4-5s) |
| Qwen 3.5 4B | ~2.8 GB | Full quality (~5-7s) |
Speech models powered by WhisperKit. Cleanup models powered by LLM.swift. All models served by Hugging Face.
Download the app:
- Download GhostPepper.dmg
- Open the DMG, drag Ghost Pepper to Applications
- Grant Microphone and Accessibility permissions when prompted
- Hold Control and speak
"Apple could not verify" warning? On macOS Sequoia, you may see a Gatekeeper warning the first time you open the app. Go to System Settings > Privacy & Security, scroll down, and click Open Anyway next to the Ghost Pepper message. Click Confirm in the popup. You only need to do this once.
Build from source:
- Clone the repo
- Open
GhostPepper.xcodeprojin Xcode - Build and run (Cmd+R)
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Microphone | Record your voice |
| Accessibility | Global hotkey and paste via simulated keystrokes |
- Launch at login is enabled by default on first run. You can toggle it off in Settings.
- Everything stays local — transcription history and recordings are stored on your Mac only. Nothing is sent to the cloud. You can clear history anytime in Settings.
Built with WhisperKit, LLM.swift, Hugging Face, and Sparkle.
MIT
All models run locally, no private data leaves your computer. And it's spicy to offer something for free that other apps have raised $80M to build.
Ghost Pepper requires Accessibility permission, which normally needs admin access to grant. On managed devices, IT admins can pre-approve this via an MDM profile (Jamf, Kandji, Mosaic, etc.) using a Privacy Preferences Policy Control (PPPC) payload:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Bundle ID | com.github.matthartman.ghostpepper |
| Team ID | BBVMGXR9AY |
| Permission | Accessibility (com.apple.security.accessibility) |