Syrinx

Hold-to-talk dictation for macOS. Hold Right Option, speak, release — your words land wherever the cursor is. Fully on-device, no account, no cloud.

Features

• Push-to-talk anywhere — works in every app with a text field, no plugins
• On-device speech recognition — 16.9 MB Whistle model, audio never leaves your Mac
• Fast — ~0.2 s from key release to typed text
• Small live pill — level bars pulse top-center while you talk, then it's gone
• 7 languages — English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish (auto-detected)
• Bonus CLI — syrinx-transcribe turns any audio file into JSON text

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rodriveiga01/syrinx/main/install.sh | bash

Or clone and run ./install.sh. It installs the engine (cactus-needle via pipx), downloads the model, and starts the dictation daemon at login.

Two manual steps (macOS requires your clicks):

1. The installer prints an open -R … command — run it and drag the revealed file into System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility (toggle on).
2. Hold Right Option and speak once — allow the Microphone prompt.

Usage

Click any text field, hold Right Option, speak, release. That's it.

• Pressing another key mid-hold cancels the take (Option shortcuts keep working).
• Taps under ~0.4 s and silence are ignored; takes cap at 30 s.
• syrinx --key right-cmd switches the hotkey (also right-ctrl).
• syrinx-transcribe clip.wav [--words] transcribes files to JSON.
• Logs: tail -f ~/.cache/syrinx/syrinx.log
• Stop: launchctl bootout gui/$(id -u)/com.syrinx.dictate
• Uninstall: ./uninstall.sh

How it works

syrinx is a background daemon: a global hotkey listener records 16 kHz mic audio while the key is held, the preloaded Whistle model transcribes it in-process, and the text is pasted via clipboard + a synthetic Cmd+V. The pill overlay is a borderless floating panel with live RMS bars. Everything runs locally — the only network use is the one-time model download.

Known limitations

• Tested on Apple silicon; Intel Macs are untested.
• The Accessibility grant is tied to the Homebrew Python build — after brew upgrade replaces Python, re-grant it once.
• Clipboard is briefly borrowed for pasting (restored right after, unless you copy something new mid-paste).

Credits & licenses

Speech model (Whistle) and engine (cactus-needle) are by Cactus Compute under Apache-2.0. Syrinx ships no Cactus code or weights — the installer downloads them from upstream. UI inspiration: Wispr Flow's floating bar. Syrinx itself is MIT.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.