Sayso

Sayso is a dictation app for macOS, Windows, and Linux. You press a key, speak, and Sayso writes the text into the app you are using. Speech recognition runs on your computer: on the Neural Engine of a Mac, and on the processor of a Windows or Linux computer. Nothing leaves the computer unless you choose a cloud model or turn on an AI style with a cloud provider.

Sayso is written in Rust with GPUI. On macOS the speech engine is a Swift program that uses WhisperKit and FluidAudio. On Windows it is a Rust program that uses transcribe-rs (ONNX Runtime and whisper.cpp). On Linux it is a Rust program that uses sherpa-onnx. The same developer made Pindrop.

What Sayso does

• Dictation into any app. Option+Space (Ctrl+Space on Windows, Ctrl+Alt+Space on Linux) starts a dictation, and the same key stops it. You can also set a push-to-talk key. Sayso pastes the text into the focused app and then restores your clipboard.
• Live preview. An overlay shows a waveform, a timer, and the words while you speak.
• Local models. On macOS: Parakeet, Nemotron, Cohere Transcribe, Canary, SenseVoice, Paraformer, eight Whisper variants, and Apple Speech on macOS 26. On Windows: Parakeet TDT v2 and v3, and six Whisper variants. On Linux: Parakeet, Whisper, SenseVoice, Moonshine, and a streaming Zipformer. You download the models that you want in the Models page.
• Cloud models, if you want them. OpenAI, Groq, ElevenLabs, Deepgram, AssemblyAI, Mistral, or any server with the OpenAI transcription API. You use your own API key.
• AI styles. A style edits the transcript with a prompt, for example Clean, Polished, Message, Email, or Notes. A style uses an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, the Claude CLI, or the Codex CLI. Raw is the style with no AI. Each style is one TOML file that you can edit. All styles share a base prompt that removes filler words, applies your self-corrections ("no wait, Friday"), writes numbers as digits, and puts a word that you spell out in place of the wrong one. The built-in styles keep your own words: your slang and your contractions stay. You can edit the base prompt and reset it.
• Style by app and site. A style can list the apps and websites that use it, so Mail gets Email and a chat app gets Message with no action from you. This is off until you turn it on in Settings › Dictation. Sayso reads the website on macOS and Windows. On Linux it works by app only, and not on GNOME or KDE with Wayland.
• Dictionary. Words bias the recognition toward names and terms. Replacements change text after transcription, for example "git hub" to "GitHub".
• History. Sayso stores each dictation with its transcript, its final text, and its audio. Text stays until you delete it. Audio expires after 30 days by default.
• Import from Pindrop. If you used Pindrop on your Mac, Sayso copies your dictations, dictionary, and prompt presets. Find it at the end of onboarding and in Settings › History and privacy.
• No lost text. If the insertion or the AI style fails, the text stays on the screen and in History.
• Config as a file. All settings are in config.toml, and Sayso reloads the file when you save it.

CONTEXT.md defines the terms.

Install

Supported platforms

Select a button to download the file of the newest release. The Releases page has all files, each with a .sha256 file.

Linux runs on X11 and on Wayland. docs/linux.md lists what works on each desktop.

macOS

With Homebrew:

brew install --cask watzon/tap/sayso

Or by hand:

1. Download Sayso-<version>-macos-arm64.dmg with the button above.
2. Open the DMG and move Sayso to the Applications folder.
3. Open Sayso. Onboarding starts.

The DMG is signed with the Developer ID of Watzon Ventures LLC and notarized by Apple. Each release also has a .sha256 file. To check your download:

shasum -a 256 -c Sayso-<version>-macos-arm64.dmg.sha256

Windows

1. Download Sayso-<version>-windows-x64-setup.exe with the button above.
2. Open it. It installs Sayso for your user account, without administrator rights.
3. Sayso starts after the install. Onboarding starts.

To check your download, compare the hash with the .sha256 file:

(Get-FileHash Sayso-<version>-windows-x64-setup.exe).Hash

If the installer is not signed, Windows SmartScreen asks first. Select More info › Run anyway.

Linux

1. Download the file for your system with a button above. Each file is sayso-<version>-linux-<arch> with one of these endings, and <arch> is x86_64 or aarch64.

   File	System	Install
   .deb	Debian 12 or later, Ubuntu 22.04 or later	sudo apt install ./sayso-<version>-linux-<arch>.deb
   .rpm	Fedora, openSUSE, and the RHEL 10 family	sudo dnf install ./sayso-<version>-linux-<arch>.rpm (openSUSE: sudo zypper install)
   AUR	Arch Linux and systems based on it	yay -S sayso-bin, or another AUR helper
   Nix flake	NixOS, and Nix on other distributions	nix run github:watzon/sayso. docs/linux.md has the NixOS configuration.
   .flatpak	Any distribution with Flatpak	flatpak install --user ./sayso-<version>-linux-<arch>.flatpak
   .AppImage	Other distributions, no install	chmod +x the file, then start it
   .tar.gz	Other distributions	Unpack it and run ./install.sh. Sayso goes to ~/.local. sudo ./install.sh --system installs it for all users, with the udev rule for Wayland key input.

2. Open Sayso from your app menu, or start the AppImage. Onboarding starts.

The .deb, the .rpm, the AppImage, and the tarball need glibc 2.35 or later. The Flatpak brings its own libraries. docs/linux.md lists the tested distributions and has the details for each desktop.

First start

1. Choose a model and download it. The default, Parakeet Unified, is about 1.3 GB.
2. Allow the microphone and, on macOS, Accessibility. Sayso needs Accessibility to paste text into other apps. Windows needs no extra permission. On Linux, docs/linux.md lists the permissions for each desktop.
3. Press Option+Space (Ctrl+Space on Windows, Ctrl+Alt+Space on Linux), speak, and press the key again.

Privacy

With a local model and the Raw style, your speech and your text stay on the computer. There is no telemetry.

The official build also looks for a new version when it starts and one time each day. It gets one file from the Releases page of this repository on GitHub. The request names your Sayso version and your system (for example Sayso/0.3.0 (macos; aarch64)), and GitHub sees your IP address. It has no identifier of you or your computer. To stop these checks, turn off Settings › General › Check for updates. A build from source makes no such request.

The Models page and the Styles page label each cloud destination. Your API keys are in the macOS Keychain, in Windows Credential Manager, or in the Secret Service keyring on Linux.

License and price

The source code is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3. You can read it, change it, and build it for yourself at no cost.

The official build is the signed and notarized app. It is free, and it needs no license key. Sayso is paid for by the people who use it: the download page at justsayso.app asks what you want to pay, and $0 is a valid answer.

The name Sayso and the app icon are not part of the license. If you publish a changed version, give it another name and another icon.

Support Sayso

Sayso has no price, no ads, and no telemetry. The people who use it pay for the work on it.

If you got Sayso from GitHub (a release file, the Nix flake, or a build from source), nothing asked you what you want to pay. If Sayso is useful to you, sponsor its developer:

A one-time amount and a monthly amount are both possible. A sponsorship gives you no extra features: each build of Sayso is the full app.

Build from source

macOS

You need Xcode 16 or later and Rust 1.98.1. rust-toolchain.toml selects the Rust version.

git clone https://github.com/watzon/sayso.git
cd sayso
SAYSO_SIGN_IDENTITY=- scripts/bundle.sh
open build/Sayso.app

SAYSO_SIGN_IDENTITY=- makes an ad hoc signature, which needs no Apple developer account. With an ad hoc signature, macOS asks for the microphone and Accessibility again after each rebuild. To keep the grants, set SAYSO_SIGN_IDENTITY to the name of your own signing certificate.

Windows

You need the Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools (the "Desktop development with C++" workload and a Windows SDK), CMake, LLVM (for libclang; set LIBCLANG_PATH when it is not on PATH), and Rust 1.98.1.

git clone https://github.com/watzon/sayso.git
cd sayso
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts\bundle-windows.ps1
build\windows\Sayso\Sayso.exe

Add -Installer to also make the installer in dist\. That needs Inno Setup 6.

Linux

You need the packages in scripts/linux-deps.sh (Debian and Ubuntu names) and Rust 1.98.1.

git clone https://github.com/watzon/sayso.git
cd sayso
scripts/linux-deps.sh
scripts/bundle-linux.sh

The script makes build/sayso-<version>-linux-<arch>.tar.gz. Unpack it and run ./install.sh. To make the .deb, the .rpm, the AppImage, and the Flatpak from that tarball, run scripts/package-linux.sh build/sayso-<version>-linux-<arch>.tar.gz.

CONTRIBUTING.md has the development commands, the checks, and the layout of the code.

Files on disk

On all three, ~/.config/sayso wins for the config when it exists, and $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, $XDG_DATA_HOME, and $XDG_CACHE_HOME win over all of them.

API keys are in the Keychain (macOS), in Windows Credential Manager, or in the Secret Service keyring (Linux), under dev.sayso.Sayso. The Windows uninstaller keeps your history, models, and settings. To remove them too, delete the two Sayso folders above.

Help and contributions

• To report a bug or ask for a feature, open an issue.
• To report a security problem, follow SECURITY.md. Do not open a public issue.
• To change the code, read CONTRIBUTING.md.

More documents

• docs/plan.md: decisions and milestones.
• docs/research.md: research and sources.
• docs/releasing.md: how to make a release.
• docs/linux.md: Sayso on each Linux desktop.
• docs/porting.md: the platform seams, for the next ports.