Free, private dictation app for Mac. Your voice, as clean text.

Hold a shortcut, speak naturally, and release. Reed puts clean text into the app you’re using. Your audio and dictated text stay on your Mac.

Download Reed — Free How setup works →

Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) · macOS 14 or later · English · No account. Version 0.3.5, what’s new. Reed is free and open source under the Apache License 2.0: source on GitHub.

You saidUm, can you, uh, send me the deck before lunch? Thanks.

You saidHi Priya. Um, so the plan the plan is to ship on Monday. I want to I want to go over the numbers first. Send it by send it by Friday.

You saidSo I think. pause I think we should go with the simpler design. pause It’s fine it’s fine to revisit it after launch.

#launch — Chat
Priya · 9:41
staging looks good — anything left before we flip it?
Can you send me the deck before lunch? Thanks.▍
Hold ⌃⌥ to talk, release to writeAnimated illustration, not a recording. Timing is not a measurement.

Speech to text

Speak the way you think. Read it back clean.

Filler goes, a restarted phrase keeps the version you meant, and a thought is joined across pauses. Your meaning is never changed.

A quick message

You said

Um, can you, uh, send me the deck before lunch? Thanks.

Reed wrote

Can you send me the deck before lunch? Thanks.

An email, with a restart

You said

Hi Priya. Um, so the plan the plan is to ship on Monday. I want to I want to go over the numbers first. Send it by send it by Friday.

Reed wrote

Hi Priya. So the plan is to ship on Monday. I want to go over the numbers first. Send it by Friday.

A longer thought, with pauses

You said

So I think. pause So I think we should go with the simpler design. pause It’s fine it’s fine to revisit it after launch.

Reed wrote

So I think we should go with the simpler design. It’s fine to revisit it after launch.

Text examples verified through Reed’s own cleanup code, not audio recordings. How they were checked →

How it works

Three motions. No menus.

1

Hold

Press and hold the shortcut (⌃⌥ by default, or one you record). A small pill shows Reed is listening.

2

Speak

Talk the way you think: ums, false starts, pauses and all. No need to dictate like a robot.

3

Release

Let go. Reed writes the cleaned-up text where your cursor is, in the app you were already using.

Usable text from natural speech

Filler goes, restarts collapse to what you meant, sentences get their punctuation and capitals, and numbers come out as digits. Turn off cleanup to keep the speech recognizer’s original transcript.

Private, and offline after setup

Speech recognition and cleanup run on your Mac; Reed never sends your audio or dictated text anywhere. After the one-time model download, dictation works with no connection at all. More about offline dictation for Mac →

In the apps you already use

Reed waits in the menu bar. The shortcut works in Mail, Slack, Notes, your editor, the address bar: wherever there is a text cursor. Apps that don’t accept direct insertion get the text pasted instead.

Privacy

Your audio and dictated text stay on your Mac.

What never leaves

Recognition and cleanup happen on your Mac, on the speech model Reed downloads during setup. The app blocks the dictation path from the network, so Reed never uploads audio or a transcript. There is no account, so nothing you say or write is tied to a name or email. Anything you choose to send us yourself, such as a support email or a bug report, is yours to decide.

What does connect, and only for these reasons:

  • Speech-model download — about 461 MB, once during setup, and again only if the model files go missing.
  • Updates — Reed checks for and installs new versions from inside the app.
  • Report an issue — opens the bug report form on GitHub in your browser; you choose what to post.
  • Nothing else — no usage analytics, no crash reports, no account.

See exactly what each connection carries →

Getting started

Two minutes to your first dictation.

  1. Install. Open the disk image, drag Reed to Applications, open it. It lives in the menu bar.
  2. Set up once. Reed asks for Microphone and Accessibility access, then downloads its speech model (about 461 MB).
  3. Try it. Hold ⌃⌥ in the practice field, speak, release. Then the shortcut works everywhere.

Step-by-step details, permissions and troubleshooting are on the Help page.

Download Reed for Mac.

Free, with no account and no trial period. Dictation and cleanup run on your Mac.

Download Reed — Free

Version 0.3.5 · October 14, 2026 · 15 MB · What’s new

Apple Silicon, M1 or newermacOS 14 or laterEnglish dictationUpdates install from inside Reed

Reed is free and licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Intel Macs cannot run Reed.

Questions

Before you download.

Which Macs run Reed?

Any Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) on macOS 14 or later. The speech model runs on the Neural Engine, which Intel Macs don’t have, so the app is built for Apple Silicon only and an Intel Mac cannot open it.

Which languages does Reed understand?

English, today. Dictating in another language is not supported yet.

Does it work offline?

Yes. After the one-time speech-model download, dictation and cleanup need no connection. Update checks use the network when it is available; dictation never does.

What does cleanup do, and does every Mac get the same result?

On every supported Mac, Reed’s rules cleanup removes filler words, collapses restarted phrases, fixes punctuation and capitals, and writes numbers as digits. On macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence available, Reed additionally uses on-device Apple Intelligence for better cleanup of harder sentences. Results can therefore differ between systems. Cleanup never changes your meaning and can be switched off in Settings → Cleanup.

Why is Reed free?

Because everything runs on your Mac, a dictation costs us nothing to process, so Reed has no subscription, no account, no trial clock and no paid tier.

Comparing dictation apps? See how Reed compares with Apple Dictation, Wispr Flow and Superwhisper, or with other open-source apps.

Setup, permissions, “where did my text go” and more on the Help page, or write to support@w20.ai.