Yap
Private on-device dictation for Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android
About Yap
Yap is a voice dictation app for Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android that recognizes speech on your own device instead of sending it to a cloud service. You hold a key, speak, release, and the words are transcribed, tidied and pasted at your cursor in whatever app you are already using. The pitch is speed, privacy and price: Yap says its recordings never leave the device, nothing is stored on its servers, and it costs $6.90 a month against the $10 to $15 a month that cloud dictation apps such as Wispr Flow and Aqua Voice charge on their own pages. Yap is a product of O-mega Enterprise Inc.
Yap publishes its comparison openly, including where the numbers come from: its measured median of 0.56 seconds from release to text on an Apple M5 Pro Mac, set against the targets and estimates those competitors state themselves, with the note that older Macs take longer. Alongside the paid desktop app the site offers free browser tools that need no account: an online dictation page and an audio-to-text page, both of which download an OpenAI Whisper speech model into the browser and run it locally. One subscription covers every platform, and the plan includes everything; there are no feature tiers.
- •Install Yap on your Mac or Windows PC and create a free account. The first launch downloads the speech model, which needs an internet connection once.
- •Put your cursor where the text should go, in any app, then hold Fn and start speaking at your own pace.
- •Release the key. Yap transcribes what you said, tidies it, and pastes it at the cursor, so you keep moving without switching to a separate window.
- •Turn on Spoken punctuation in Settings if you want to dictate commands such as "new paragraph", and set custom shortcuts or hands-free recording.
- •Review earlier dictations in the local history, which stays on your computer and remains readable, copyable and deletable even if your subscription ends.
To try it before installing, the browser demo and the free online dictation page download a Whisper model (about 80 MB, or about 165 MB where the browser uses the graphics chip), cache it, and recognize speech inside the tab.
- •On-device recognition - Speech and transcripts stay on your device. Yap states that your voice is never uploaded, nothing is stored on any server, and nothing is shared or sold, which it contrasts with cloud dictation apps that send audio to their servers.
- •Dictation in any app - Hold a key in any application, speak, release, and the text lands at your cursor. There is no new workspace to learn and no tab to switch to.
- •Fast release-to-text - Yap publishes a measured median of 0.56 seconds on an Apple M5 Pro Mac and explains how it compared itself with Wispr Flow and Aqua Voice.
- •Languages and punctuation - English and additional languages are supported. Spoken punctuation commands can be switched on, and the free browser tool offers an English model or a multilingual mode that recognizes 99 languages.
- •Shortcuts and local history - Custom shortcuts, hands-free recording and a local history are included, along with automatic app updates.
- •Free browser tools - Online dictation and audio file to text run Whisper in the browser with no account, no daily quota and recordings of up to 2 minutes each, with the honest caveat that a browser-sized model makes more mistakes than larger ones.
Yap suits writers, developers and knowledge workers who want to talk instead of type but do not want their voice sent to a third-party server. People moving off Dragon for Mac, or who find built-in Mac and Windows dictation too limited, get a hold-to-talk workflow that works in any app. Developers can dictate prompts into tools like Claude Code, and the site has a guide for exactly that. Privacy-conscious professionals handling client material will value that recognition happens locally. Budget matters too: at $6.90 a month or $69 a year it costs less than the cloud alternatives it compares itself with. Anyone who only needs occasional speech to text can use the free browser pages without creating an account.
