Dictation for the Mac · runs on your Mac

Say it to me
the way you'd say it to anyone.

I'm Susu. I type what you say, right where you were already typing. Most of the work in writing is assembling the sentence, and you never do that when you talk. Everything happens on your Mac, so nothing you say goes anywhere. $4.99 once. The first 3,000 words are on me.

macOS 26 or later · Apple silicon · 4 MB

listening

Why it feels different

You stop composing and start describing

Typing makes you build a sentence one word at a time, choosing each one as you go. Talking doesn't. You've been doing it all day, to people, without noticing.

So what changes isn't your typing speed. You stop assembling sentences and say what you mean, and I write down what came out.

Which is why most of it happens on a sofa rather than at a desk. You don't have to sit up to talk to me.

one utterance · about 30 words · 16 seconds

Where your words go

Nowhere. That's the whole answer.

Other dictation apps send what you said to a server, get the text back, and ask you to trust what happened in between. I don't send it. Your voice becomes words on your own Mac and stays there. The only question I ever ask the internet is whether a newer version of me exists, and only when you go looking for one.

It's also why there's no waiting. Nothing is uploading, so there's nothing to wait for.

CLOUD DICTATION
upload · queue · return
SUSU
transcribe
the same work, minus the round trip

Talk, then carry on

01

Hold your key and talk

I appear where you told me to sit. I never take focus, so the thing you were typing into stays exactly as you left it, cursor and all.

02

Say the sentence

Speak normally, at the speed you'd talk to a person. You don't have to slow down for me, and you don't have to say the punctuation unless you want to.

03

Let go

The words appear where your cursor was. The ums are gone, the punctuation is in, and you keep working without touching the mouse.

The meter

You can see that I heard you

Most dictation apps draw a waveform, which tells you about the audio. My eyes are driven by your voice directly, so watching them is watching the level. One small object is the meter, the state and my face at once.

That's why all of me fits in 64 × 32 points.

reacting to a voice, at true size ×3

Seven states, two shapes

I never write a word on screen while you dictate. Every state is the same two eyes at a different tension.

idleArmed. Not on screen — only the menu bar glyph.
listeningAmber, and driven by your voice.
thinkingLooking up and away while I work.
deliveredA blink and a small hop as the text lands.
nowhereNo text field. A glance at the clipboard.
mutedA password field. I didn't listen at all.
errorSomething broke, and I say which.

Languages

English and Spanish, and more coming

Talk to me in English or in Spanish. You don't have to tell me which, and there's no setting to change. I work it out from what I hear.

More languages are on the way.

en US · 0.94es US · 0.51more soon
both models, one pass, confidence decides

Placement

Put me where you actually want me

Tuck me in a corner, let me follow your cursor, or leave me centered at the bottom if that's what you're used to. Wherever I sit, I stay out of the way. I never cover what you're writing and never steal focus.

bottom center
at the caret
bottom right
it never takes focus, wherever it sits

Never lost

A failure never costs you the words

Dictated somewhere there's no text field? I keep what you said, put it on the clipboard, and tell you plainly rather than throwing it away. Every error I can show you happens before I capture anything, so nothing you said can go missing.

Nowhere to put it
Hello, can you hear me?
Copied · ⌘V to paste
the pill grows into this, and the eyes travel

I can't send your voice anywhere

Not “I promise not to.” There's nowhere for it to go. Your voice and your words never leave this Mac. Not to the people who made me, not to anyone.

Recognition and cleanup both run on hardware you own, with frameworks that ship in macOS. There's no server for me to talk to, no account to make, and no telemetry. Your license key is verified offline; buying me doesn't create an account, because there's nothing to create one on.

You don't have to take my word for it. Turn off Wi-Fi completely and keep dictating. Everything still works, because none of it was ever happening anywhere else.

I never write recordings to disk. Transcripts stay on your Mac, in Application Support, so you can find something you said earlier, and you can delete them whenever you like.

Try turning off the Wi-Fi

I have no users to quote at you yet. Here's something better than a testimonial: a test you can run yourself, in about ten seconds.

Switch off Wi-Fi completely, then dictate a paragraph. It works exactly as before. The words appear, the punctuation is right, both languages still work. Nothing was ever leaving, so nothing is missing.

That's the whole claim, and you just proved it without trusting anybody.

Good questions

Does it work offline?

Completely. Recognition and cleanup both run on your Mac, so a plane, a tunnel or a dead router changes nothing.

Is my audio stored anywhere?

No. I hold it only while you're speaking and let it go once the transcript exists. It's never written to disk, on your Mac or anywhere else.

Which languages?

English and Spanish. I listen for both at once, so I pick up which one you're speaking on my own.

$4.99. Once.

The obvious question when the other one is $15 a month: what's wrong with me? Nothing. I just cost almost nothing to run. There are no servers to pay for, because your Mac does the work. A subscription would be charging you rent on something that isn't costing anybody anything.

Try it

Freefirst 3,000 words

Everything works. Nothing is disabled, watermarked or on a timer. I keep the count on your Mac.

  • About two weeks of ordinary use
  • No account, no card, no email
Download and try it

Keep it

$4.99one time

A license key by email, verified offline. Yours for every Mac you own, and for every future version.

  • No subscription, ever
  • Wispr Flow is $15 a month

You've never heard of me, and that's a fair reason to hesitate. So I ask for nothing up front: no card, no account, no email. Use me for 3,000 words and decide then.

Buy a license

Say it out loud instead

The first 3,000 words are free and nothing is held back. If I don't make you faster, you've lost nothing but the download.

macOS 26 or later · Apple silicon

Features

Everything it does

Susu was built from seven months of real dictation, so what is here is what actually got used — and what is missing was left out on purpose.

It learns your words

Names, product names and jargon you use often can be added so they come out right the first time. No more correcting the same word twice a day.

KlaviyoTailscaleSupabase+ add
a list you own, stored on your Mac

It tidies up after you

The ums and uhs come out, the punctuation goes in, and the false starts disappear — so what lands is the sentence you meant, not a transcript of you thinking. It won't rewrite you, though. What you said is what you get.

what you said, tidied — not rewritten

Works anywhere you can type

If there's somewhere to put text, Susu can put it there. Any app, any browser, any text box, right where your cursor already was.

any appany browserany text box
wherever the cursor already was

Spoken punctuation and lists

Say “new paragraph”, “comma”, “number one”. Say “scratch that” and the last thing goes away.

“new paragraph”“número uno”“scratch that”
in both languages

Download

Get Susu

One file, about 4 MB. The first 3,000 words are free and nothing is held back while you decide — no card, no account, no email.

Version 0.3.1 · signed and notarized by Apple

Will it run on your Mac?

Worth checking before you download, because two of these are walls rather than preferences.

macOS 26 or later

Susu uses speech and language models built into the system. On anything older they simply are not there, and it cannot run. Apple menu › About This Mac tells you which version you have.

Apple silicon

An M1 or newer. Intel Macs are not supported and will not be. The same About This Mac window says which chip you have.

Apple Intelligence on

Not a wall — dictation works without it. It is what tidies up the ums and the punctuation afterwards, so leaving it off means rougher text.

What happens when you open it

Three things, and the first one surprises people, so it is worth saying in advance.

01

macOS checks it with Apple

The first time you open anything downloaded from the web, macOS verifies it. Susu is signed and notarized, so this takes a second and then never happens again. If you see a warning instead, right-click the app and choose Open.

02

It asks to control your computer

This is the big one, and you should be suspicious of it. Typing into another app is not something macOS lets software do casually — it needs Accessibility permission, and that is the only way any dictation tool can put words where your cursor is. You grant it in System Settings, and you can take it back at any time.

03

It asks for the microphone

Once, the first time you speak. Audio is used to make the words and then discarded — never written to disk, never sent anywhere.

One setting worth changing. Susu uses the fn key by default, and macOS also opens its own panel when you tap it. System Settings › Keyboard › “Press fn key to” › Do Nothing stops that. You can also pick a different key inside Susu — fn is just where it starts.

Then it stays out of the way

There is no window to keep open and no menu to learn. Susu sits in the menu bar, and the only thing you do is hold a key and talk.

If you ever want it gone, drag it to the Trash. Everything it kept was on your Mac, so nothing is left behind anywhere else.

Support

Something not working?

Write to susu@farolabs.me and describe what happened. Most problems are one of the five below.

Nothing is typed when I let go

Accessibility permission is missing or was reset. System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility, and make sure Susu is switched on. If it is already on, switch it off and on again — macOS sometimes keeps a stale entry after an update.

macOS says the app cannot be opened

Right-click Susu in Applications and choose Open, then confirm. This only happens the first time.

Susu hears nothing

Check the microphone permission, then check which input device is selected in System Settings › Sound. If another app has taken exclusive use of the microphone, quit it and try again.

The fn key opens something else

System Settings › Keyboard › Press fn key to — set it to “Do Nothing”. Susu deliberately does not swallow the key, so that every other fn shortcut keeps working.

Spanish comes out as English

The Spanish model may not be installed yet. Susu will offer to download it the first time it is needed; it is a one-off download and then works offline like everything else.

I lost my license key

Email susu@farolabs.me from the address you bought with and we will re-send it.