{ "schema": "tesign-radar/item/1", "generated_at": "2026-09-17T01:56:13.055Z", "lang": "en", "slug": "yap", "url": "https://tesign.com/en/item/yap/", "alternates": { "ko": { "html": "https://tesign.com/item/yap/", "json": "https://tesign.com/item/yap/index.json", "markdown": "https://tesign.com/item/yap/index.md" }, "en": { "html": "https://tesign.com/en/item/yap/", "json": "https://tesign.com/en/item/yap/index.json", "markdown": "https://tesign.com/en/item/yap/index.md" } }, "name": "Yap", "use_label": "On-device dictation for Mac users", "one_liner": "Press a shortcut, talk, text lands in any macOS field; on-device, no account or API key.", "text": { "why": "macOS 26 added the SpeechAnalyzer and SpeechTranscriber APIs, which do on-device streaming speech to text with models the OS ships and manages. Yap uses only that path, so it downloads no model, weighs 4 MB, idles at about 60 MB of memory and contains no network code at all. In the benchmark the README cites (5,559 LibriSpeech clips), Apple's model scored a 2.12% word error rate on clean audio against 3.74% for Whisper Small, about three times faster.", "take": "A case for using the speech recognition already in the OS instead of shipping a model: lighter, and private by construction.", "build": [ "At roughly three thousand lines of Swift it is easy to read and modify: keep the `RecordingCoordinator` state machine and add a language picker or an app-specific paste path to make your own dictation tool." ], "who": [ { "role": "Developers prompting coding agents", "situation": "dictate into terminals and editors, preview before inserting" }, { "role": "People writing email and Slack all day", "situation": "sentences faster than typing" }, { "role": "Users who do not want audio leaving the machine", "situation": "dictation with zero network calls" } ], "start": [ { "command": false, "text": "brew install --cask frigadehq/tap/yap" }, { "command": false, "text": "brew upgrade --cask yap # to update later" }, { "command": false, "text": "# or download the .dmg from https://frigade.com/yap and drag it into Applications" }, { "command": false, "text": "Build from source (Xcode 26): git clone https://github.com/FrigadeHQ/yap.git && cd yap && ./install.sh" } ], "caveat": [ "MIT licence. macOS 26 Tahoe or later on Apple Silicon only; Intel Macs are not supported (the older 0.1.4 Intel build sends audio to Apple's servers). Needs four permissions — Microphone, Speech Recognition, Accessibility, Automation — and Accessibility must be switched on by hand. Language follows the system locale; there is no language picker yet. Free." ] }, "cta": { "type": "install", "label": "INSTALL", "url": "https://frigade.com/yap" }, "ready": "install", "categories": [ "productivity", "ai" ], "categories_confirmed": true, "tags": [ "dictation", "speech-to-text", "macos", "on-device", "swift", "menu-bar" ], "platform": [ "macos" ], "license": { "spdx": "MIT", "scope": "permissive", "scope_text": "Use, change and redistribute, commercially too. Keep the notice.", "url": "https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT.html", "note": null, "open_source": true }, "language": "Swift", "source_urls": { "canonical": "https://frigade.com/yap", "github": "https://github.com/frigadehq/yap", "huggingface": null, "app_store": null, "sightings": [ { "source": "showhn", "url": "https://github.com/FrigadeHQ/yap", "posted_at": "2026-07-27T18:36:02.000Z", "hn_url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49073834" } ] }, "numbers": { "as_of": "2026-09-16T21:00:00.000Z", "stars": 392, "stars_unit": "GitHub stars", "stars_checked_at": "2026-09-15T19:35:30.662Z", "stars_observed_since_check": 0, "star_delta_24h": null, "star_delta_7d": null, "star_delta_30d": null, "star_delta_unit": "GitHub stars gained in the window, GH Archive events summed to as_of", "spark_14d": [ null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null ], "hf_likes": null, "hf_likes_observed_at": null, "hn_points": 104, "hn_points_observed_at": "2026-09-13T14:52:26.821Z", "store": null, "method": "Star total = the value last checked on GitHub (stars_checked_at) + increases observed via GH Archive since. The 24h · 7d · 30d gains are GH Archive hourly events summed to the reference time (as_of). No score of ours." }, "ranks": null, "activity": { "pushed_at": "2026-09-15T00:08:43.000Z", "owner_type": "Organization", "open_issues": 7, "contributors": 6, "releases_count": 13, "latest_release": { "tag": "v0.1.12", "published_at": "2026-09-15T00:08:43.000Z", "prerelease": false }, "checked_at": "2026-09-15T19:35:30.662Z", "core_checked_at": "2026-09-15T19:35:30.662Z" }, "signals": [ { "kind": "back", "label": "BACK CATALOG", "value": null } ], "images": { "og": "https://tesign.com/img/yap-6c42099287.png", "cover": "https://tesign.com/img/yap-6c42099287.png", "cover_width": 2400, "cover_height": 1260, "gallery": [ "https://tesign.com/img/yap-6c42099287.png" ], "alt": "The Yap dictation window near the bottom of the screen with a live waveform and a running transcript preview", "tier": 1 }, "dates": { "first_seen_at": "2026-09-13T14:52:26.821Z", "source_created_at": "2026-07-27T18:36:02.000Z", "discovery_hours": 1148.273561388889, "launch_signal_at": "2026-07-27T18:36:02.000Z", "kept_at": "2026-09-14T19:27:43.572Z", "first_published_at": "2026-09-14T19:27:43.743Z", "updated_at": "2026-09-15T04:36:57.060Z", "ingestion_mode": "backfill" }, "notes": [ "This file was produced by the same build, from the same data, as the tesign.com item page. The text is editorial; the numbers are stored observations.", "null in the JSON means not observed — never zero. The Markdown writes [unconfirmed] for it.", "Star total = the value last checked on GitHub (stars_checked_at) + increases observed via GH Archive since. The 24h · 7d · 30d gains are GH Archive hourly events summed to the reference time (as_of). No score of ours.", "Reconstructed from archive data, not a live discovery.", "A summary, not legal advice." ] }