yada

Yet another dictation app for macOS.

yada records audio in memory, transcribes with OpenAI, rewrites for punctuation/casing, and inserts text at the current cursor. It is designed for direct download (not App Store), minimal UI, and clean code.

Demo (click to watch):

yada-demo-5.mp4

Install (macOS)

1. Download the latest yada-*-mac.zip from GitHub Releases.
2. Double-click the zip to unzip it.
3. Drag yada.app into your Applications folder.
4. First launch: right-click yada.app → Open → Open.
5. If macOS blocks it, go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.

First run

1. Open yada from Applications.
2. Enter your OpenAI API key and click Save.
3. Grant Microphone and Accessibility permissions when prompted.
4. Press the global hotkey to start/stop dictation (default: Cmd+grave).

UI

Features

• Global hotkey (configurable) with two modes:
  • Toggle mode: press to start, press again to stop (default).
  • Hold mode: hold to record, release to stop.
• Mic selection (sets system default input device).
• In-memory audio capture (no audio/text saved to disk).
• OpenAI transcription + rewrite pipeline.
• Configurable rewrite prompt for customizing GPT instructions.
• Accessibility-based insertion with clipboard fallback.

Defaults

• Transcription model: gpt-4o-transcribe
• Rewrite model: gpt-5-mini
• Hotkey: Cmd+grave (backtick key) with at least one modifier required
• Hotkey mode: Toggle (press to start/stop)
• Rewrite prompt: "Rewrite the text with correct punctuation and capitalization. Preserve meaning. Return plain text only."

Developer info

See docs/DEVELOPMENT.md for developer intro, build, and run instructions. Windows scaffold info is in docs/windows-contributing.md.