What you need
- macOS 12 (Monterey) or later
- Apple Silicon or Intel — separate downloads, described below
- macOS 14.2 or later if you want to record system audio in meetings
Installing
1
Download the right build
There are two
.dmg files on the releases
page — one for
Apple Silicon, one for Intel. Apple menu → About This Mac tells
you which you have.2
Drag it to Applications
Open the disk image and drag OpenWhispr into your Applications folder.
Running it from the mounted disk image instead causes odd behaviour later,
so do move it across.
3
Open it and work through onboarding
The app is signed and notarised by Gizmo Labs Inc., so macOS opens it
without a security warning. Onboarding asks for the permissions below.
Installed the Intel build on an Apple Silicon Mac? You don’t need to do
anything — OpenWhispr detects that it’s running under Rosetta and switches
you to the Apple Silicon build at the next update.
Permissions
macOS makes you grant these explicitly, and dictation is only partly useful until you do. They live in the app under Settings → Privacy & Data under System → Permissions. Each card shows a Grant Access button until it’s granted — once it is, the card turns green with a checkmark and the button disappears.
System Audio is optional and only matters for meetings. macOS files
system-audio capture under the same permission as screen recording, which is
why that’s the pane the app opens — for meetings OpenWhispr captures audio only
and never records your screen. It needs macOS 14.2 or later; below that the
option isn’t available.
Screen Recording is optional too, and only used if you turn on Share
screen context for the voice agent. With it on, pressing the voice agent
hotkey captures a single screenshot of the display your cursor is on and sends
it with that one command — it is never saved, stored, or logged. Leave the
setting off and no screenshot is ever taken.
When Accessibility looks granted but pasting fails
This is the common one, and it’s macOS behaviour rather than a bug. Replacing the app — an update, a reinstall, a rebuild — can leave a stale entry pointing at the old copy while the new one has no access. In Settings → Privacy & Data → Permissions, open Troubleshooting and use Reset accessibility permissions. That removes OpenWhispr from the list so you can add it back cleanly. Updates and reinstalling has the full sequence.The Globe key
On a Mac the default dictation hotkey is the Globe (fn) key — one key, nothing to hold alongside it, and nothing else on the system wants it. It asks for no permission beyond the three above. That’s macOS-only. The Globe key can’t be used as a hotkey on Windows or Linux, and neither can the mouse-button hotkeys OpenWhispr also accepts here. You can change it, and there are four other slots — Voice Agent, Translation, Meeting Mode and Chat Agent — under Settings → Hotkeys under App. Your hotkeys covers all five.The menu bar and the Dock
OpenWhispr lives in the menu bar. Click the icon to show the dictation panel or open Settings. The Dock icon follows the control panel — it appears when the control panel is open and goes away when you close it. A tray-only launch shows no Dock icon at all, which is intentional rather than a failed start.Updates
OpenWhispr checks for updates at launch and tells you when one is available. It doesn’t download anything until you say so. Apple Silicon and Intel builds are tracked separately, so you always get an update for the Mac you’re actually on. Your version is under Settings → System, under Updates, next to Current version.Uninstalling
1
Move the app to the Trash
From your Applications folder.
2
Remove downloaded models, if you want the disk space back
3
Remove app data for a clean slate