Magnum Vox types what you say into any app on your Mac. Hold the Control key, speak, let go, and your words appear in whatever you are working in: IGNIS, OrO, Claude, email, anything. It runs on your own Mac, works with no internet, and nothing you say is uploaded.
Free for members. Works on any recent Mac, Apple Silicon or Intel. The installer picks the right engine for your chip. The speech model downloads once (about 1.5 GB on Apple Silicon, about 480 MB on Intel). If your Mac does not have ffmpeg yet, the installer adds it with Homebrew. On a 6-core Intel Mac we measured about a second between letting go of Control and the words appearing, the same as Apple Silicon; older Intel Macs may take a few seconds.
Install in five steps
- Download and open the file. Double-click
local-dictate.zipin your Downloads folder. A folder calledlocal-dictateappears next to it. - Open Terminal. Press Command and Space, type
Terminal, and press Return. A window with a blinking cursor opens. That is where you paste the lines below. - Paste this line and press Return. The first install takes a few minutes because the speech model downloads once. When it asks which microphone to use, type the number next to your microphone and press Return.
cd ~/Downloads/local-dictate && bash install.sh - Allow it once. The installer prints a long file path. In System Settings, open Privacy & Security, then Input Monitoring. Click the + button, press Command+Shift+G, paste that path, click Open, and switch it on. Do the same in Accessibility. Then paste the
launchctl unload ... launchctl loadline the installer prints at the end and press Return. - Try it. Click into any text box, hold either Control key, say a sentence, and let go. A soft pop means it is listening. The words appear about a second later.
If something is off
- Nothing happens after you let go. Check that both permissions in step 4 are switched on, then run the restart line from step 4 again.
- It is using the wrong microphone. Run the line from step 3 again and pick a different number.
- See what it is doing. Paste this line to watch its log. Press Control and C to stop watching.
tail -f ~/Library/Logs/local-dictate.log
On your iPhone
Three ways to use Magnum Vox on your phone. On iPhone the text arrives by the clipboard: you speak, it is copied, you paste. The Mac app types straight into any app.
1. Use this page
- Open magnumnexus.io/vox in Safari.
- Tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen.
- Open Magnum Vox from your Home Screen, tap the big button, and speak.
- Tap again. The text is copied for you. Switch to any app and paste.
2. Get the Shortcut
One press from the Action Button, Back Tap or Siri: speak, and the corrected text is on your clipboard. No page to open.
Open the downloaded file and tap Add Shortcut. The first time you run it, iPhone asks to allow it to contact magnumnexus.io: choose Always Allow.
Or build it by hand (works on every iPhone)
Open the Shortcuts app, tap the + button, name the shortcut Magnum Vox, then add these five actions in order.
- Tap Add Action, search for Dictate Text, and add it. Leave Stop Listening on After Pause.
- Add Get Contents of URL. Set the URL to https://magnumnexus.io/api/vox/fix. Tap the small arrow to show options, then set Method to POST and Request Body to JSON. Tap Add new field, choose Text, type text as the key, and for the value tap the field and choose the variable Dictated Text.
- Add Get Dictionary Value. Set it to Get Value for text in Contents of URL.
- Add Copy to Clipboard. It copies the Dictionary Value from the step before.
- Add Show Notification and type Copied. Paste it anywhere.
Start it with one press
- Action Button (iPhone 15 Pro and later): Settings, Action Button, swipe to Shortcut, tap Choose a Shortcut, pick Magnum Vox.
- Back Tap: Settings, Accessibility, Touch, Back Tap, Double Tap, then pick Magnum Vox under Shortcuts. Double tap the back of your iPhone to start.
- Siri: say “Hey Siri, Magnum Vox”.
3. A Magnum Vox keyboard
A full iPhone keyboard that types straight into any app is on the roadmap: coming later.
Privacy: the Shortcut sends only the finished text to Magnum Nexus to fix names, and it is not stored or logged. Your device’s own speech recognition handles the audio.
Voice commands
Say these on their own, as a command, and Magnum Vox does them instead of typing the words. Said inside a normal sentence they stay as words.
- new line
- new paragraph or next paragraph
- open bracket / close bracket
- open parenthesis / close parenthesis
- open quote / close quote
- dot dot dot
- question mark
- exclamation point
- full stop
- semicolon
- colon
- bullet point
- scratch that
Want the words themselves? Say literally first, for example “literally new line”.
In the Mac app, create an empty file called commands_off in ~/Developer/local-dictate to turn them off.
Magnum Vox also joins the stray full stops Whisper adds when you pause mid-thought, so a long dictation reads as sentences. In the Mac app, create an empty file called flow_off in the same folder to turn that off.
Hold either Control key to record. A soft pop means it is listening. Let go and the text is typed for you.
Edit vocabulary.txt in ~/Developer/local-dictate to teach it your name, your company and the words you use, so they are spelled properly.
On iPhone, see On your iPhone above. Or use the browser test below, or Wispr Flow on any computer.
Try Magnum Vox in your browser firstA quick test pad that works on any computer. It only types into this box; the Mac tool above types anywhere.
The browser speech model is about 75 MB and downloads once. Long recordings are cut at quiet moments, so nothing is dropped.
My wordsNames and terms you want spelled correctly, in every Magnum Vox tool in the vault.
One name or term per line: your name and your company are a good start, then the people and products you mention often. These are remembered on this device and used to spell names correctly in every Magnum Vox tool in the vault.