Ghoasty

Local push-to-talk dictation for macOS (Apple Silicon). Hold a modifier combo, speak, release — your speech is transcribed on-device and pasted where the cursor is.

• Local & private — audio never leaves the machine
• Parakeet v3 engine (parakeet.cpp, Metal) — ~0.1s/utterance, multilingual auto-detect + automatic punctuation
• Push-to-talk — bind any modifier combo (⌥, ⌘⇧, ⌃⌥, Fn…); a second combo also presses Return
• Built-in mic capture so Bluetooth headphones stay in high-quality output mode
• Floating waveform pill at the bottom of the screen, reacting to your voice (Full or Minimal style, adjustable animation)
• Auto-update via Sparkle

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac, macOS 13+
• Xcode command-line tools (swiftc), cmake, git

build.sh clones and builds parakeet.cpp (with Metal) and downloads the model on first run.

Build & run (dev)

./build.sh          # builds parakeet.cpp + downloads the model (~1.4GB) on first run, then compiles/signs
open Ghoasty.app

The build fetches parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3-f16.gguf into models/ (git-ignored) and signs the app with a stable local identity so macOS permissions survive rebuilds.

Permissions (one time)

Grant these in System Settings → Privacy & Security:

• Accessibility — required for the global hotkey (event tap) and for pasting
• Microphone — recording

No Input Monitoring needed: the hotkey uses a CGEventTap gated by Accessibility.

Local signing (dev)

build.sh signs with a stable local identity WisprLiteDev if present (self-signed cert; see git history for the openssl recipe), else ad-hoc. This only makes TCC permissions (Accessibility, Microphone) persist across rebuilds on your own machine — it is not distributable.

Auto-update (Sparkle) — one time

./setup-sparkle.sh     # fetches Sparkle into ./Frameworks and generates an EdDSA key pair

Then paste the printed public key into build.sh (SU_PUBLIC_ED_KEY=...) and set SUFeedURL to your appcast URL. Once Frameworks/Sparkle.framework exists, build.sh/dist.sh link and embed it automatically and a Check for Updates… item appears in the menu. Without this step the app builds and runs fine, just without auto-update. Sign each published release with Frameworks/bin/sign_update Ghoasty.dmg and reference it in the appcast.

Distribute (Developer ID + notarization)

dist.sh produces a self-contained, notarized Ghoasty.app and Ghoasty.dmg that any Apple-Silicon Mac opens with no Gatekeeper warning. It bundles parakeet-server, the libggml* dylibs, the default model, and Sparkle inside the app, rewrites their rpaths to be bundle-relative, signs inside-out with Developer ID Application + the hardened runtime (entitlements in Ghoasty.entitlements / parakeet-server.entitlements), then notarizes and staples both the app and the DMG.

One-time: store notarization credentials in the keychain:

xcrun notarytool store-credentials GhoastyNotary \
  --apple-id hello@nightly.app --team-id ZTRDTUL87R --password <app-specific-password>

(App-specific password from appleid.apple.com. Signing identity is Developer ID Application: Akudama GmbH (ZTRDTUL87R) — its team member is hello@nightly.app.) Then:

./dist.sh                    # sign + notarize + build DMG  (NOTARY_PROFILE=... to override name)
SKIP_NOTARIZE=1 ./dist.sh    # sign + package only, no Apple round-trip (for local testing)

Config & data

All user data lives under ~/.ghoasty/:

• config.json — hotkeys, microphone, overlay style + animation timing (editable from Settings…)
• history.json — recent dictations
• models/ — models downloaded via the in-app switcher (the bundled default stays read-only inside the app)
• ghoasty.log — runtime log

Parakeet auto-detects the spoken language, so there is no language setting to configure.