Everything happens where your cursor is.

Hold, talk, release

Hold fn while you speak and let go to insert. Tap it once instead to talk hands-free, then tap again to finish. Prefer another key? Use right ⌥, right ⌘, right ⌃, or record any shortcut.

• Esc cancels a recording; nothing is typed.
• fn still works for fn shortcuts: pressing fn with another key (like fn+←) cancels the dictation instead of recording.
• Sayburst warns you if macOS is set to open the emoji picker on the 🌐 key and shows where to change it.
• A small overlay shows the microphone in use, elapsed time and a live level meter, with stop and cancel buttons. It never steals focus.
• Pick any microphone. If it's unplugged mid-recording, Sayburst stops, keeps what you said, and tells you.

Writing modes

Every dictation passes through a mode. Modes run on your Mac and take milliseconds.

Clean

Removes fillers (“um”, “uh”) and accidental repeats, fixes capitals and punctuation, understands “new line”, “new paragraph” and “bullet point”.

Message

Same cleanup, but no forced period at the end — for chat.

Email

Puts the greeting and sign-off on their own lines.

Notes

Short lines and bullets when you list things.

Raw

Exactly what the model heard.

Choose a mode per app — Email for Mail, Message for Slack — and override it for a single dictation from the menu bar. Each mode's settings and instructions are editable, and you can add your own.

Polish, rewrite, and ask — with a model you choose

Connect a writing provider to go beyond cleanup. Run one on your Mac with Ollama or LM Studio, or use OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, Groq or any OpenAI-compatible service with your own API key.

• Polish: turn on “Polish with a model” in any mode to rewrite with that mode's instructions.
• Rewrite selection: select text, hold the rewrite shortcut, say “make this friendlier” or “turn this into bullet points”. The selection is replaced.
• Ask: hold the ask shortcut and ask a question. The answer appears in a panel with Copy and Insert buttons; nothing is typed until you choose.
• Context, if you allow it: selected text, clipboard text, or the current window's text can be included. Each is off by default.

Before a cloud provider is turned on, Sayburst shows exactly what will be sent. Audio is never sent. Sayburst never runs commands that a model or your speech suggests.

Vocabulary and replacements

Add names, products and jargon so they're spelled your way. Whisper models are nudged toward them while transcribing; with Parakeet, Sayburst corrects near-misses like “Saberst” → “Sayburst” — but never changes real words.

Replacements turn exact phrases into anything: “my email” → your address, “sig” → your signature. Import and export as JSON or CSV.

History and recovery

Every dictation is saved to a searchable history on your Mac. See what the model heard next to what was inserted, copy, export (Markdown, JSON, CSV), delete, or run it again with a different model.

Text is never lost: if it can't be typed — you switched windows, a password field is focused, Accessibility is off — Sayburst keeps it and offers it back. ⌃⌥⌘V pastes your last dictation anywhere.

Choose how long to keep history (forever down to one day) or turn it off. Recordings are deleted after transcription unless you choose to keep them.

Notes and files

Capture a note: hold the notes shortcut and speak. Sayburst adds a timestamped bullet under today's date in a Markdown file you choose — handy with Obsidian or any notes folder.

Transcribe a file: drop an audio or video file onto the History window to transcribe it with the same local model.

Local speech models

Parakeet v3 is the default: fast and accurate in English and 24 other European languages, running on the Neural Engine. Whisper models cover 99 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi and Arabic. Downloads are verified against published checksums, can be cancelled and resume where they stopped. Compare models.