Skip to content
Docs

Docs

Everything you need to run Edict: setup, the keys, the word list, and what to check when something looks off. Five minutes, end to end.

Getting started

Download the app, drag it to Applications, and open it. Edict lives in the menu bar, and the first run walks you through the two permissions it needs. The speech models ship inside the app, so there is nothing else to download and it works offline from the first launch.

The first 7 days are a fully functional trial. No account, no card; buy a key only if it sticks.

+
Microphone

So it can hear you. Click Grant and macOS shows its normal one-click prompt.

+
Accessibility

So it can paste the transcript and detect the global hotkey. macOS won't let an app flip this switch itself: Grant opens System Settings with Edict registered in the list, you flip the toggle there, then come back.

+
First dictation

Tap Right Command, say something, tap again. The text pastes where your cursor is. That's the whole loop.

Shortcuts

Three keys, each rebindable in Settings > Hotkeys: click Edit, press the key or combo you want. Esc or clicking away keeps the current binding.

+
Right ⌘ · dictate

Tap to start, tap again to stop and paste.

+
Esc · cancel

Discards the current dictation. Nothing is pasted.

+
Right ⌥ · re-paste

Pastes your last transcript again, wherever focus is now.

+
Push to talk

Prefer holding the key? Settings > General > Push to talk: hold while you speak, release to insert. Off, the default, means tap to toggle.

Word list

Edict never rewords you, but it will fix spellings you've taught it: say "use effect", get useEffect. Rules live in Settings > Dictionary as spoken and written pairs, and they apply to every dictation right before it lands.

Matching is whole-word and case-insensitive, and the longest phrase wins. It's plain deterministic replacement, no model second-guessing your identifiers.

On disk it's a CSV at ~/Library/Application Support/Edict/replacements.csv, one spoken,written rule per line. Edit it with anything; changes apply on your next dictation, no restart.

Your agent can keep it current too. Connect Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, or Cursor from Settings > Agent and it can read, add, and remove rules over MCP as new names enter your codebase.

Troubleshooting

Nearly everything below comes down to permissions or focus. Check these before anything else.

+
The menu-bar icon is red

A permission is denied. Open Settings > General and grant Microphone and Accessibility; the icon goes back to normal the moment both are clear.

+
It stopped and nothing was pasted

If focus moved to another app while you talked, Edict refuses to paste into the wrong window. The pill says "saved to clipboard · focus changed": your words are on the clipboard, so click where they belong and paste, or tap Right Option to re-paste.

+
The pill says “saved to clipboard · grant access to paste”

Accessibility isn't granted, so the transcript was kept on the clipboard instead of pasted. Flip the toggle in System Settings, and paste this one by hand.

+
The hotkey does nothing

Also Accessibility. Once you flip the toggle in System Settings the key comes alive within a couple of seconds, no relaunch needed.

+
Updates

Edict never checks for updates behind your back. Use Check now in Settings > General, or say yes when it asks, once, about checking on a schedule.

+
Still stuck

Email, and the person who wrote the code answers.

hello@edict.sh