dybur

Fast, local, private voice dictation for macOS and Windows.

Talk into any text field. Instantly. Without cloud, accounts, or privacy trade-offs. dybur.com

Features

• 100% Local - Speech recognition runs entirely on your device using state-of-the-art ONNX models
• Universal - Inject text into any application via hotkey
• Private - No cloud, no accounts, no telemetry
• Fast - Sub-second transcription latency
• Multilingual - Supports 25 European languages with automatic detection
• Smart - Automatic punctuation and capitalization
• VAD - Voice Activity Detection filters silence for better accuracy

Installation

Download the latest release from GitHub Releases.

Usage

1. Launch the app (or run dybur start from CLI)
2. Focus any text field
3. Press Ctrl+Shift+Space (default hotkey)
4. Speak
5. Press the hotkey again to stop (or release if using push-to-talk mode)
6. Text appears in the active field

Recording Modes

dybur supports two recording modes:

• Toggle (default): Press the hotkey to start recording, press again to stop
• Push-to-Talk: Hold the hotkey to record, release to stop and transcribe

You can switch modes from the tray menu (Recording Mode) or by editing the config file.

Voice Activity Detection (VAD)

VAD automatically filters silence and background noise before transcription, improving accuracy and reducing processing time. It uses the lightweight Silero VAD model (~2MB) running locally via ONNX.

VAD is enabled by default. Toggle it from the tray menu or via CLI:

dybur vad          # Toggle VAD on/off
dybur vad on       # Enable VAD
dybur vad off      # Disable VAD
dybur vad status   # Show VAD settings

All settings and controls are available from the tray menu or via CLI:

dybur start       # Start background service
dybur stop        # Stop service
dybur status      # Check service health (alias: s)
dybur settings    # Open config file (alias: config)
dybur doctor      # Run diagnostics (alias: diag)
dybur models      # Manage speech models (alias: m)
dybur devices     # Manage input devices (alias: d)
dybur vad         # Toggle Voice Activity Detection

Configuration

Config file location:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/dybur/config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\dybur\config.json

{
  "hotkey": "Ctrl+Shift+Space",
  "autoPunctuation": true,
  "sentenceCase": true,
  "silenceTimeoutMs": 1000,
  "model": "parakeet-tdt-v3-int8",
  "clipboardCleanup": true,
  "recordingMode": "toggle",
  "vadEnabled": true,
  "vadThreshold": 0.5,
  "vadMinSpeechMs": 250
}

Option	Values	Description
hotkey	Key combo	Global hotkey to trigger recording
autoPunctuation	true/false	Automatically add punctuation
sentenceCase	true/false	Capitalize first letter of sentences
silenceTimeoutMs	Number	Silence detection timeout (ms)
model	Model name	Speech recognition model to use
clipboardCleanup	true/false	Restore clipboard after text injection
recordingMode	"toggle"/"push_to_talk"	Recording behavior mode
vadEnabled	true/false	Enable Voice Activity Detection
vadThreshold	0.0-1.0	VAD sensitivity (higher = stricter)
vadMinSpeechMs	Number	Minimum speech duration to keep (ms)

Models

dybur supports multiple speech recognition models. You can switch models from the tray menu or via CLI:

dybur models list      # List available models
dybur models switch    # Select a model interactively

Model	Size	Languages	Description
parakeet-tdt-v3-int8	~670 MB	25	Default. Multilingual transducer, balanced accuracy
parakeet-tdt-v2-int8	~660 MB	English	Fast English-only transducer
nemotron-streaming-int8	~660 MB	English	Low-latency streaming transducer
whisper-large-v3-turbo-int8	~1.1 GB	99	OpenAI Whisper, broad language support
whisper-large-v3-turbo-fp16	~1.6 GB	99	Whisper FP16, higher accuracy

Models are downloaded automatically on first use.

Requirements

• macOS: 10.15+ (Catalina or later)
• Windows: 10/11
• Microphone: Required for dictation
• Disk: ~700 MB - 1.6 GB depending on speech model

macOS Permissions

On first launch, macOS will prompt for the following:

• Administrator Password - To install the dybur CLI command to /usr/local/bin (one-time setup, can be skipped)
• Microphone Access - Required for voice recording during dictation
• Accessibility - Required for injecting text into applications (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility)

Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 18.0.0
• pnpm 8.10.0+
• Rust (for building the tray application)

Project Structure

dybur/
├── apps/
│   ├── cli/               # Rust CLI binary (sidecar for tray app)
│   └── tray/              # Tauri 2.0 tray application
├── packages/
│   ├── cli/               # Node.js CLI (@dybur/cli)
│   ├── config/            # Configuration management
│   └── core/              # Core business logic
└── scripts/               # Build and utility scripts

Setup

# Install dependencies
pnpm install

# Build all packages
pnpm build

# Run tests
pnpm test

# Lint code
pnpm lint

# Type check
pnpm typecheck

Building the Tray App

cd apps/tray
pnpm tauri build

Privacy

• All speech processing happens locally on your device
• Audio never leaves your computer
• No cloud services, no accounts required
• No telemetry or analytics
• Logs contain no speech content

License

MIT