Dictation for macOS
HoldFn transcribes on your Mac and types the result into whatever app you were already using — no window to copy out of, no account, nothing uploaded.
Dictation is free, forever, with any model and no limits. Pro is one payment. Thirty days of Pro when you first open it — no account, no email, no card.
hold fn to talk · release to type
No record button. No window to find. No transcript to copy out of and paste back in.
Speech recognition runs on your machine. We have no server that could receive your audio, and there is no account to make. HoldFn never sends your audio anywhere — unless you point it at your own transcription server, which nothing does by default.
No sign-up, no email address, no licence server to log into. The 30-day Pro trial asks for nothing at all.
HoldFn is not a hermit: it downloads a speech model once, checks for updates, and — only if you bought a licence — re-checks that licence. The fourth exists only if you set it up yourself: your own transcription server, which is the one case where audio does leave the machine. All four are written down, in full, including what each one sends.
No cookies, no analytics script, no third-party fonts, nothing embedded. That is why you did not get a cookie banner.
Dictation is free, forever, with any model and no limits. Pro is the polish.
Your names, jargon and spellings, corrected in every take.
The ums and likes, dropped before the text lands.
Latch the key with a second one and stop holding anything.
Finish a take without touching the keyboard.
See the words while you are still speaking.
$19 launch price · rising to $25 later · €19 in euros
Checkout and downloads open when the store and the first signed build are ready. Nothing here is a working link yet.
When you do buy: your licence arrives by email within a few hours. It is a signed block of text you paste into the app once — there is no key in your customer portal, because the licence is signed and emailed rather than fetched from one.
Records meetings too? Meetfacts is the sister app — it records both sides of a call and writes it up, also entirely on your Mac. $39 on its own, or $49 for both.
No. Your audio and your transcripts are processed on your Mac. HoldFn never sends your audio anywhere — unless you point it at your own transcription server, which nothing does by default. There is no server of ours that could receive them.
HoldFn makes four network calls, and they are all listed on the transparency page: a one-time model download, an update check you can switch off, and — only if you bought a licence — a periodic licence check. None of those three carries anything from your recordings. The fourth is the transcription server you can enter yourself in the settings: point HoldFn at one and it posts the recording there, to an address only you know. Nothing is set up out of the box.
Dictation does, once the speech model is downloaded. The first setup needs a connection to fetch the model. After that you can dictate with the Wi-Fi off.
macOS 14 or later. Apple Silicon is recommended — the speech models run far faster on it.
No. One payment, no automatic renewal, nothing to cancel. The licence is perpetual for this major version and works on as many of your own Macs as you like. Twelve months of updates are included; after that the app keeps working exactly as it did, and security fixes still arrive. If you want another year of new features, a renewal costs half of what you last paid.
Yes, and you should. Dictation is free forever, with any model and no limits. All five Pro features run for thirty days when you first open the app, with no account, no email address and no card.
In your email, not in a portal. The licence is a signed block of text you paste into the app once. If it has not arrived, check spam and then write to contact@holdfn.com and we will send it again.
Accurate enough to be faster than typing, and not accurate enough to send unread. Speech recognition gets names, jargon, dialect and crosstalk wrong. The Pro vocabulary feature exists because of the first two. Read the text before you send it.