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Voice dictation

Talk to Claude, Codex or any app.

Click the mic pill or press ⌃⌥Space and speak. Pairbar shows the words as you say them, polishes them into a clean prompt when you stop, and types them where you need them. Recognition runs on your Mac; the polish uses your own Claude or Codex plan.

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Pre-order: $129 Founding licence (first 200) · yearly and monthly at launch · Pairbar for macOS ships soon

Choose an example:

How it works

From your voice to the chat in four steps.

  1. 1

    Start

    Click the mic pill, or press ⌃⌥Space from any app. The pill opens into a card with a glowing edge and level lines.

  2. 2

    Talk

    The words appear as you speak, in your supported languages, including English technical terms. Press 1–6 to change the mode as you go.

  3. 3

    Stop

    Whisper refines the words on your Mac, then a quick polish by your own Claude or Codex, or on your Mac, tidies them. The stop budget scales with the length of your dictation; slower refinements fall back to the available transcript.

  4. 4

    Send

    The polished text blurs in. ↩ sends it to the chat, ⇧↩ lets you review it, ⌥↩ inserts it to edit, Esc cancels.

Keys while the card is up

⌃⌥Space
Start or stop
↩
Send to the chat
⇧↩
Review first
⌥↩
Insert to edit
esc
Cancel
1–6
Change the mode

The pill

Always there, never in the way.

A compact Liquid Glass microphone and Notes pair. Drag them together to a side or top edge. Right-click to hide Notes or both controls, and restore them in Settings → Voice.

Bottom centre
the default: a small Liquid Glass pill just above the Dock
Left or right edge
a compact vertical microphone and Notes pair
Top, under the notch
the microphone and Notes sit horizontally
Under the message box
attached under Claude's and Codex's own message box, right where you'd type

Modes

Six ways to shape what you say.

Pick a mode before you start, or press 1–6 while you speak.

  1. 1Prompt

    A clear instruction for Claude or Codex: fillers and stutters out, punctuation fixed, spoken symbols written as symbols, numbers as digits.

  2. 2Message

    Light cleanup for chat and email: punctuation and capitals, with symbols left as words.

  3. 3Verbatim

    Exactly what you said.

  4. 4Code

    Symbols and names said literally: “camel case user id” becomes userId, “dash dash help” becomes --help.

  5. 5Notes

    Every sentence becomes a bullet.

  6. 6Translate to English

    Speak a supported language and get English.

Details

Made for talking to coding agents.

  • Always one click away

    A compact Liquid Glass microphone beside Notes. The pair docks vertically at either edge and horizontally at the top. Drag the controls together, hide them from the right-click menu, or enable the extra mic under Claude's and Codex's message box.

  • Polished, not just transcribed

    When you stop, Whisper refines the words on your Mac, then a quick polish by your own Claude or Codex, or on your Mac. Its stop budget scales with dictation length; slower refinements fall back to the available transcript.

  • Your language, your technical terms

    Automatic detection among your configured supported languages, with project vocabulary to help preserve English technical terms and names. Support varies by recognition engine.

  • Works in any app

    The text is typed into the field you're in, then your clipboard is put back the way it was.

  • History and recovery

    Every dictation is kept in your history on this Mac, and if something goes wrong, Copy is right there.

  • Private by design

    Recognition runs on your Mac. The polish uses your own Claude or Codex plan. There's no Pairbar server in between.

FAQ

Voice, answered.

The full reference is in the voice docs.

Does my voice leave my Mac?
No. Speech recognition, Whisper included, runs on your Mac. Only the polish sends text, never audio, to your own Claude or Codex on the plan you already have, and you can polish on your Mac instead. There's no Pairbar server.
Does the polish cost extra?
No. It uses your own Claude or Codex plan, like a short chat, with no API key and nothing extra from Pairbar. Polishing on your Mac uses no plan at all.
Will it send a message without me seeing it?
Only if you press ↩. ⇧↩ shows you the text first, ⌥↩ puts it in the message box to edit, and Esc cancels. Cancelled dictations stay in your history.
Does it work outside Claude and Codex?
Yes. In any app, the text is typed into the field you're in, and your clipboard is put back the way it was afterwards. Typing into other apps needs the Accessibility permission Pairbar already uses for its windows.
Which languages does it understand?
Pairbar detects among your configured supported languages automatically. Live recognition, Whisper refinement and Polish have different language support; availability depends on the engine and your Mac. Project vocabulary helps preserve English technical terms and names. Translate to English turns supported speech into English.
What if something goes wrong mid-dictation?
What you said isn't lost: every dictation is kept in a history on your Mac, and when something fails, the card offers Copy so you can paste the text yourself.
Do I need both Claude and Codex?
No. Voice works with only Claude, only Codex, or both, and the polish uses whichever plan you have. It's part of every Pairbar licence, with no separate subscription.

More on voice

Voice dictation for Claude desktopDictate to CodexVoice dictation for Claude CodeVoice docsPricing