Vocaldi

Vocaldi is a paid Mac app that combines voice typing with read-aloud for people who prefer speaking to typing or listening to written text. Transcription, dictation cleanup and speech synthesis run on your Mac, so the audio and text you process stay on the device. It requires Apple Silicon and macOS 14 or later.

Dictation inserts text at your cursor in any app through a global keyboard shortcut. You can keep your spoken wording with spacing and stutters tidied, or choose stronger cleanup for more polished text. Vocaldi learns your vocabulary locally and keeps a history of recent dictations and copied text. It supports dictation in multiple languages.

Read-aloud turns selected text into speech, with clipboard text as a fallback. It uses Kokoro for local voice synthesis and lets you adjust playback speed. Voices cover American and British English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Hindi, Japanese and Mandarin. Having both speech directions in one app lets you dictate a passage and then listen to it for review.

Core dictation and read-aloud work offline after setup and activation. You don't need an app account. Internet access is needed for initial model downloads, license activation and occasional checks, and updates. Optional pseudonymous diagnostics and crash reports contain no content and can be disabled; feedback you choose to send also uses the network. Vocaldi is proprietary software currently distributed as a signed, notarized public beta.