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Murmur · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon

Voice to text,
that actually feels good.

Fast, private transcription for macOS.Hold a key, speak naturally, get clean text — anywhere you type.

Hold ⌥ to speak
●HOLD ⌥ TO SPEAK
Notes

Morning thoughts

May 15, 2026 · 8:42 AM

Download for macOS
Always freeNo accountWorks offlineApple Silicon native
FEATURES

Built for the way
you actually work.

Six small decisions that make voice-to-text feel native instead of bolted-on.

Local by default

Murmur transcribes on your Mac out of the box — your audio stays where you are. Cloud models are available when you want them, never on until you turn them on.

LOCAL BY DEFAULT · CLOUD WHEN YOU WANT

Faster than you type

The text shows up before you stop talking — fast enough that dictation feels immediate.

FASTER THAN YOU CAN TYPE

Writes where you're already looking

Inserts directly into any text field — Notes, Slack, VS Code, your terminal.

ANY TEXT FIELD

Push-to-talk that stays out of the way

Hold a key, speak, release. No wake word, no always-on mic, no popups.

⌥ · GLOBE · CUSTOM

49 languages, one keystroke

English, Hindi, Mandarin, Spanish, German, French, Japanese — and 42 more. Murmur auto-detects which language you're speaking.

49 LANGUAGES · AUTO-DETECTED

Light on your machine

Murmur sleeps when you don't need it. Near-zero CPU when idle, no background indexing, no fan spin-up. You won't notice it's installed.

QUIET WHEN IDLE

● ALWAYS FREE · NO TIERS · NO PAYWALLS

HOW IT WORKS

Keystroke to clean text,
in under a second.

No buttons to click, no dialogs to dismiss, no audio to upload. Three motions, one piece of software.

⌥Right Option

STEP 01

Hold the key.

Press and hold ⌥ Right Option — or assign your own global hotkey. Murmur listens for exactly as long as you hold it. No wake word. No always-on mic.

GLOBAL HOTKEY · WORKS FROM ANY APP

Reminder to follow up with the design team about onboarding before Friday.

STEP 02

Speak naturally.

Talk like you'd talk to a colleague. Murmur handles "ums," restarts, and run-on sentences — and switches languages mid-sentence without missing a beat.

NATURAL SPEECH · 49 LANGUAGES

Transcribed
Untitled.md

STEP 03

Watch it appear.

Release the key. Clean text shows up exactly where your cursor was — in Notes, in Slack, in a code comment, in your terminal. No paste. No window switching.

DIRECT INSERTION · NO CLIPBOARD

USE CASES

From morning pages
to merge commits.

Murmur fits the way you already work — whether that's draft 17 of a novel, a code review at 9 PM, or the meeting that started two minutes ago.

FOR WRITERS

“Most of my best lines came from talking, not typing.”

Drafts feel different when you speak them. Murmur lets you keep the cadence of your thinking — without losing the precision of your tool. Your editor, your shortcuts, your habits, all intact.

USED FOR

  • Morning pages and journals
  • First drafts of long-form work
  • Captures before the thought is gone
  • Voice memos that become real notes

FOR DEVELOPERS

“My commit messages are finally not garbage.”

Dictate the why, not just the what. Murmur writes directly into your editor, terminal, and PR description — leaving the muscle memory of your keyboard untouched for the parts that actually need it.

USED FOR

  • Inline comments and JSDoc
  • Commit messages with context
  • README prose and release notes
  • Slack standup updates from the terminal

FOR THINKERS

“Thinking out loud is finally a productive activity.”

The thoughts you have between meetings, on a walk, halfway through reading a paper — they used to evaporate. Now they land where you'll actually find them, formatted the way you want them.

USED FOR

  • Meeting notes in real time
  • Research summaries and quick captures
  • Slack replies without context-switching
  • Voice memos that become structured prose

● WORKS WITH EVERY MAC APP THAT ACCEPTS TEXT · NO EXTENSIONS NEEDED

INSIGHTS

Time, given back.

Murmur shows you what changed — words spoken, hours recovered, and the apps where you stopped reaching for the keyboard.

Murmur — Insights
This week
May 11 — May 17

TIME RECOVERED

0.0hours
12% vs last week

Saved vs. typing manually at 62 WPM

DAILY ACTIVITY

Words dictated per day

MTWTFSS

WORDS SPOKEN

0

This week

AVG SPEED

0wpm

2.5× your typing speed

FREQUENT APPS

  • CursorActive
  • SlackActive
  • NotesActive
  • MailActive

● YOUR INSIGHTS · STORED ON YOUR MAC

You won't open Insights every day. But the first time you do, the number will surprise you.

FROM THE MAKER

Made by hand. Run on your hardware.

A short note about why Murmur exists and how I'm building it.

A SHORT LETTER

I've been dictating into Macs since high school. I have a folder of voice memos I never transcribed, because every tool I tried got the words right but the experience wrong.

Murmur is what I wanted to exist. Hold a key, speak naturally, and the text appears where your cursor already was. Nothing more, nothing in your way.

Free, always. Local by default. Yours to keep on however many Macs you own.

If you try it and something feels off, write to me directly. I read everything.

JS
JSCHANDIGARH · MAKER OF MURMUR

IN BRIEF

PRICE

Always free

No paid tier, no subscription, no upgrade prompts. It will not change.

WORKS ON

Apple Silicon · M1 and later

A native Mac app, quietly doing its thing in the background.

BY DEFAULT

Local transcription

Your audio stays on your Mac. Cloud models are available when you choose them — never on until you flip the switch.

NO ACCOUNT

Just download

Nothing to sign up for, nothing to log into, no license keys.

● NO INVESTORS · NO ROADMAP · ONE PERSON, MAKING THIS SLOWLY

QUESTIONS

A few things to know.

If something here doesn't answer your question, write to me directly. Email reply, not a support queue.

Yes — and you're in control. Murmur transcribes on your Mac by default, with no cloud round-trips, no telemetry, and no analytics. If you ever want to use a more powerful cloud model for a specific session, you can flip it on per-use — and the pill clearly shows you which mode is active. Local is always the default.
No.Murmur is built to sit quietly in the background. Near-zero CPU when not listening, no background indexing, no fan spin-up. You won't notice it's installed.
Murmur uses a high-quality transcription engine that performs at or near human accuracy for clear English speech. Accuracy drops in noisy environments or with very thick accents, but it stays usable. If you ever want more accuracy for a specific session, the optional cloud model is a flip away.
Apple Silicon only — M1 and later. Murmur is a native Mac app and won't run on Intel Macs. M1 Air through M4 Max all work great.
macOS dictation has improved, but it's bound to text fields, shows a UI that interrupts your flow, and is tuned for short commands. Murmur runs through a global hotkey, handles longer free-form speech, and inserts text directly where your cursor was — no dialogs, no popups, no system sounds.
49 languages out of the box, including English, Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi, German, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic, and 40 more. Murmur auto-detects which language you're speaking, so you don't have to change settings between them.
Free. Always. No paid tier, no subscription, no per-minute pricing, no upgrade screen. The cloud option, when you choose to use it, is also included at no charge during normal use.
Yes.Right Option is the default because it's rarely used, but you can rebind to any global key — Globe (fn on newer Macs), function keys, modifier combos. The pill HUD can be moved, hidden, or shown only during transcription.

Still curious? Email me at hello@usemurmur.app — I read every message.

● TYPICAL REPLY WITHIN 24 HOURS

ALWAYS FREE

Try it for a week.

If it doesn't earn its place on your dock, throw it away. No account to cancel, nothing to undo.

Download Murmur for macOS→
Always freeNo account, everWorks offlineApple Silicon native

● ONE PERSON · MADE SLOWLY · HONEST SOFTWARE