Your Keyboard Is for Code. Your Voice Is for Everything Else.
As a developer, you spend your keyboard time where it matters most — writing code. But between code comments, documentation, commit messages, PR descriptions, Slack replies, and emails, a surprising amount of your day is spent typing prose. Chirp lets you dictate all of that directly into any app, so you never have to leave your editor.
Works in VS Code, Terminal, and Any App
Chirp uses a global hotkey (Fn or Option+M on Mac, Alt+M on Windows; the Option/Alt+M shortcut is configurable). On Mac it pastes the transcribed text wherever your cursor is by sending Cmd+V, so it works in VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, Vim, your terminal, Slack, GitHub in a browser, or any other app that accepts a paste. On Windows the text lands on your clipboard and you paste it with Ctrl+V. There's no plugin to install. One thing to know: on Mac the transcript replaces whatever was on your clipboard.
Better Commit Messages and PR Descriptions
How many times have you written a one-line commit message because typing a proper explanation felt like too much effort? With Chirp, you can speak a detailed commit message in seconds. The same goes for PR descriptions, code review comments, and issue reports. Speaking naturally tends to produce more thorough explanations than rushed typing.
Documentation Without the Pain
Writing documentation is one of those tasks developers know they should do but often skip because it's tedious. Chirp makes it faster. Dictate your README sections, API docs, inline comments, and architectural decisions. When you can speak at 150 wpm instead of typing at 40, documentation stops feeling like a chore.
A Stack You'll Appreciate
Chirp is built with technologies developers respect: Tauri 2.0 for the desktop framework, Rust for performance-critical backend logic, and whisper.cpp (the open-source C/C++ port of OpenAI's Whisper model) for speech recognition. The app uses the ggml-tiny.en-q5_0 quantized model (~30MB), delivering fast transcription with a tiny footprint.
On Apple Silicon Macs, Chirp uses Metal GPU acceleration, and a short dictation typically transcribes in 0.2–0.6 seconds. Intel Macs and Windows PCs run on the CPU and take a little longer. The download is about 53 MB on Mac and 33 MB on Windows — smaller than most Electron apps. The model is English-only and small, so expect to fix the occasional library name or unusual identifier.
100% Offline and Private
No cloud processing and no telemetry. Transcription runs entirely on your machine, the audio file is deleted as soon as it's transcribed, and the text stays in a local SQLite history. The only network calls are an update check on launch and, once you have a license, a license check about once a day. See the full breakdown of how on-device dictation works. For developers working on proprietary code or under NDA, this is a hard requirement that Chirp meets by default.
Lightweight and Stays Out of Your Way
Chirp runs from the menu bar or system tray and uses minimal resources. It responds to its hotkey from any app and stays out of the way when you don't need it. It comes with Light, Dark, Vampire, and System themes. Recordings are capped at five minutes, which is plenty for a commit message or a PR description.
Try It Free
Chirp includes 28 free transcriptions with no account required, then a $9.99/year license (up to 5 devices) unlocks unlimited use. Available for macOS 13+ (universal: Apple Silicon and Intel) and Windows 10/11 (x64).