Dictation history, and the rescue after a crash
By Ryleigh Newman · Published · Updated
YapToText keeps a history of your dictations on your Mac: each one with its raw transcript, the final text, the mode, the app it went to and, by default, the recording itself. It lives on the History page in the sidebar, and its settings are in Settings, Advanced, History & audio. It is how you find what you said last Tuesday, hear it again, or fix it by regenerating it.
It is also the safety net. If the app or the Mac dies mid-sentence, the audio survives, and the next launch turns it back into text. None of it leaves your Mac.
This app is completely free. You don't have to make an account. There are no subscriptions, no difficult downloads, and nothing is locked. Made for Apple silicon Macs. Source on GitHub.
On this page: 12 sections
See what each entry holds
Each row shows the final text, with chips for the mode, the app, the time, and AI when cleanup ran. Show pipeline details opens everything else. When a dictation comes out wrong, the pipeline details show which stage to blame.
- The recording. A full player, whenever the audio was kept. The next section covers it.
- The three stages. What the speech model heard, the text after cleanup, dictionaries and commands, and what was actually delivered when that differed.
- The facts of the dictation. Timestamp, mode, what Auto mode detected, the cleanup model, the delivery outcome, the target app, how long you spoke, the language and whether the audio was kept.
- Where the time went. Stop to text, split into transcription, AI cleanup and delivery.
Find a dictation
The search box matches the final text, the raw transcript, the mode name and the app name, ignoring case. Under it are three filters:
- Date chips. All, Today, 7 days or 30 days.
- A mode menu. Limits the list to one mode.
- AI only. Shows only entries where AI cleanup ran.
The count beside the search box shows how many entries match out of the total, and Clear filters puts everything back. The chart button beside it opens your statistics.
Play it back
Every row has a play button, and a thin progress bar runs under the text while it plays. Hearing the recording settles whether you said it or the speech model misheard it.
The pipeline details hold the full player: skip back or forward five seconds, play or pause, a scrubber with the elapsed and total time, a button that shows the recording in Finder, and a share button. If the audio was not kept for an entry, the play button is grayed out and the details say not kept.
Reuse, fix or remove an entry
There is no text box for retyping an entry. Changing one means regenerating it. Regenerate rewrites an entry from its raw transcript, so a bad cleanup is never final.
- Regenerate with AI. Re-runs cleanup on the raw transcript and replaces the entry in place. It uses the entry's own mode if that mode has cleanup, then the current mode, then Clean Up, so even a Raw Transcription entry can be reformatted. If it is your most recent dictation and its text is still on screen from the last five minutes, the new text is swapped in right there. Otherwise it goes to your clipboard.
- Copy. Puts the final text on the clipboard.
- Insert into the previous app. Hides YapToText and types the entry into the app you were just using.
- Delete. Removes the entry and its recording together.
You do not have to open the app for the recent ones. The menu bar panel has Regenerate, Insert last and your last three dictations. The Paste recent dictation shortcut in Settings, General, unassigned until you set it, opens a list of your last nine dictations so you can insert one at the cursor.
Export what you said
Each entry's export menu has three choices:
- Export Text. Saves the final text as a .txt file named with the dictation's date and time.
- Export Audio. Saves the recording as a .caf file, named the same way.
- Copy Raw Transcript. Puts the version from before cleanup on the clipboard.
The Export button at the bottom of the page writes the whole visible list to one Markdown file, yaptotext-history.md, with each entry under a heading of its mode and date. Filters apply, so a search plus a date chip exports just those entries. Export Preset in Settings, Advanced, which moves your setup to another Mac, never includes History.
Choose what is kept, and for how long
Everything here is in Settings, Advanced, History & audio. By default History keeps your last 500 dictations and deletes anything older than 30 days.
- Save dictation history. On (default). Off, dictations are used once and never stored. Turning it off stops new entries. It does not remove the ones already there.
- Keep. Keep last 500 (default), Keep everything, Keep last 100, or This session only, which writes nothing to disk. Even Keep everything stops at 2,000 entries.
- Also save the audio recording. On (default). Off keeps text only, and the recording is deleted the moment a dictation ends.
- Keep canceled dictations. On (default). A dictation you cancel with Esc is still transcribed and saved, marked as canceled, and never inserted anywhere. Off, canceling discards the recording.
- Clear history when I quit. Off (default). On, every entry and recording is removed when the app quits.
- Auto-delete old items. After 30 days (default), Never, After 7 days or After 90 days. The sweep runs at launch and takes each entry's audio with it.
Clear All at the bottom of the History page removes every entry and every recording. Deleting a single entry deletes its audio too.
What stays out of History
- Quick Edit commands. Never recorded.
- Work on the Utility page. Dictations into its scratchpad and files transcribed in its Transcribe a file card are not filed. A file you transcribe with Transcribe file in the menu bar panel or on the History page is filed, under the file's name.
- A cancel after you stop talking. Only a dictation canceled while you are still recording is kept. Esc or the cancel button after you stop, while the app is still transcribing, throws that dictation away. A stray tap of the dictation key at that point is ignored, and the dictation finishes normally.
Get a dictation back after a crash
From the first moment of audio, the recording streams to a file inside the app's container, and the app notes which session is live. Every clean end, whether you finish, cancel or hit an error, clears that note. If it is still there at the next launch, the last session never finished, and the app rescues it.
- You: Open YapToText again after the crash, or after the Mac restarts.
- YapToText: Transcribes the saved audio in the mode you were using and files it in History under the name Recovered after a crash, with the original start time. It also puts the text on your clipboard and announces that it recovered your last dictation.
- Check: Press Command V where you wanted the words, or find the entry in History.
A recording under half a second is treated as a stray tap and thrown away. The recording stays with the entry only when audio saving is on, and with history off the text still goes to your clipboard. I dictate everything, so losing a paragraph to a crash was never acceptable to me.
Limits
- No editing in place. Entries cannot be retyped. Regenerate them instead.
- A ceiling. Keep everything still stops at 2,000 entries, and the oldest go first.
- One Mac. History is a plain JSON file, history.json, in the app's own container, with the recordings next to it. Nothing is synced or backed up by the app.
- Statistics follow History. The Statistics page counts only what History keeps, so a shorter retention means smaller totals.
If something is off
If a dictation is missing, start at the top of this list:
- Clear the filters. A search, a date chip, a mode or AI only may be hiding it.
- Check where it came from. Utility scratchpad dictations, Utility file transcriptions and Quick Edit commands are never filed.
- Check how it ended. A dictation canceled after you stopped talking, while it was still transcribing, is not kept.
- Check the switches. Save dictation history must be on, and This session only forgets everything when the app quits.
- Check its age. Auto-delete removes entries older than 30 days at each launch, and Keep last 500 drops the oldest past 500.
If the play button is grayed out, that entry's audio was not kept. If Regenerate is missing from a row, no cleanup model is available, which can happen on the Homebrew build before Phi-3.5 Mini Instruct or another cleanup model is downloaded on the AI Models page. For anything else, the troubleshooting page goes step by step.
The short version
- Find it. Search the History page by text, mode or app, and filter by date.
- Hear it and fix it. Play the recording, open the pipeline details, or regenerate it in another mode.
- Keep what you want. History keeps 500 entries and 30 days by default, and you can change both in Settings, Advanced, History & audio.
Every dictation stays on your Mac, and a crash mid-sentence comes back on the next launch. If History ever loses something, tell me on GitHub, with the report from Copy Diagnostics in Settings, About. Every issue gets read.
This app is completely free. You don't have to make an account. There are no subscriptions, no difficult downloads, and nothing is locked. Made for Apple silicon Macs. Source on GitHub.
Related
Questions
Where does YapToText store my dictation history?
In a plain JSON file, history.json, inside the app's own sandboxed container under Application Support/YapToText, with the recordings as .caf files in an Audio folder next to it. Nothing is uploaded or synced.
What happens if YapToText crashes in the middle of a dictation?
The audio is on disk from the first moment you speak. At the next launch the app transcribes it, puts the text on the clipboard and files it in History as Recovered after a crash. A recording under half a second is discarded as a stray tap.
Does canceling a dictation delete it?
No, not by default. A dictation canceled with Esc while you are recording is still transcribed and saved to History, marked as canceled, and never inserted. A cancel after you stop, while the app is transcribing, is not kept, and turning off Keep canceled dictations in Settings, Advanced discards every canceled recording.
How long does YapToText keep dictations?
By default it keeps the last 500 entries and deletes anything older than 30 days at launch. You can choose Keep everything (up to 2,000), Keep last 100 or This session only, and auto-delete after 7, 30 or 90 days, or never.
Can I turn off history, or stop it from saving audio?
Yes. Settings, Advanced, History & audio has a Save dictation history switch and an Also save the audio recording switch. With audio off, the recording is deleted the moment a dictation ends. With history off, dictations are used once and never stored.
How do I export my dictation history?
Each entry exports its text as a .txt file or its audio as a .caf file from the row's export menu. The Export button on the History page writes every entry in the current filtered list to one Markdown file.