What's new in YapToText
By Ryleigh Newman · Published · Updated
The newest YapToText is 1.5.3 (21), on the Mac App Store since September 29, 2026. It makes the dictation pop-up and the Quick Edit pop-up draggable again on macOS 27, and it rebuilds media pausing, so a paused video stays paused when you dictate. The floating panel page and the Quick Edit page cover both pop-ups. GitHub and Homebrew are still on 1.5.2 (19), so if you installed with Homebrew, the newest notes that apply to you are the 1.5.2 ones.
Below is every release since the first build, newest first, in the app's own words. The number in parentheses is the build number. Older notes describe the app as it was then, and a later release may have changed a default. The help pages describe the app as it is now. The same list opens from the version number in the app's Home header, and the install page covers updating.
The updates feed carries each release and each new guide, for a feed reader.
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: 15 sections
1.5.3 (21)
Released
On the Mac App Store since September 29, 2026. GitHub and Homebrew are still on 1.5.2 (19).
- The dictation pop-up and the Quick Edit pop-up can be dragged again on macOS 27
- Rebuilt media pausing: a paused video stays paused when you dictate, and videos in Safari and web-based apps now pause and resume too
1.5.2 (19)
Released
- The app warns when the room or the fans are too loud for the microphone to hear you
- Language auto-detection, plus Polish and fourteen more languages
- Apple Speech has been removed: Whisper is the only speech engine
- Bluetooth hearing aids and headsets keep their full sound quality: the app records from the microphone you chose, and Music comes back at full quality after every dictation
- Fixed a crash and a freeze when a Bluetooth device connected mid-dictation
- Intelligent Insert is more reliable in Gmail, chat pages, and Electron apps
- Dictating over a selection replaces it the way it was written
- Quick Edit swaps a word or phrase exactly as you say it
- Cleanup no longer drops words you said
- Hallucinated speaker labels and stage directions are gone
- Miscellaneous bug fixes
1.5.1 (16)
Released
- Dictating into a terminal works better: reading the text around your cursor uses invisible keystrokes that a terminal treats as its own shortcuts, so that read is now skipped there instead of triggering commands and losing the text
- Intelligent Insert can be turned off for particular apps: the list sits right under its switch on the Dictation page, with terminals already in it
- Canceling a dictation no longer throws it away: it is still transcribed and saved to History, marked as canceled, so a stray Escape cannot lose what you said. It is never inserted anywhere
- Keeping canceled dictations is on by default, alongside the other saving options in Settings > History & audio
- The app watches how well it can actually hear you: if the microphone signal drops well below your own normal, the Dictation page says so and names the likely cause, instead of quietly mishearing more and more
1.5 (15)
Released
- Send it for me: choose a key per app (Return or ⌘Return) that is pressed the moment your words land, so a dictated message or prompt goes out on its own
- Quick Edit follows your request: rewrite, change tone, translate, capitalize. Case changes apply instantly, and it says so when nothing changed or when what you said was not an edit
- Quick Edit has its own pop-up: pick where it opens, drag it anywhere and it stays, and give it its own colors. The key taps to start and stop by default
- The dictation pop-up stays wherever you drag it. Layout, position, snap-back, and colors live on the Dictation page with a live preview
- Canceling a dictation closes the pop-up in one motion, the same way every time
- Intelligent Insert follows you when you switch apps mid-dictation, keeps working in chat apps, and closes the previous sentence when you dictate just before its period
- Dictionaries group every spelling of a word into one folder, the app's own name is recognized however it is heard, and suggested sound-alikes never include plurals, truncations, or real words
- A sign-off is spelled the way you gave the app your name
- Cleanup never bleeps a word you said or adds a label or a copy of the original. Invented speaker names, wrapping quotes, and silent-clip phrases are removed
- Erase All Data in Settings > Advanced starts the app over from the welcome screen
- Every setting has one home, and onboarding shows the real pop-ups with their controls
1.4 (14)
Released
- Spoken punctuation follows the standard dictation convention: say “is it working now, question mark” and get “is it working now?” with no stray mark left behind
- Punctuation names spoken in the middle of a sentence stay as words. They become the mark only at the end of a clause
- Quiet speech: auto-amplify now measures your voice against the room instead of a fixed level, and the app warns when the Mac’s input volume is low and can raise it for you
- Cleanup can no longer drop a sentence or add an ellipsis you did not say
- A long dictation that ends in silence no longer repeats its last sentence over and over, and long dictations clean up faster
- Fixed a crash when changing the input device. The microphone meter in Settings now follows the chosen input
- Fixed hallucinated speaker labels such as “Male speaker:” appearing in transcripts and being learned as vocabulary
- Intelligent Insert reads around the cursor more reliably in web and Electron apps, with fewer keystrokes and fewer system beeps
- A notice under Intelligent Insert explains the beep and how to silence it in Sound settings
- The menu bar spinner is visible on a light menu bar
- Light mode has a firmer window background and clearer card edges
- The first dictation after idle is faster, and the microphone lets go properly after every dictation
- Restore Defaults in Settings > Advanced puts every setting back, with a confirmation and an Undo button
- The Homebrew build can use the microphone
1.3.1 (12)
- Dictation is over twice as fast, with a new default speech model
- The app is about a gigabyte smaller
- Intelligent Insert is faster and now works in far more apps
- Your clipboard is handed back right after a dictation is pasted
- Auto mode no longer turns what you say into a list on its own
- Energy settings now switch the cleanup model with the power source, not just the dictation model
- The AI Models page shows what each model is for, with accuracy and speed ratings
- A rewritten in-app Help covering Quick Edit, Intelligent Insert, and energy
- Apple's speech services are no longer started when you dictate with Whisper
- Fewer system beeps in apps that do not support reading the text around your cursor
- Now installable with Homebrew
- Bug fixes, including the menu bar spinner running backwards
1.3 (9)
1.3 shipped the same work as 1.3.1 but bundled the wrong speech model, so the speed and size gains only really arrive in 1.3.1.
- Dictation is over twice as fast
- New lighter default speech model, and the app is 1GB smaller
- Background noise is removed before transcribing
- Learns your vocabulary from your recent dictations
- Faster text insertion
- Smoother animations and many small fixes
1.2 (8)
Released
- Dramatically faster from stop to text: the AI cleanup reuses its work between dictations, both the speech and AI models warm up at launch, and needless extra passes were trimmed, so your words appear almost instantly
- New master switch: turn off post-transcription analysis for the fastest possible raw transcription, or leave it on for modes, formatting, and cleanup
- Your dictionary now shapes what the app hears, not just what it types, so your names and terms come out right the first time
- When you fix the same misheard word twice, the app offers to remember it for good
- A microphone health check in Settings shows how clearly you are being heard, with specific tips to improve it
- Better accuracy in noisy rooms and for fast speech
- Words you finish saying right as you press stop are no longer clipped
- The waveform responds the instant you start talking, with no startup lag
- The pop-up and its menus collapse the moment you stop, without waiting
- Energy-aware transcription: plugged in uses the full model, on battery it switches to the lighter one to save power, automatically, or set your own per mode
- An Energy page in Settings that reads your Mac and recommends the right models for it
- Long recordings now stream out as you go, cut at natural pauses, instead of leaving you on a spinner
- Ending a dictation never starts audio or video that was not already playing. A paused player is only resumed if the app actually paused it
- Intelligent Insert adapts to the text around your cursor in more apps, including web editors
- Fixed a freeze that could happen at the start of a dictation while checking Music
1.1.1 (6)
Released
- The microphone releases about a second after each dictation ends: the orange indicator only shows while you dictate
- “Keep the microphone warm” now genuinely lets go when off, or when its standby window ends
- Launch and app switching never touch the microphone
- Releasing a hold-to-talk key always ends the session, even mid-startup
- The pop-up's opening animation is identical every time
- Inserting text no longer stalls the closing animation
- Intelligent Insert reads the surrounding text more reliably
1.1 (4)
Released
- Quick Edit: select text in any app, press your key, say the change
- Voice corrections: “scratch that”, “replace X with Y”, “add this to my dictionary”
- Rebuilt listening engine: noisy rooms, whispers, and shouting all transcribe cleanly
- Auto-gain with a peak guard and soft limiter: loud speech never distorts
- Deeper decoding in noise recovers dropped words. Fast speech gets a second listen
- Long pauses are compressed. Silence and background noise insert nothing
- The half-second before your key press is captured, so first words are never clipped
- Any key can be a trigger, not just modifiers. Conflicting bindings are flagged red
- Intelligent Insert: mid-sentence dictation adapts case, spacing, and punctuation
- Insert Last types into the app you were just using
- Dictation never affects other apps' audio. Media pause only triggers for real players
- Re-choreographed pop-up: the wave winds into a spinning ring while it thinks
- AI cleanup is much faster after the first run. Lower idle CPU
- Separate accent, pop-up, and waveform colors, plus a full RGB mode
- One-click AI cleanup toggle per mode. Bring your own Whisper or GGUF models
- Crash recovery from the first moment of audio. Quick Edit commands stay out of History
- VoiceOver announces every state. Pop-up controls are accessibility actions
- Dozens of fixes, including cleanup never paraphrasing your words
1.0 (3)
Released
- Released on the Mac App Store
- Recording pop-up polish: cleaner edges and sizing
- AI cleanup prompts tuned to preserve your exact wording and tone
- Faster path from stopping a dictation to text on screen
1.0 (2)
Released
- Auto mode: each dictation is read and routed to the right treatment on its own
- Auto mode knows the destination app: Mail leans email, Messages stays casual, editors lean code
- End a dictation with “make that formal” or “as a bullet list” to steer the result
- Select text first and Auto mode shapes your dictation as a fitting reply
- Tap a bare modifier key (like Right ⌘) to start and stop dictation
- Redesigned menu bar popover with one-click regenerate options
- Smoother live text animation while transcribing
- Welcome tour and dictionary improvements
- Heavy new automated test suites for transcription cleanup quality
1.0 (1)
Released
- The first YapToText build: free, on-device dictation for the Mac
- Whisper transcription entirely on your Mac: nothing ever leaves it
- AI cleanup with Apple Intelligence or the bundled on-device model
- Modes: Raw, Clean Up, Note, Email, Message, and Code
- Dictionaries, spoken commands, history, and statistics
The short version
- Newest. It is 1.5.3 (21), on the Mac App Store since September 29, 2026.
- GitHub and Homebrew. Both are still on 1.5.2 (19).
- In the app. The version number in the Home header opens this same list.
Right now the App Store has the newest build. If a release broke something for you, tell me on GitHub. Every issue gets read.
For what the other Mac dictation apps shipped in the same weeks, the dictation app updates log puts their changelogs side by side.
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
Sources
- https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yaptotext/id6786382289 (checked 2026-10-03)
Questions
What is the latest version of YapToText?
1.5.3 (21), on the Mac App Store since September 29, 2026. GitHub and Homebrew are still on 1.5.2 (19).
What changed in YapToText 1.5.3?
Two things. The dictation pop-up and the Quick Edit pop-up can be dragged again on macOS 27, and media pausing was rebuilt, so a paused video stays paused when you dictate and videos in Safari and web-based apps pause and resume too.
What does the number in parentheses mean?
It is the build number. 1.5.3 (21) is version 1.5.3, build 21.
What is the difference between 1.3 and 1.3.1?
1.3 bundled the wrong speech model, so the faster dictation and smaller app it promised only arrived in 1.3.1.
Where is the changelog inside the app?
The version number in the app's Home header opens the same list you see on this page.
How do I report a bug or ask for a feature?
Open an issue at github.com/ryleighnewman/YapToText/issues. That is where I read bug reports and ideas, and every one gets read.