Vox on your Mac

Try Minivox in sixty seconds, then install the Vox app so Node tools and web pages can use speech on your Mac.

Try Minivox in 60 seconds

Minivox is the smallest dictation app built on Vox. It needs macOS 26.

bunx @voxd/cli@latest install mini

1. Put the text cursor wherever you want the words.
2. Press Right ⌘M and allow microphone and Accessibility access.
3. Speak, then press Right ⌘M again. The text is copied and pasted where your cursor was.

The first dictation downloads the speech model, about 500 MB, so expect a pause once. Run minivox settings to change the shortcut or microphone.

Minivox uses Vox in your app: there is no daemon, just a Swift app linking the Vox packages. Its source is in apps/minivox and short enough to read in one sitting.

Install the Vox app

Install Vox on your Mac when other programs should share one speech engine: Node and Bun tools, web pages, browser extensions, the command line.

1. Download Vox from voxd.cc/download and drag it to Applications.
2. Open it. Vox lives in the menu bar and starts the local engine.
3. Check it from a terminal:

bunx @voxd/cli@latest doctor        # expect ready: true

The app runs two local endpoints, both on 127.0.0.1 only:

The HTTP bridge runs inside the Vox app. If only the engine is running, for example after vox daemon start, Node tools work but web pages will not find Vox.

Try it from the terminal

alias vox="bunx @voxd/cli@latest"
vox warmup start parakeet:v3                   # preload the model
vox transcribe file --metrics recording.wav   # text plus stage timings
vox speak --model avspeech:system "Hello"     # system voice, no key needed
vox perf dashboard                             # timings by app and model

Next

• Use it from code: Vox for Node or Vox for the browser.
• All commands, benchmarks and troubleshooting: Command line.