Introducing Ora
Hold Option + Space, speak, and let go — Ora transcribes on your Mac and drops the text right at your cursor. No internet, no account, no telemetry.
Overview
Ora is dictation for the Mac done the way it should be: you hold a key, you talk, you let go, and the words appear wherever your cursor is — in your editor, your browser, your terminal, anywhere text goes. The whole thing runs on your machine.
The whole interaction
- Press and hold Option + Space.
- Say what you mean.
- Release — the transcript is inserted at your cursor.
No window to switch to, no "copy from the transcription app," no paste. It's fast enough to feel like typing with your voice: ~100ms median from speech to text.
On-device, on purpose
Ora transcribes entirely on Apple Silicon. That's not a privacy checkbox bolted on afterward — it's the architecture:
- 100% on-device — audio never leaves your Mac.
- Works offline — on a plane, on the subway, on a locked-down network.
- No account needed — nothing to sign up for, nothing to log in to.
- No telemetry — we don't measure what you say or how often you say it.
The best privacy policy is the one you don't need, because the data was never sent anywhere.
Free and open
Ora is open source. Read the code, file an issue, or build your own on top of it on GitHub, and grab the app from the Ora page. It's the front door to OceanAI — the fastest way to get a thought out of your head and into whatever you're working on.