Getting started

What Macalla is, what it needs, and what happens when you press the key.

Macalla is local-first voice dictation. Hold a key, speak, release, and the corrected text is pasted into whatever had focus. Transcription, punctuation and filler removal run on your machine.

Install

Macalla 0.2.3 needs a Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or later), running macOS 26 or 27, the two versions it has been tested on. It does not open on earlier versions of macOS.

• Download: get Macalla_aarch64.dmg (about 8 MB) from the releases page, open it, and drag Macalla to Applications.
• Homebrew: run brew install --cask ogham-mcp/tap/macalla.

How a dictation works

1. Hold the shortcut. The menu-bar icon shows that Macalla is listening.
2. Speak normally. Punctuation and capitals are handled for you.
3. Release. The text lands at your cursor.

Screenshots

Screenshots live next to the docs under images/ and are referenced with a relative path, like ![The settings window](./images/settings.webp). They must show nothing private: no real names, addresses or dictated text that is not a fixture.