Whisper-M — Support

Whisper-M is local voice-to-text for macOS: press a shortcut, speak, focus the field the words belong in, press again. If something is not working, it is almost always one of the four permissions below — that is the honest shape of the problem space for an app that has to watch a global shortcut and type into someone else's window.

Getting help

Write to info@ludofax.com. Include your macOS version, whether your Mac is Apple Silicon or Intel, the Whisper-M version from the About window, and which transcription model you have selected. Replies usually come within a few days.

There is no crash reporting and no analytics in this app. Nothing reaches us unless you send it, so a short account of what you were doing immediately before the problem is the single most useful thing you can write.

Installing and first launch

Where should the app live?

In /Applications. Drag it out of the disk image before running it, and eject the image. macOS ties permissions to the app's location and signature, so permissions granted to a copy running from a mounted disk image disappear with the image.

macOS says the app is damaged, or cannot be verified

You should never see this from a build downloaded here — releases are signed with our Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple, which is what makes a first launch pass quietly. If you do see it, the download was likely truncated or altered. Delete it, download again, and check the SHA-256 shown next to the download button:

shasum -a 256 Whisper-M-0.2.2.dmg

If the checksum matches and macOS still refuses, tell us — that is a real bug in our release, not something you should work around.

Permissions

The shortcut does nothing, but the button in the app works

Input Monitoring is missing. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring and switch Whisper-M on, then quit and relaunch the app.

If it is already on and still nothing happens, the shortcut itself may not be observable — the Fn key in particular is unreliable on some keyboards. Choose a multi-key combination instead.

The text is copied to the clipboard instead of being typed in

That is the designed fallback, and it means Accessibility permission is missing or the destination did not accept insertion. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility and switch Whisper-M on. If Whisper-M is not in the list, use + and choose /Applications/Whisper-M.app.

Test in TextEdit before concluding it is broken. Some applications draw their own text fields in ways that no accessibility client can write into, and for those the clipboard is the correct outcome rather than a failure.

Recording never starts, or produces silence

Check Microphone permission first, and confirm the microphone itself works in Voice Memos. Whisper-M also discards recordings that contain no speech at all, so a very quiet or muted input can look like a failure to transcribe.

System Settings shows Whisper-M enabled, but the app says the permission is denied

macOS is holding a stale permission record, usually for a copy of the app that has been moved, replaced or re-signed. Quit every copy of Whisper-M, then reset just the affected permission — never all applications:

tccutil reset Accessibility com.ludofax.whisperm

The other three are Microphone, SpeechRecognition and ListenEvent (that last one is Input Monitoring). Relaunch Whisper-M afterwards and grant the permission again. Do not run tccutil reset All — it clears permissions for unrelated applications too.

Why does a dictation app want Accessibility and Input Monitoring?

Input Monitoring lets Whisper-M notice the specific shortcut or mouse button you chose while another app is in front. It uses a listen-only event tap, which cannot alter or swallow your keystrokes. Accessibility is separate, and is what lets the app see which field is focused and type the result into it.

Both are genuinely powerful permissions, and you are right to be careful about them. Both can be withheld: without Input Monitoring you start dictation from the app or menu bar, and without Accessibility every result goes to the clipboard.

Transcription

Which model should I use?

Base Multilingual is the right default — accurate enough for everyday dictation and quick to load. Larger models up to Large v3 are more accurate and slower, and take considerably more disk space. Tiny English is worth trying on an older machine.

The first dictation after launching is slow

The selected model loads in the background after launch, so this should be brief and should not recur. A larger model takes longer to load.

Apple Speech is refused

Apple's recogniser requires that your selected language and device support on-device recognition, and Whisper-M will not silently fall back to Apple's network service when they do not. Either choose a supported language or use a local Whisper model, which has no such restriction.

Accuracy is poor on names and jargon

Add them to the dictionary in settings as replacements. This is deterministic and applied locally after transcription, so it is reliable in a way that coaxing a model is not.

Your data

Where are my dictations stored?

On your Mac, in Whisper-M's own folder in your Library, for 30 days by default. You can change the retention period, clear the history, or turn history off entirely in settings. Nothing is sent to us — see the privacy policy.

Can I take my data to another Mac?

Yes. Settings offers a versioned JSON export covering history, dictionary, snippets and modes, which imports on another installation. Exports deliberately never contain API keys, so you will re-enter those on the new machine.

Does it work offline?

Completely, once you have downloaded a model. Downloading the model is the only step that needs a network connection, and dictation afterwards needs none. This is worth testing yourself with Wi-Fi off — it is the kind of claim that should be checkable.

Updates

Whisper-M 0.2.2 has no automatic updater. New versions are posted on the Whisper-M page. To update, download the new disk image and replace the copy in your Applications folder; your history and settings are kept.

Reporting a bug

Useful reports say what you did, what you expected, and what happened instead. Please do not paste anything you dictated that you would not want read — we do not need the content to understand a routing or insertion bug, and we would rather not have it.

Last updated 8 August 2026 · Applies to Whisper-M 0.2.2 · Ludofax AB