Hold right ⌥ to dictate at speaking speed, or speak in your native language and release the key to commit clean English or Japanese directly into Slack, Cursor, Mail, or Discord. Zero cloud audio uploads, zero weekly word caps, and no $15/month subscription fatigue.
Cloud dictation wrappers charge $144–$180 every year primarily to relay your audio to remote GPUs. Apple Silicon already has the Neural Engine and unified memory to run speech recognition and translation locally.
| Capability | Saylane | Wispr Flow | Typeless | macOS Dictation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Annual cost | $0 for dictation, voice translation & Pinyin; $26.49/yr (¥99/yr) unlocks ⌥T screen translation, AI editing & all 7 iTool apps | $144/yr billed annually ($12/mo) or $180/yr ($15/mo) | $144–$180/yr ($12–$15/mo subscription) | $0 (built into macOS) |
| Free word allowance | Unlimited — no account or API key required | 2,000 words/week cap on Mac free tier | Limited trial / monthly word cap | Unlimited (auto-stops after short silence) |
| Where voice audio is processed | 100% on this Mac (Apple Speech + optional local Qwen3-ASR 0.6B / SenseVoiceSmall); audio is never saved |
Uploaded to cloud servers | Uploaded to cloud servers | On-device on Apple Silicon |
| Speak Language A → Write Language B | Built-in 4-mode toggle (⌘⌘): A→A, A→B, B→A, B→B across ZH, EN, JA, KO, FR, ES, DE | Cloud dictation / rewrite; no local input-method mode ring | Cloud translation / rewrite | Same-language transcription only |
| Keyboard typing in the same tool | Full Rime Pinyin (librime) built into the same macOS input source |
Voice utility only; separate IME needed for Chinese/CJK | Voice utility only | Separate keyboard layout |
| In-place screen translation | Built-in ⌥T Translate Anywhere — overlays translated text in matching pixel size, weight & color | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| Optional LLM refinement | Bring your own endpoint (OpenAI-compatible HTTPS or local HTTP like Ollama); off by default | Locked to vendor cloud pipeline | Locked to vendor cloud pipeline | None |
Single-pass local Whisper wrappers make you stare at a spinner until you finish talking. Saylane runs a two-stage local speech pipeline coupled directly to macOS InputMethodKit.
While you hold right ⌥, macOS on-device recognition streams live characters into your active text field every 0.26 seconds. When you release, Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (873 MB) or SenseVoiceSmall (254 MB) re-transcribes the full audio buffer in ~0.3s (~2 characters wrong per 100 on 150 Mandarin FLEURS clips).
Numbers, versions, and engineering terms come out formatted (M1, 36G, 11:35, 0.8.1, ChatGPT, macOS), spoken fillers are dropped, and whenever you manually fix a proper noun in the field twice, Saylane remembers that spelling locally.
/Library/Input Methods/Saylane.app handles pure typing and text insertion with zero network or microphone permissions. /Applications/Saylane.app runs local ASR and OCR in the menu bar — so your keyboard stays rock-solid at all times.
Hold right ⌥ inside Cursor's composer, Zed, or your terminal running Claude Code / Codex. Explain edge cases, file names, and architectural constraints out loud without breaking flow or hitting a 2,000-word weekly wall.
Double-tap right ⌘ to switch into Chinese → English or Chinese → Japanese. Speak naturally in Mandarin and release ⌥ — clean target-language prose lands directly in the message composer, with zero copy-paste through a browser tab.
Stuck on a Japanese dashboard, dense PDF figure, or unselectable modal dialog? Press ⌥T, drag a box, and read the translation rendered right where the original strokes stood.
Download Saylane free for unlimited local dictation, cross-language voice input, and Rime Pinyin. Add the iTool Yearly Membership ($26.49/yr · ¥99/yr) whenever you want ⌥T Translate Anywhere, AI editing, plus LinkShell, Transeen, StupidMirror, CoShot, and VibeCheck.
Wispr Flow and Typeless stream your microphone audio to cloud servers and charge $12–$15/month ($144–$180/year) once you pass a weekly word limit. Saylane runs speech recognition and translation locally on your Apple Silicon Mac, has no word limit or account requirement for dictation and voice translation, and includes a full Rime Pinyin input method plus ⌥T in-place screen translation.
Yes. Double-tap right Command (⌘) to select A → B mode (for example Chinese → English or Chinese → Japanese), then hold right Option (⌥) and speak. When you release the key, fluent translated text is committed straight into Slack, Cursor, Claude Code, Mail, Discord, or any text field.
Yes. Where an app attaches a macOS InputMethodKit client, Saylane composes live text in the field. In terminals or views without an IMK client, Saylane pastes the finished text at the caret via Accessibility and immediately restores your previous clipboard.
Hold-to-speak local dictation, hold-to-speak voice translation (A→B), downloadable local ASR models (Qwen3-ASR 0.6B and SenseVoiceSmall), and Rime Pinyin are 100% free with no account. Translate Anywhere (⌥T in-place screen translation) and optional AI editing are unlocked by the iTool Yearly Membership ($26.49/year or ¥99/year), which also unlocks all 7 iTool apps.
macOS 26 or newer on an Apple Silicon Mac (M1, M2, M3, M4, or newer). The installer is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized.
