Type4Me macOS Voice Input

Skill by ara.so — Daily 2026 Skills collection.

Type4Me is a macOS voice input tool that captures audio via global hotkey, transcribes it using local (SherpaOnnx/Paraformer/Zipformer) or cloud (Volcengine/Deepgram) ASR engines, optionally post-processes text via LLM, and injects the result into any app. All credentials and history are stored locally — no telemetry, no cloud sync.

Architecture Overview

Type4Me/
├── ASR/                    # ASR engine abstraction
│   ├── ASRProvider.swift          # Provider enum + protocols
│   ├── ASRProviderRegistry.swift  # Plugin registry
│   ├── Providers/                 # Per-vendor config files
│   ├── SherpaASRClient.swift      # Local streaming ASR
│   ├── SherpaOfflineASRClient.swift
│   ├── VolcASRClient.swift        # Volcengine streaming ASR
│   └── DeepgramASRClient.swift    # Deepgram streaming ASR
├── Bridge/                 # SherpaOnnx C API Swift bridge
├── Audio/                  # Audio capture
├── Session/                # Core state machine: record→ASR→inject
├── Input/                  # Global hotkey management
├── Services/               # Credentials, hotwords, model manager
├── Protocol/               # Volcengine WebSocket codec
└── UI/                     # SwiftUI (FloatingBar + Settings)

Installation

Prerequisites

# Xcode Command Line Tools
xcode-select --install

# CMake (for local ASR engine)
brew install cmake

Build & Deploy from Source

git clone https://github.com/joewongjc/type4me.git
cd type4me

# Step 1: Compile SherpaOnnx local engine (~5 min, one-time)
bash scripts/build-sherpa.sh

# Step 2: Build, bundle, sign, install to /Applications, and launch
bash scripts/deploy.sh

Download Pre-built App

Download Type4Me-v1.2.3.dmg from releases (cloud ASR only, no local engine):

https://github.com/joewongjc/type4me/releases/tag/v1.2.3

If macOS blocks the app:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Type4Me.app

Download Local ASR Models

mkdir -p ~/Library/Application\ Support/Type4Me/Models

# Option A: Lightweight ~20MB
tar xjf ~/Downloads/sherpa-onnx-streaming-zipformer-small-ctc-zh-int8-2025-04-01.tar.bz2 \
    -C ~/Library/Application\ Support/Type4Me/Models/

# Option B: Balanced ~236MB (recommended)
tar xjf ~/Downloads/sherpa-onnx-streaming-zipformer-ctc-multi-zh-hans-2023-12-13.tar.bz2 \
    -C ~/Library/Application\ Support/Type4Me/Models/

# Option C: Bilingual Chinese+English ~1GB
tar xjf ~/Downloads/sherpa-onnx-streaming-paraformer-bilingual-zh-en.tar.bz2 \
    -C ~/Library/Application\ Support/Type4Me/Models/

Expected structure for Paraformer model:

~/Library/Application Support/Type4Me/Models/
└── sherpa-onnx-streaming-paraformer-bilingual-zh-en/
    ├── encoder.int8.onnx
    ├── decoder.int8.onnx
    └── tokens.txt

Key Protocols

SpeechRecognizer Protocol