Parla
Built for one voice,shared for the curious.
Parla started with a simple frustration: dictation that stumbles over British English, Spanish, and English spoken with a Spanish accent — and that wants your voice on someone else's server to do it.
Why it exists
Good dictation should not need a subscription and a server
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It began on the Mac
A push-to-talk dictation app that runs an open speech model on the Mac's own Neural Engine, cleans the text with the language model already in macOS, and types it wherever the cursor is.
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Then the phone wanted in
Phones are where most quick messages get written, and the built-in dictation is not great at switching languages or at names. Rather than squeeze a model onto the phone, Parla lets the iPhone borrow the Mac that is already on at home.
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Deliberately light
One process on the Mac, gentle on memory when idle, and gentle on the phone's battery. Speed matters as much as accuracy: dictation that makes you wait is dictation you stop using.
Where it stands
Working, in daily use, and not for sale
In everyday use
Push-to-talk dictation, per-app styles, custom vocabulary, spoken lists and history. Runs on macOS 26 on Apple silicon.
Built and being tried out
The keyboard, pairing, sessions, the away-from-home route and the on-device fallback all exist, and are being tested on a real phone.
Android
The connection between phone and Mac was designed not to be Apple-specific, so another phone could speak the same language one day. No promises.
Contact
Interested? Get in touch
There is nothing to download, but there is someone to talk to. Write if you would like to try something like this, compare notes on local speech recognition, or just ask a question.
Questions
Things people ask
Can I download it?
No. Parla is not distributed. It depends on a Mac you own being set up as the listener, and supporting that for other people is a different project from building it for oneself. If you are interested, get in touch anyway.
Will it be on the App Store?
There are no plans for it. The Mac app types into other applications, which the Mac App Store's sandbox does not allow, and the iPhone keyboard needs its paired Mac to be useful.
What do I need for something like this?
An Apple silicon Mac on macOS 26 that stays on — a Mac mini is ideal — and, for the phone, an iPhone with Tailscale if you want it to work away from home.
Which languages does it handle?
The speech model covers dozens of language locales. Parla is tuned and tested for British English, Spanish from Spain, and English with a Spanish accent, and switches between them without being told.
Does anyone else ever hear my voice?
No. Audio goes from the phone to your own Mac, encrypted, and is discarded once transcribed. The full list of what crosses a network is on the How it works page.
Is the code available?
Not publicly. If you are working on something similar and want to compare approaches, ask.