AFK

Away From Keyboard

Hold ⌘G (or optionally Fn), speak, and the transcript pastes at the caret. A quiet macOS menu-bar app — bring your own keys.

AFK listening pill over a dark desktop

Live transcript pill while you hold the shortcut — release to paste.

Demo video coming soon — stills below until then.

How it works

1

Hold

Press and hold ⌘G (default; or Fn / a custom shortcut). The menu-bar icon lights up and the listening pill appears.

2

Speak

Your mic streams to the speech-to-text provider you chose. Live text shows in the pill when the provider supports streaming.

3

Paste

Release — the transcript pastes at the caret. Optional polish strips fillers without rewriting what you said.

Features

Bring your own keys

xAI Grok, OpenRouter, OpenAI, Local Whisper, Ollama, or a custom OpenAI-compatible server. Keys stay on your Mac.

Privacy paths

Fully local with Whisper + Ollama, or your own cloud keys. Nothing is bundled into the app binary.

Menu bar native

Lives quietly in the menu bar. Hold-to-talk or hands-free. Vocabulary, history, and shortcuts when you need them.

Open source MIT

Read the code, build from source, or grab a notarized DMG. Contributions welcome.

Screenshots

AFK Settings window with speech, polish, and API keys
Settings — providers, models, and API keys (saved only on this Mac).
macOS menu bar showing the AFK status icon
Menu bar — AFK’s mark sits with your other status items.
AFK listening pill close-up
The listening pill — waveform, live text, elapsed time.

Get an API key

BYOK — paste a key in Settings (⌘,), or set an env var when you launch from a shell. Start with xAI Console for the default Grok voice model, or use OpenAI / OpenRouter / local Whisper.

Step-by-step for each provider: README → API keys tutorial.

Permissions

Once, on a stably signed build:

  • Microphone — so AFK can hear you
  • Accessibility — so paste lands at the caret

Grant from the menu bar warning items, or System Settings → Privacy & Security. The Release DMG is Developer ID signed and notarized.