AT YOUR DESK01
Prompts without the performance
Explain the change, the error, or the edge case in a low voice. The rest of the room does not need to join the conversation.
QUIET VOICE INPUT FOR SHARED OFFICES
Want to dictate,
but feel awkward speaking out loud?
undervoice lets you talk through an idea without sharing it with the room—or feeling awkward about reading a prompt out loud. Speak softly into your iPhone and the words appear at the cursor on your Mac, transcribed locally.
01 / HOW IT WORKS
Your Mac is across the desk. Your iPhone can be inches away.
undervoice uses the iPhone in your hand instead of the Mac across the desk. At that distance, your voice reaches the mic before the keyboard, HVAC, and conversations around you—so you can speak softly and still give the local model clean audio.
IPHONE → MAC / HOW IT FEELS
Speak softly into your phone. Watch the words land in Codex.
The iPhone handles close-range capture. Encrypted audio goes to the Mac you paired, where it is transcribed locally and inserted at the active cursor.
Building route preferences
ScenicRouteRanker.swiftBuild a walking-route map that ranks shade, noise, and slope instead of simply choosing the fastest path.
NEAR-FIELD AUDIO02
Give your voice the head start
Close-talk capture does not silence the office. It makes your voice stronger than the room before recognition even begins.
CODING FLOW03
Stay in the tools you already use
Keep focus in Codex, Claude Code, Xcode, Terminal, or a browser. The transcript arrives at the cursor.
02 / WHAT MATTERS AT A DESK
Useful numbers, not mystery metrics.
These are the facts that shape everyday use: how close the microphone is, where audio goes, and how much friction remains after you speak.
A microphone you can bring close
Your iPhone can sit inches from your mouth while your MacBook stays 50–80 cm away on the desk.
Less voice for the same input level
A distance-only estimate for 5–10 cm versus 50–80 cm. The room, device angle, and microphones affect real results.
No cloud transcription hop
Recognition runs on your Mac. Once the model is ready, local use does not need the public internet.
Nothing to clean up later
Audio is processed in memory and released. It is not left behind as a recording on either device.
The result goes where you were typing
No second app, clipboard shuffle, or context switch between speaking and coding.
Short local history by default
Mac transcript history defaults to one hour and can be turned off. It never syncs to an undervoice server.
The boundary you can verify:paired devices only; no audio upload or audio files; insertion stops when focus changes; password and secure-input fields are excluded.
03 / ENGLISH RECOGNITION
Built for English. Tuned for the way developers speak.
English is not one option in a long language list here. undervoice configures recognition around English dictation and the technical language inside your prompts—from API names and acronyms to variables and commands.
EnglishEnglish + technical vocabulary
ENGLISHLOCAL
English is the default, not a fallback
NVIDIA Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 powers a product-tuned English pack. The runtime and quantization are chosen together for practical, fully local transcription on Mac.
- Runtime
- sherpa-onnx
- Optimization
- INT8 ONNX
- TUNED FOR
- English dictation and local speed
EN + CODELOCAL
Technical terms stay technical
Say library names, APIs, variables, commands, and acronyms inside a normal prompt. You do not need to switch language modes in the middle of a sentence.
- Runtime
- sherpa-onnx
- Optimization
- INT8 ONNX
- DESIGNED FOR
- coding vocabulary in natural prompts
What “optimized” means
The English pack, local runtime, quantization, and product settings are selected as one recognition path for English coding prompts. It is not a claim that one universal model performs equally well in every language.
Model sourcesParakeet TDT v3
04 / IPHONE VS. MACBOOK MICROPHONE
Fix the input before judging the model.
Both routes can use the same local model on your Mac. The difference is where the audio begins: inches from your mouth or across the desk.
| Shared-office use | iPhone held close | MacBook microphone |
|---|---|---|
| Mouth-to-mic distance | 5–10 cm | 50–80 cm |
| Speaking quietly | Your voice reaches the mic first | Voice, keyboard, HVAC, and nearby speech arrive together |
| Voice level needed | Stay at a low voice | Often requires speaking up at desk distance |
| Where recognition runs | Locally on your Mac | Locally on your Mac |
| Best fit | Open offices and shared desks | Private rooms or conversations you do not mind sharing |
The 14–24 dB estimate uses the free-field relationship 20 × log10(r₂/r₁) for 5–10 cm versus 50–80 cm. Reflections, placement, and speaking direction change real-world results.
05 / SECURITY AND NETWORKING
Your recording goes straight to the Mac you chose.
undervoice has no speech relay. On the same network, iPhone connects directly to Mac; across networks, you can use your own Tailscale setup. App-level authentication and encryption stay in place either way.
Installation and permission details →Only paired devices get in
Sharing Wi-Fi is not enough. A new iPhone must be explicitly paired or approved after a reset.
Encrypted before it leaves iPhone
Audio, transcripts, and control messages are authenticated and encrypted end to end.
A fresh key for every connection
Reconnect and a new session key is derived. Captured traffic from an old session cannot simply be replayed.
Audio never becomes a file
Recordings live in memory only. Diagnostics exclude audio and transcript text.
No undervoice speech cloud
On a local network, audio travels directly from iPhone to Mac. The model runs there.
Bring your own private network
For another Wi-Fi or cellular connection, use your own Tailscale network without dropping undervoice encryption.
06 / TYPE ANYWHERE
Wherever the cursor is, that is where the words go.
CodexClaude CodeXcodeTerminalAny text field
“Keep the public API, replace retries with exponential backoff, and add three boundary tests.”
listeningYour Mac remembers the active app and selection when dictation starts. If focus or selection changes, insertion pauses. Password fields and controls using Secure Keyboard Entry are never written to.
TALK TO YOUR MAC, NOT THE ROOM
Speak softly. Code freely.
Install the model on Mac, scan the pairing code with iPhone, then hold to talk whenever an idea is faster to say than type.