Dictation keyboard for iPhone & iPad

Speak instead of typing. Nothing leaves your iPhone.

SpeakTact is a keyboard with a microphone key. Tap, speak, tap again: your words appear in any app. A local AI model recognizes your speech right on your device: no cloud, no account, no waiting.

Local AI, 100 % on-device No cloud No account 25 languages, detected automatically Works in every app

How it works

Three taps between thought and text.

  1. 01

    Switch keyboards

    Tap any text field and pick SpeakTact with the 🌐 key, for example in Messages, Mail, Notes or Slack.

  2. 02

    Tap the microphone

    Speak naturally, in German, English or one of 23 other European languages. SpeakTact sets punctuation for you.

  3. 03

    Tap again. Done.

    The text is there in a fraction of a second. Not happy? The undo key takes it back.

Set up once, in a few minutes

  1. 1Load the AI model once (about 480 MB)
  2. 2Allow the microphone
  3. 3Add the keyboard and turn on Full Access

Made for every screen

One keyboard. Shaped for iPhone and iPad.

Privacy

Your voice stays with you.

Most dictation sends your voice to a server. SpeakTact doesn't. A modern AI speech model runs on your iPhone's Neural Engine and does the listening, even in airplane mode.

  • Audio and text never leave the device
  • The keyboard itself has no internet access
  • No account, no tracking, no analytics
  • The microphone is only used while you dictate
  • Works in airplane mode

Fast because it's local

No round trip. No waiting.

0.15 sfrom the second tap to text on screen (median)
0 bytesof your voice sent anywhere
10 sof speech, recognized in under 0.2 seconds

Measured on an iPhone 17 Pro, median of 64 dictations. Values vary by device.

More than a microphone

A real keyboard, built around your voice.

Type when you want to

A complete keyboard with umlauts, an emoji panel and key haptics. Dictate a sentence, fix a word by hand, all without switching.

Undo in one tap

Right after a dictation the emoji key turns into undo.

Dynamic Island

A quiet ring shows dictation is ready. It turns itself off after 5, 15 or 60 minutes without use.

Control Center & Action button

Start a dictation session before you even open an app.

Works offline

After the one-time download, no internet connection is needed anymore, not even for dictation.

Questions

Good to know.

What kind of AI is it?

SpeakTact uses NVIDIA Parakeet, an AI speech recognition model with 600 million parameters. It's downloaded once and then runs entirely on your device's Neural Engine. Your voice is never uploaded, stored on a server or used for training.

Why does the keyboard need “Full Access”?

iOS doesn't allow keyboards to use the microphone. Full Access lets the keyboard talk to the SpeakTact app on the same device, which does the listening. The keyboard has no internet access and never sends what you type.

How big is the download?

The speech model is downloaded once, about 480 MB. Use Wi-Fi if you can. After that, SpeakTact works completely offline.

Why does a dictation sometimes take a moment to start?

The AI model has to be in memory before it can listen. It stays there while a dictation session is running. How long the session stays active after your last dictation is up to you: under “Turn Off After” in the settings, choose 5 minutes, 15 minutes or one hour. Once the session has ended, or if iOS has closed SpeakTact in the background, the model is loaded again for your next dictation. This usually takes less than a second. After an install or update it can take a few seconds once, because iOS first prepares the model for your device. You can start speaking right away: your words appear as soon as the model is ready.

Which devices are supported?

iOS and iPadOS 18 or later. We recommend an iPhone 12 or newer, or an iPad with an A14 or M1 chip or newer. The final list follows after the beta.

Which languages does it understand?

25 European languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian. The language is detected automatically, and punctuation and capitalization are added for you. We have tested German and English most thoroughly.

Why do I see an orange dot?

iOS shows it while an app may use the microphone. SpeakTact keeps dictation ready for a while so the microphone key reacts instantly, and turns it off by itself after a time limit you choose.

What is the ring in the Dynamic Island?

It shows that a dictation session is running. To make the microphone key react instantly in any app, SpeakTact keeps the microphone ready for a while. iOS only allows this while the session is visible to you, as a Live Activity in the Dynamic Island and on the Lock Screen. The ring shows how much time is left. If you don't dictate, the session ends on its own after 5, 15 or 60 minutes and the microphone is switched off.

What does it cost?

The TestFlight beta is free. We'll announce the price of the App Store version before launch.

When can I try it?

We're testing on iPhone and iPad right now. Join the waitlist and you'll get an invite to the TestFlight beta.

Be one of the first.

Get an invite to the SpeakTact beta for iPhone and iPad.