Write at the speed
of thought, privately.

Local-first voice-to-text for macOS.

macOS · Apple Silicon only · free throughout beta

dictation · sollu
listening · local only Fn + Space
01 · what it isthe shape of it

What it is

Local-first. Private by architecture.

Hold Fn, speak, let go. Text appears where your cursor is.

i.

Runs on your Mac

All transcription happens on-device. Your audio lives in memory only while you hold the key. The moment it's transcribed, it's gone.

ii.

Works in any app

Text lands at your cursor, in Notion, Slack, VS Code, Mail, anywhere.

iii.

Tanglish & Hinglish

Switch between English, Tamil, Hindi mid-sentence. It keeps up.

02 · who it's foryou, probably

Who it's for

Built for people who think in sentences.

If your first drafts are messy, personal, or just too much to type. Sollu is for you.

03 · why it existsa note from the maker

A pen's job is to write. Not to remember. Not to transmit.

A voice-to-text app, in the digital era, should act like a pen. It should hear you and write it down. Nothing more. There are already plenty of notepads, audio archives, and second brains. Those are different products, for different jobs.

I kept looking for that pen, and couldn't find one. I'm a writer who's lazy to type, and I don't want an LLM generating my first draft. Every voice-to-text app I tried had a trade-off I couldn't live with: the transcription wasn't good enough, the privacy was someone else's policy document, or my words were quietly being used to train a model I'd never see.

So I built sollu for myself. Since then I've been publishing at least one essay a week, brainstorming with Claude out loud instead of typing, and dumping thoughts as fast as they form. Friction, gone.

If that sounds useful to you too, I'd love to have you in the beta.

Aasif Iqbal J. · maker of sollu
04 · how it worksfour steps, all local

How it works

Four steps. Your voice never leaves your Mac.

i.

Listen

Hold Fn. Sollu captures audio into memory, not to disk.

ii.

Transcribe

An on-device model turns your voice into text. Fast on Apple Silicon.

iii.

Clean

Light cleanup. Punctuation, filler words. Your voice stays your voice.

iv.

Type

Text lands at your cursor, in the app you're already in. Audio is gone.

05 · the invitationwhat you get

Private beta

If you like being early to good things,
I'd love to have you in.

This is a small, hand-picked beta. I'm not looking for a thousand signups. I'm looking for a handful of people who will actually use it, tell me when it breaks, and help shape what it becomes.

Free throughout the betaUse it as much as you want for as long as the beta runs. No trial clock, no paywall.
One year free at launchIf your feedback meaningfully shapes the product, you get a full year on the house, post-launch.
Registration
open through May
Beta testing
throughout May
Launch
when it's earned
Take a beta spot

macOS · Apple Silicon · ~2 min form · [email protected]