Install

Two permissions matter and they do different jobs. The microphone is how it hears you. Accessibility is how what you said gets typed into whatever you were already typing in. Refusing the second is the one mistake that looks like the app is broken rather than like a permission is missing, because everything else keeps working.

1. 1

   Download it and drag it to Applications

   Apple silicon, macOS 12 or later. The download is about forty megabytes, because the models are fetched separately and live outside the app.

2. 2

   Open it, and let macOS ask you twice

   Earshot is signed but not notarised, so the first open goes through System Settings, Privacy & Security, where an Open Anyway button is waiting for you. This happens once.

3. 3

   Say yes to the microphone, and yes to Accessibility

   The microphone is how it hears you. Accessibility is how the words get typed into the app you were already in: without it, recognition works perfectly and nothing appears anywhere.

4. 4

   Leave it to fetch the models

   Around 800 MB the first time, kept in your home directory rather than in the app. The notch says so while it works, and you can carry on with the rest of setup meanwhile.

5. 5

   Pick the key you hold to talk, then hold it and say something

   The last step is a live one on purpose. You watch the words arrive before anything you care about depends on them.

Setup is reachable again afterwards from the menu bar, because permissions get revoked and agents get installed long after the first run.

Updates

Nothing to do. Each launch checks quietly, and a newer build is downloaded, checked against a signature and swapped in. The models sit outside the bundle, so an update moves about forty megabytes rather than eight hundred.

When it goes wrong