Need help? Email [email protected] and we will get back to you.
Yapper is free, private voice dictation for iPhone. Speech is turned into text on your iPhone; nothing is sent anywhere.
Getting started
- Open Yapper and allow the microphone.
- Go to Settings › General › Keyboard › Keyboards › Add New Keyboard › Yapper, then turn on Allow Full Access.
- In any app, switch to the Yapper keyboard with the globe key and tap the mic. The first time, Yapper opens and starts listening. Talk, tap Done, then swipe right along the bottom edge to go back. Your words are typed in.
- The speech engine then stays on for the time you choose (15 minutes by default), so your next dictations happen right in the keyboard.
Common questions
- Why does the keyboard open the Yapper app? iOS doesn't let keyboards use the microphone, so the app does the listening. It only has to open once per session.
- Why is it slow to start the first time? Apple on-device, the default, starts instantly. Parakeet is slower: the first time it loads, iOS optimizes it for your iPhone's chip, which can take a few minutes. After that it loads in seconds, and "Don't wait for Parakeet" uses Apple's model in the meantime.
- Why is there an orange dot? iOS shows it whenever an app has the microphone on. Turn the speech engine off in the app, the keyboard, or the Dynamic Island to make it go away.
- The keyboard only types and won't dictate. Turn on Allow Full Access for Yapper in Settings › General › Keyboard › Keyboards › Yapper.
- A dictation failed. Open History: failed dictations are kept there with their recording (for 1 day by default), and you can transcribe them again.
Contact
Questions, bug reports and ideas are all welcome at [email protected]. If something isn't working, tell us your iPhone model and iOS version, and which speech engine you use.
Yapper is open source, so you can also report a bug on GitHub.