Docs

Everything you need to get PitchKiwi running and comfortable on your Mac.

01Requirements

  • A Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer)
  • macOS 14 Sonoma or newer
  • Around 1 GB of free disk space for the speech model

02Install

  1. Buy PitchKiwi on Gumroad for $16.99, one time. Gumroad emails you a license key.
  2. Download the app and open the .dmg, then drag PitchKiwi into Applications.
  3. On first launch, macOS will say it can't verify the developer. This is expected: PitchKiwi isn't notarized with a paid Apple developer account. Right-click the app and choose Open, then confirm. You only do this once.
  4. Grant the two permissions PitchKiwi asks for: Microphone and Accessibility.
  5. Paste your license key into the activation screen to unlock the app.
Why the extra click on first launch? Apple charges $99 a year to remove this warning. PitchKiwi is a $16.99 side project, so that cost isn't in the price. The app is exactly the same either way.

03First dictation

  1. Click into any text field: TextEdit is a good place to try it first.
  2. Hold the Fn key.
  3. Speak while the small waveform moves with your voice.
  4. Release Fn. Your words appear, cleaned up, at the cursor.

The first transcription after launch is slower while the speech model loads. After that, it's fast.

04Setting your hotkey

Fn is the default. You can change it in Settings to any combination you like.

Using a non-Apple keyboard? Fn/Globe-key shortcuts only work on Apple keyboards, your Mac's built-in one or an official Apple external keyboard. It's a hardware limitation, not a bug: third-party keyboards handle their Fn key in firmware and never send anything PitchKiwi can listen for. Pick a combo built from Control, Option, Shift, or Command instead.

05Prompt Mode

Hold the Prompt Mode shortcut (Fn+Shift by default) and talk through what you want built, even if it's messy and unstructured. PitchKiwi turns it into a prompt with Goal, Context, Requirements, and Done when, ready to paste into Claude Code or any other agent.

06Troubleshooting

My old clipboard content gets pasted instead of the transcription.

This can happen under load, when the receiving app reads the clipboard before PitchKiwi restores your previous copy. Open Settings and increase the paste delay slightly, then try again in the app where it happened.

Permissions stopped working after an update.

Unsigned builds can lose their permission grants when the app is rebuilt. Reset and re-grant:

tccutil reset Accessibility com.pitchkiwi.app
tccutil reset Microphone com.pitchkiwi.app

Then relaunch and grant both permissions again in System Settings.

The speech model won't download.

Check Settings → Network Log to see if the request to Hugging Face is being blocked by a firewall or the Offline switch.

07License key

There's no PitchKiwi account, no email, no password. Your license key from Gumroad is the whole system: enter it once to activate, and the app checks it against Gumroad roughly every 7 days after that.

  • Offline for a while? The app stays unlocked for up to 30 days since your last successful check before it asks you to reconnect.
  • Moving to a new Mac? Open Settings and choose Deactivate this Mac first, then activate with the same key on the new machine.
  • Lost your key? It's in your original Gumroad receipt email.

Your voice, transcripts, and dictation history are never uploaded, stored on a server, or seen by anyone. See the full Privacy Policy.