01
Idle stays faint
A Realtime session is already open so the first utterance is not a reconnect. The capsule sits where you dragged it. Music on a Bluetooth headset stays in stereo because the built-in microphone is preferred.
macOS app · push to talk · one-time license
A listening
object, not a window.
Hold Fn. Speak. Release. A faint capsule blooms, then the cleaned sentence appears at the cursor — Slack, Xcode, a browser, a note. The overlay stays text-free unless something actually needs saying.
The same Metal alien orb you get on the Mac. Hold to hear it swell. Right-click the live capsule to switch looks.
Four ways listening can look.
The same tiny stadium. Four shaders. Classic wave, luminous glow, anamorphic lens light, and the alien orb — the default. Click a look. The real overlay is drawn in Metal so the rim can bloom in wide color; Tk is only the fallback.
One listen, six quiet moves.
Nothing here is a dashboard. The work is the path from a listen to a sentence that already belongs in the field you were typing.
02
Hold Fn, or lock it
Hold to talk. Double-tap to keep listening with your hands free, then tap once to finish. The menu bar Listen item does the same lock. Short Fn pulses that wrap volume, brightness, or media keys are ignored so those keys do not start a listen. A recorded chess-piece click marks the start.
03
The mic opens only then
Capture starts with the listen and stops when it ends. The orange Control Center indicator is honest: it is there while you are speaking, and gone when you are not.
04
Commit, then polish
Default transcription is gpt-transcribe on a committed turn. An optional live model is one flag away. A conservative Responses pass strips fillers and false starts, keeps your names, and turns spoken “number one, number two” into a real list. Fast tier, store off.
05
The field is the context
The destination app name, and when Accessibility allows it a few hundred characters on either side of the cursor, shape capitalization, spacing, and tone. Password fields are never read.
06
Insert like a native
Native fields get a verified Accessibility insert. Short text can be typed. Longer text pastes once; the previous clipboard is restored only after the destination has read it. You can copy something, dictate around it, and get the copy back.
The details that are the product.
Anyone can call a transcription API. The work is not wrecking the rest of the Mac while you do it.
A real Mac app
One disk image. Drag Listen Orb into Applications. A listening mark sits in the menu bar. After the first key is saved, the app opens at login. Uninstall Listen Orb… from that menu removes the app, the login item, and local settings. The Keychain key stays until you delete it.
Metal, not a chat bubble
The overlay is a signed-distance capsule with bloom, four listening styles, and almost no chrome. Connecting, warning, and error stretch that same glass pill—one shared look, with a jewel and a single line of text. “No speech was detected” clears itself after three seconds.
Headphones stay music
Core Audio prefers the built-in mic so AirPods do not drop into call mode. Mac Studio and other machines without a built-in mic fall through to a Studio Display or USB input. Pass a headset only if you mean to.
Your key never prints
The first launch asks you to paste an OpenAI key. It is saved in Keychain and never printed. Listen Orb has no speech servers, so there is nowhere else for it to go. OpenAI bills that usage. A ChatGPT plan is not API billing.
No account. No telemetry. No our-cloud.
A license is sold through Polar. Audio still goes to OpenAI while you listen. Optional polish sends the transcript and a small window of nearby text. Everything else stays on the Mac.
- Microphone — open only during a listen.
- Secure fields — never read.
- API key — Keychain, never logged.
- The Mac app — no analytics, crash reporters, or ads.
- Full privacy notes
A paid Mac app. Not open source.
Listen Orb is commercial software. You buy a one-time license. Polar handles checkout and tax. There is no Listen Orb subscription.
The license
Polar is the cash register. You pay once for the Mac app. Listen Orb does not sell tokens or host a speech model.
Speech is separate
Each listen uses your OpenAI API key. OpenAI bills that usage. A ChatGPT plan is not API billing. How to create a key.
A Mac app. One disk image.
After you buy, download Listen Orb.dmg and install it like any other Mac utility.
Requires a Mac, a Listen Orb license, and an OpenAI API key with Realtime and Responses access. Stay online; there is no bundled model. How to create a key.
Open the image
Double-click Listen Orb.dmg. Drag Listen Orb onto Applications.
Right-click → Open the first time
This build is signed, not notarized. Gatekeeper may block a normal double-click. Right-click the app and choose Open.
Paste your own OpenAI key
The first-run window stores it in Keychain as
listen-orb-openai.Grant the three permissions
Microphone, Accessibility, and Input Monitoring. After the key is saved, the app also opens at login.