The voice bundle
for your computer.

Start the 14-day free trial on parlohub.com (Monthly is free for 14 days, and cancelling before then means no charge), then download Parlo, drag it into Applications and open it. Setup walks you through the microphone, keyboard and accessibility permissions and downloads the on-device models once (a couple of GB). After that, hold fn in any app and talk. Parlo needs macOS 15 or later on an Apple Silicon Mac.

Yes. Parlo's dictation (fn by default) and voice commands (fn + ctrl by default) can each use any shortcut you like, set in Settings → General: a modifier on its own or combined (Right ⌥, fn ⇧) or a key with modifiers (⌥ Space, F5). Each can also have a second shortcut, handy on an external keyboard without an fn key.

Yes, since Parlo 0.1.43. Tap fn twice and talk with your hands free, then tap fn once to type what you said; Esc cancels. The notch shows “Hands-free” while it's on, and Parlo stops by itself after a minute of silence or 15 minutes in all, so the mic is never left on by accident. Holding fn still works as push-to-talk, and fn shortcuts like fn + Delete keep working while you dictate hands-free. Turn it off in Settings → General. It works with the built-in fn shortcut.

Speech recognition, dictation and voice commands run on-device and work with Wi-Fi off after a one-time model download; your audio never leaves the Mac. Meeting notes are your choice: Parlo Cloud (the recommended default, included with your plan) sends the transcript text to Parlo's relay to write the notes and needs a connection, while the on-device option writes them locally and works offline. Searching your files, notes, email and calendar also stays on the Mac and works offline. Two other things send text, never audio: factual questions (“exchange rate USD→EUR”) query keyless public sources, and Polish opens the transcript in your own ChatGPT or Claude.

Yes. Parlo's dictation removes fillers and false starts, inserts spoken punctuation, and applies spoken self-corrections automatically (“meet at 2, actually 3” → “meet at 3”), in any macOS app. Since 0.1.37 it also fits what you say to the text around your cursor: it continues a sentence in lowercase, capitalizes a new one, adds the space between back-to-back dictations and drops the stray period when you dictate into the middle of a sentence. Names keep their capitals. All of it is processed on-device, without an extra wait.

Yes. Parlo's Settings → Dictation has a Dictionary: add names, brands and terms the way they should be written (ChargeBee, kubectl), and since Parlo 0.1.43 it catches close mishearings of them on its own, so “charge b” becomes ChargeBee, every time you dictate, in every app. Everyday words spelled correctly are never swapped for a lookalike. It runs on your Mac before any other cleanup, so it's instant and works offline. In the same pane, App Tones set a casual, formal or code style for dictation cleanup in a specific app; for every other app Parlo picks one automatically.

Act is Parlo's voice-command mode (currently in alpha). It handles app switching (“open Slack”, “switch to Finder”), reminders (“call the vet tomorrow at 9”), file operations (“copy report.pdf to the desktop”), quick math or lookups (“what's 15% of 200”, “capital of Peru”), since 0.1.37 searching your own Mac: files, Apple Notes, your Mail inbox and your calendar (“find the lease PDF from last month”, “what's on my calendar tomorrow?”), and since 0.1.38 your recorded meetings (“open my last meeting”, “draft a follow-up for my last meeting”). Anything destructive asks for confirmation before it runs.

Yes, since Parlo 0.1.37. Hold the Act shortcut (fn + ctrl by default) and ask: “find the lease PDF from last month” searches your files through Spotlight, including the text inside documents, filtered by type (PDF, image, screenshot, spreadsheet, presentation, folder) and by dates like “today” or “last week”. “Search my notes for wifi” searches Apple Notes. “Find emails from Ana about the contract” searches the inbox of the Mail app by sender and subject. “What's on my calendar tomorrow?” or “what's my next meeting?” lists your events, with a Join button for calls. Results appear as a list in the notch; click one to open it. Everything is read-only and runs on your Mac: nothing is uploaded and it works offline. It needs macOS 15 or later (no macOS 27 required) and asks the first time for access to Notes, Mail or your calendar. Mail search covers Apple Mail, not Gmail or Outlook in a browser.

Yes. Parlo reads the calendars in the Mac's Calendar app, which includes a Google account added in System Settings → Internet Accounts. If you don't use the Mac's calendar, Parlo 0.1.44 and later can connect Google Calendar directly: open Settings → Meetings → Calendar, click Connect Google Calendar…, copy the “Secret address in iCal format” from your calendar's settings in Google Calendar and paste it. There's no Google sign-in. Parlo downloads your calendar from Google every 5 minutes, keeps the link in your macOS Keychain, sends nothing to Parlo's servers and never changes your calendar. Meeting reminders with Join & record, speaker names from the invite, follow-up recipients and “what's on my calendar?” then work from Google, together with any calendars on the Mac. Some work accounts have the secret address turned off by their admin; adding the account in Internet Accounts works instead.

Parlo Cloud is the hosted notes option, included with every plan (monthly and Founder) with no API key to manage. When a recording ends, Parlo sends the transcript text, the meeting's title and times, the speaker names in the transcript and the attendee names from the calendar invite to Parlo's relay, which passes them to a hosted model and streams the notes back. Since Parlo 0.1.46, when some voices are still unnamed, a short step first sends the same text, plus your own name when it helps, so the model can say which voice is which. Never the audio. The relay stores no transcript, metadata or notes; it keeps only a per-day count of calls against a salted hash of your license. The model provider's standard API terms apply (no training, deleted within 30 days). You choose Parlo Cloud or on-device at setup, can switch any time in Settings → Meetings, and the Meetings window shows which one wrote each meeting's notes. If your Mac sleeps or goes offline during a run, Parlo waits and finishes with Parlo Cloud once it's back online; if it stays offline, you get on-device notes first, replaced by the Parlo Cloud version when you reconnect, unless you've edited them. Any other failure falls back to on-device and tells you. Since 0.1.38 Parlo Cloud can also draft a meeting's follow-up: then it sends the meeting's notes (not the transcript), its title and date and the recipients' names, never their email addresses, and stores nothing.

Yes, since Parlo 0.1.45. Home, the first page of the Parlo window, has a Next up list with your next three meetings for today and tomorrow, when each one starts and who's invited. The Meetings list shows them at the top too. From 15 minutes before a meeting until it ends, Join & record opens the Zoom, Google Meet, Teams or Webex link from the invite and starts recording in one click, and Record starts recording for a call you're already on. It needs a connected calendar: the Mac's Calendar app or, since 0.1.44, a Google Calendar link in Settings → Meetings. Events count as meetings when they have other guests or a call link; all-day, cancelled and declined events are left out. No bot joins the call, and Parlo never changes your calendar.

Parlo detects a call is happening (calendar invite or sustained mic activity), offers to record, then captures your mic and the system audio locally — no bot joins the meeting. It also notices when the call ends and offers to stop the recording, so it doesn't keep running after you hang up. When you stop, it transcribes on your Mac, names speakers from the calendar invite and the conversation where it can (the invite from the Mac's calendars or, since 0.1.44, a connected Google Calendar), and writes the transcript and structured notes to a folder on your Mac. The notes themselves come from Parlo Cloud (included, transcript text only, nothing stored) or from the on-device model, whichever you picked at setup; the audio never leaves your Mac either way. Since 0.1.41 you can also import an audio or video file (a recorder, iPhone Voice Memos, a call app's recording) and get the same transcript and notes, and since 0.1.42 Parlo Cloud notes are organized by the topics discussed. Two more options exist: Polish opens the transcript in ChatGPT or Claude with a ready-made prompt, and you can use your own OpenAI, Anthropic or OpenAI-compatible key instead of Parlo Cloud. If a cloud run fails, Parlo falls back to the on-device model — notes are never missing.

Yes, and since Parlo 0.1.46 it tries to use real names. Parlo separates the voices on your Mac, including in-person meetings recorded with no call running, then names them from the calendar invite and from how people address each other. With Parlo Cloud notes, the transcript text also helps name voices that are still numbered. When Parlo isn't sure, a voice stays “Speaker 1” rather than getting a guess, and a name can occasionally land on the wrong voice, so check who said what before relying on it. Parlo keeps no voice fingerprints, and the audio never leaves your Mac.

Yes, since Parlo 0.1.38. Click Follow-up on a meeting in the Parlo window, choose Draft Follow-up… in the menu bar menu, or hold the Act shortcut and say “draft a follow-up for my last meeting”. For a one-on-one, Parlo writes a short email to the other person with what you agreed and both sides' next steps; for a team meeting, a recap with decisions, action items and open questions. It's written from the meeting's notes by whatever writes your notes (Parlo Cloud, your own API key, or the on-device model), and the recipients come from the calendar invite. You can edit everything, then copy it or open it in Mail. Parlo never sends anything for you.

Yes. Parlo can publish each meeting's notes, transcript, and metadata (never the audio) to a folder you pick — your iCloud Drive, a network share, or natively to Google Drive (My Drive or a Workspace Shared Drive, as a real Google Doc or markdown). Turn it on in Settings → Meetings, share that folder with your team once in the provider's own app, and everyone in it sees every meeting you share. Auto-share (optional, off by default) publishes each meeting as soon as its notes are ready. Google Drive access is scoped to only the files Parlo creates — it can't see or touch anything else in your Drive.

Settings → Models lets you choose between two on-device speech engines, picked by tradeoff rather than name: “More languages” (the default) covers almost any spoken language, and “Speed & accuracy” is faster and more accurate but covers 25 European languages — English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and 18 more. Pick whichever matches what you speak; you can switch anytime in Settings → Models.

Now: dictation, meeting notes with follow-up drafts, and voice commands in one Mac app, including voice search across your files, Apple Notes, Mail inbox, calendar and meeting notes. Next: more commands and app-aware actions. Later: sharper local models tuned from real usage, dictation on iPhone, and your phone as a capture remote. Alpha users steer all of it, and Parlo evolves around what they need.

Wispr Flow is cloud-based dictation — your audio is transcribed on a server — and its new Notetaker records meetings there too, on Mac and Windows. Superwhisper does dictation and meeting notes, with a local mode, and now ships for Windows, iOS and Android as well. Parlo keeps speech recognition on-device (audio never leaves the Mac) and bundles three things in one app: system-wide dictation, bot-free meeting notes, and voice commands that operate your Mac. Notes come from Parlo Cloud (included) or the on-device model, your choice, with your own API key as a further option. Parlo runs on macOS 15 and later. Pricing is $8/month with a 14-day free trial, or $80 lifetime for the first 100 users — versus roughly $15/month for Wispr Flow and $8.49/month or $249.99 lifetime for Superwhisper.

Yes. Companies can get Parlo for a whole team through the form at parlohub.com/teams, with the company name and how many people need it. Team plans are set up by hand for now: Parlo activates a license for each person's work email, so nobody has to go through checkout, and pricing depends on team size. Each person gets everything in the Monthly plan, Parlo Cloud meeting notes included. Speech recognition and dictation run on each Mac, so the audio never leaves it. Teams with strict data policies can keep meeting notes fully on-device too, and notes can be shared to a Google Workspace Shared Drive or a network folder.

Yes, for approved organizations. Registered charities, nonprofits and NGOs can apply to use Parlo for free through the form at parlohub.com/teams, with the organization's name, country, registration or charity number if it has one, website, what it does, and how many people would use Parlo. Every request is reviewed by hand and decided case by case. Approved organizations get free licenses for the people who will use Parlo, activated by email, with everything in the Monthly plan included.