// lotusvoice

How it works

1. Hold Right Option — recording starts, menu bar turns red
2. Speak — audio is captured via your microphone
3. Release — audio is transcribed locally with Whisper AI
4. Text is pasted — automatically inserted wherever your cursor is

Everything runs locally on your machine. No audio is sent to the cloud.

Install

1. Open LotusVoice.dmg
2. Double-click Install Dependencies — this installs sox (audio recording) and whisper-cpp (transcription) via Homebrew
3. Drag LotusVoice.app to your Applications folder
4. Launch LotusVoice — grant Accessibility and Microphone permissions when prompted

macOS Gatekeeper notice

LotusVoice is unsigned (no $99/yr Apple Developer account yet). macOS will block it by default. To run it:

Option 1: Right-click the app → Open → Open

Option 2: Run in Terminal:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/LotusVoice.app

Requirements

• macOS 12+
• Homebrew (the install script handles the rest)
• Accessibility permission (for global hotkey)
• Microphone permission

Features

• Lives in your menu bar — no window clutter
• Transcription history saved as daily markdown files in ~/.voice-history/
• Filters out Whisper hallucinations on silence
• Ignores accidental key taps (< 0.5s)