Impulse Help

Talk, and Impulse types it for you — privately, on your Mac.

What Impulse does

Impulse types for you. Press your shortcut, say what you want to write, and the words appear wherever your cursor is — an email, a message, a document, anywhere. It all happens on your Mac, so nothing you say goes to the internet.

Two things make it more than plain dictation. You pick the speech modelThe part that turns your voice into text. Bigger ones are more accurate but slower and take more space. that suits your Mac, and you can switch on Text Transform — an optional step that cleans up the way we all really talk (the “um”s, the false starts, the run-on sentences) into tidy writing.

Getting started

1. Find Impulse in the menu bar, up near the clock. Click it for quick controls and to open the main window.
2. Say yes to three permissions. When Impulse first opens, macOS asks to let it watch for your shortcut (Input Monitoring). Turn it on. Allow AccessibilityA macOS permission that lets Impulse catch its shortcuts and paste into the app you're using. too, in Settings → Permissions — the shortcuts need it, and it lets Impulse paste for you. Then quit and reopen Impulse. The first time you dictate, macOS asks for the microphone. More on this in Fixing common problems.
3. Download a speech model, then select it. Open Speech to Text Models and grab one. Not sure which? Start with Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 — it needs no language setting. When the download finishes, press Select on that model. Nothing gets transcribed until a model is downloaded and selected.
4. Try it. Press ⌥⌘Space, talk, then press it again to stop. Your words land where your cursor is. If a Finder window opens instead, see Fixing common problems.

Recording

When you start, a small panel floats on screen with a live waveformThe moving bars that show your voice as you talk, so you can see Impulse is hearing you., a timer, and a few buttons. It moves through these stages:

The buttons (and their default shortcuts)

Do this	Shortcut	What happens
Record / Stop	⌥⌘Space	Starts recording, or stops and writes it out.
Pause / Resume	⇧⌘P	Pauses; the saved audio just has a gap where you paused.
Cancel	⌘Esc	Throws the recording away. Plain Esc works too.
Tidy-up on/off	⇧⌘B	Turns Text Transform on or off. The choice stays for later recordings until you change it again.

Impulse plays a small sound when recording starts, stops, and finishes — turn any of these off in Settings → Audio. A recording stays on the microphone it started with. Connecting AirPods or plugging something in partway through will not interrupt it. If the microphone you are recording from stops working, Impulse saves what it has and tells you.

Choosing which microphone Impulse uses

macOS switches your input to whatever connected last, so putting in AirPods can quietly move dictation to the AirPods mic. In Settings → Audio you can list the microphones you prefer, best first.

Impulse records from the highest one on your list that is connected. If none of them is connected, it uses your system default, exactly as it did before. If your list is empty, nothing changes at all.

A microphone that is unplugged stays on the list, marked Not connected, so your order survives unplugging. After you re-pair a Bluetooth device, macOS gives it a new identity: remove the old entry and add it again.

Where your words go

By default, Impulse pastes the finished text straight into whatever app you're in. It uses the same AccessibilityA macOS permission that lets Impulse catch its shortcuts and paste into the app you're using. permission that the shortcuts need. If you'd rather paste yourself, turn off auto-paste in Settings → Output and the text is simply copied to your clipboardThe Mac's invisible holding spot for whatever you last copied. Paste it anywhere with ⌘V. — paste it yourself with ⌘V.

Other languages

Tell Impulse what you're speaking in Settings → Transcription. Pick a language, or choose Auto to let it work out the language on its own. Choosing the language yourself is usually more reliable than Auto.

Teaching it your words

Names, brands, and jargon can trip up any speech model. Custom Vocabulary is your personal word list — add the terms you use and Impulse spells them right. Type a term and add it, or import a list.

• Order matters. Terms near the top carry the most weight — drag to reorder, or use Move to Top / Bottom.
• Turn terms on or off without deleting them, and edit or remove any term.
• Import a plain text file (one term per line), a CSV, or a list you exported before; export as a file to back up or share.

Both engines use your list, each in its own way. Whisper reads it as a hint before transcribing. Parakeet double-checks the audio instead: after transcribing, it re-listens for your terms and swaps one in only when the sound genuinely supports it — so it won't force in a term you never actually said. One quirk: Parakeet ignores terms shorter than three characters.

Choosing a speech model

In Speech to Text Models you can download, switch between, and delete models. The rule of thumb: bigger is more accurate but slower and heavier; smaller is faster and lighter. Keep a few and switch whenever you like.

Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 is the recommended starting point: about 480 MB, and it works out which language you are speaking on its own across many European languages. Parakeet Ultra 0.6B is a newer version of the same model: about 630 MB, the same languages, and fewer mistakes in public tests. Your vocabulary list works with both. You can download both and switch between them, and in your history you can redo one recording with each model to compare. The Whisper families below are the alternative — pick one for a language Parakeet does not cover.

Family	Size	Good for
Whisper Tiny	~30–80 MB	Fastest, roughest. Quick notes.
Whisper Base	~60–150 MB	Light and speedy.
Whisper Small	~190–490 MB	A nice everyday balance.
Whisper Medium	~540 MB–1.5 GB	Accurate. A great default.
Whisper Large	~1–3 GB	The most accurate; needs the most memory.
Whisper Large Turbo	~570 MB–1.6 GB	Almost Large-accurate, much faster.

A couple of labels worth knowing. Models marked English only do English, but they're smaller and quicker; multilingual ones handle many languages. Q5 and Q8“Quantized” versions — compressed to be smaller and faster, with only a small drop in accuracy. are slimmed-down versions of a model that save space and time for a small accuracy cost. Models download from a trusted source and are checked before use; delete any you don't need to free up space.

Text Transform: tidy up your words

We don't speak the way we write. Text Transform is an optional step that fixes that — it clears out filler like “um” and “you know,” sorts out false starts, fixes punctuation, and turns rambling sentences into clean prose. It runs entirely on your Mac. Turn it on in Settings → Text Transform (it's off to begin with).

What it will and won't do

It is told to rewrite how you said something, not what you meant — not to add facts, drop your points, or write a message for you. It is an AI model, so check text that matters: Show Original puts your own words beside the rewrite. Say “tell John I'll be late” and you get a clean version of exactly that — not a message addressed to John.

Setting it up

1. In Language Models, download the AI modelA “large language model” — the kind of AI that reads and rewrites text. Impulse runs it on your Mac, offline. (Qwen3.5 4B, about 3.1 GB).
2. In Settings → Text Transform, switch on Transform transcriptions with AI. A green check means the model is ready.
3. Want a different style? Edit the instruction in Settings — and Reset to Default puts it back any time.

Show it your style

Under Text Transform Examples you can give it “before and after” pairs so it learns how you like things written. They're grouped by language and easy to switch on or off. Restore Defaults tucks a copy of your current examples into your Downloads folder first, then puts back the built-in set.

If something looks off

If the tidy-up can't run (no model ready) or fails, Impulse keeps your plain transcript and — if notifications are on — tells you what happened. If the tidied text comes out much shorter or longer than what you said, Impulse still uses it and, if notifications are on, warns you so you can check it. You can always see the untouched version in your history with Show Original, or redo it with the tidy-up turned off.

The AI model for Text Transform

The Language Models section is where you manage the AI model behind Text Transform (separate from your speech models). Download it there, and delete it if you no longer use Text Transform. The page shows how much space it's using.

Model	Size	Notes
Qwen3.5 4B	~3.1 GB	The one model Impulse uses for Text Transform.

After an app update changes how models are stored, you might see a one-time notice and need to download the model again. That's normal.

Filler words

Impulse removes the small noises we all make — um, uh, hmm and about a dozen more — from every transcription. This runs whether or not the AI tidy-up is on, and it is on from the start, so your very first dictation is already cleaner than what you said.

The list is yours. Open Filler Words to add your own, or untick one to keep it for now without deleting it. Remove filler words from transcriptions switches the whole thing off and leaves your list alone. Restore Defaults copies your current list into your Downloads folder first, then brings back the built-in one.

Checking your words before they land

The Review HUD is a panel that opens after a recording and holds your text until you approve it. You can edit it there, and Show Original puts the untouched transcript beside the tidied one so you can see exactly what the AI changed. When Impulse is set to paste for you, the footer names the app the text is headed for, for example Will paste into: Mail.

It is off to begin with. Press ⌃⌥⌘R while recording or paused to switch it on — a small indicator in the recording panel shows whether it is armed. The choice sticks: the panel opens after that recording and after every one that follows, until you press the shortcut again or change Always open Review HUD after recording in Settings → Review. The shortcut and the setting are the same switch.

In the panel, ⌘↩ accepts your text and ⌘⎋ discards it. Under After accepting you choose whether accepted text is pasted for you or only copied to the clipboard.

Your history

Every recording is saved and searchable in History, grouped by day. Open one to read the full text, play the audio, and act on it.

• Play, copy, or delete a recording, or redo it with a different model, language, or tidy-up setting.
• Show Original puts the plain and tidied-up versions side by side.
• Search by date, time, length, or anything in the text.

Recordings live in a folder you control. Change it in Settings → Storage, and Impulse offers to move your existing recordings along with it.

Settings, at a glance

Everything below lives in Settings, grouped the same way you'll see it there.

Group	What's there
Hotkeys	Change the shortcuts for record, pause, cancel, and tidy-up.
Permissions	See and grant Microphone, Input Monitoring, and Accessibility.
Audio	Your preferred microphones in order, start/stop/finish sounds, boost a quiet mic, and a startup setting for Bluetooth mics.
Transcription	Your spoken language (or Auto).
Text Cleanup	Remove filler words, and edit the filler word list.
Text Transform	Turn the AI tidy-up on, edit its instructions, manage examples, and notifications.
Output	Paste automatically, or copy to the clipboard only.
Review	Always open the Review HUD after recording.
Startup	Launch at login, and what ⌘Q does.
Storage	Where recordings are kept, with size and a quick way to open the folder.
Diagnostics	Optional detailed logs, kept on your Mac, for tracking down problems.

Opening Impulse fast

You don't have to hunt for the menu bar icon. Launch Impulse from Spotlight, Alfred, Raycast, the Dock, or Terminal, and it opens on whatever section you saw last. To jump straight to a section, use a link:

open "impulse://history" — and the same for home, speech-to-text, language-models, custom-vocabulary, text-transform-examples, settings, help, and about.

Your privacy

Impulse is built to keep your words yours. Both the speech-to-text and the AI tidy-up run entirely on your Mac — your audio and your transcripts never leave it. Your recordings sit in a folder you can open or move at any time. And the optional diagnostic logs (off unless you turn them on) are written only to your Mac and never uploaded.

Fixing common problems

The shortcut opens a Finder search window

macOS uses ⌥⌘Space for a Spotlight search in a Finder window. Open System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Spotlight and turn off Show Finder search window. Or pick another shortcut in Impulse, in Settings → Hotkeys.

The shortcut doesn't start recording

Grant Input MonitoringA macOS permission that lets Impulse notice your shortcut even when another app is in front. and Accessibility in Settings → Permissions, then quit and reopen Impulse. If the Home screen still says the shortcuts are off, it names the permission that's missing.

Nothing got pasted

Auto-paste needs Accessibility. Grant it in Settings, or paste yourself with ⌘V — Impulse also puts the text on the clipboard. If it isn't there, open the recording in your history.

Text Transform didn't do anything

It needs the AI model. Open Language Models, download it, and check the model shows as ready in Settings. (And remember it's Apple-Silicon only.)

The tidy-up changed too much

Open the recording in History and tap Show Original, or redo it with tidy-up off. You can also soften its instructions in Settings.

My Bluetooth mic sounds poor or is slow to start

Bluetooth headset mics often sound thinner and take a moment to wake up. For the best results, put your Mac's built-in mic or a wired one at the top of your list in Settings → Audio. Impulse will then keep using it even when a headset is connected. Wait for recording to fully begin before you talk.

Impulse recorded from the wrong microphone

Without a preferred list, Impulse follows your system input, which macOS moves to whatever connected last. List the microphone you want at the top in Settings → Audio.

The recording stopped on its own

The microphone it was recording from stopped working — usually unplugged, or a headset that disconnected. Impulse keeps what it recorded up to that point. Simply changing your system input no longer interrupts a recording.

Another language came out as gibberish

You're likely on an English-only model. Switch to a multilingual one and set your language in Settings → Transcription.

Plain-English glossary

The jargon you'll bump into, in everyday words. (Look for the dotted underlines above — you can tap any of them for a quick reminder.)

Transcription

The text Impulse makes from what you say.

Speech model

The part that turns your voice into text. Bigger ones are more accurate but slower and larger.

Multilingual vs. English-only

Multilingual models handle many languages; English-only ones are smaller and faster but English only.

Quantized (Q5, Q8)

A compressed version of a model — smaller and faster, with a small accuracy trade-off.

Text Transform

The optional AI step that rewrites raw dictation into clean, polished writing.

AI model (language model)

The kind of AI that reads and rewrites text. Impulse runs it on your Mac, offline.

Apple Silicon

Macs with Apple's own chips (M1 and newer). Impulse supports only these Macs.

Accessibility (permission)

Lets Impulse use its keyboard shortcuts and paste into other apps.

Input Monitoring (permission)

Lets Impulse notice your shortcut while another app is in front.

Clipboard

The Mac's holding spot for whatever you last copied. Paste with ⌘V.

Waveform

The moving bars that show your voice so you can see you're being heard.

On-device / offline

Everything runs on your own Mac — nothing is sent to the internet.

Impulse — speech-to-text from your menu bar, offline first. Made by the Impulse team. Your version number is shown under About. The open-source software that Impulse uses, with its licenses, is listed there too, under Acknowledgements.