Overview

Petal is a native macOS menu bar app for fast, local-first audio transcription in a clean, minimal interface. It brings multiple transcription engines together in one app — Apple Speech (built-in), Qwen3 ASR, NVIDIA Parakeet via MLX Audio, WhisperKit (Large V3 and Tiny), and Voxtral — all optimized for Apple Silicon. Designed for privacy-conscious workflows, Petal keeps transcription on-device with streamlined copy/paste output. Free and open source.

Minimum macOS: 14.0 (Sonoma)

Architecture: Apple Silicon

Key Features

Multiple transcription engines in one app (Apple Speech, Qwen3, NVIDIA Parakeet, WhisperKit, Voxtral)
Local-first on-device transcription for privacy
Native macOS menu bar interface
Optimized for Apple Silicon Macs
Fast copy/paste workflow for transcribed text
Clean, minimal interface
Free and open source