Support

A Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later), macOS 14 Sonoma or later, and 8 GB of memory. The speech model needs about 500 MB of space and is downloaded once.

1. Open Vel. It lives in the menu bar (the icon with five bars), not the Dock.
2. The setup page walks you through it: download the speech model, then allow the Microphone and Input Monitoring.
3. Click where you want the text, hold your dictation key (Left ⌥ to start with), speak, and let go.
4. Your words are copied: press ⌘V to paste them.

Apps from the Mac App Store aren't allowed to type into other apps. Vel copies your words to the clipboard instead, so one ⌘V puts them wherever you're writing.

Yes: Console → Settings → Dictation → Shortcut key. You can choose Left or Right ⌥, Right ⌘, Fn 🌐, or Left or Right ⌃. Only single modifier keys are offered, so the key never types anything.

Yes, with hands-free mode: double-tap your key and speak. Tap it once more to finish, or press Esc to cancel. Vel can also stop by itself when you go quiet (Settings → Dictation).

Vel works best in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hindi, Tamil and Kannada. It also understands many other languages, with lower accuracy. Choose yours in Console → Settings → Speech → I speak.

With Vel Unlimited, Vel can also detect the language each time, even when you mix languages. For Telugu, Kannada and Bengali, choosing the language gives much better results.

Teach it: select the wrong word in Console → History and type the right spelling, or add the word in Console → Dictionary. Vel learns it for next time.

Tap Try Vel Unlimited free for 7 days (Console → Vel Unlimited). Everything is unlocked for a week, at no charge and with nothing to cancel. Afterwards Vel keeps working on the free plan, and everything you made is kept.

No. It's one purchase, for you: it works on every Mac signed in to your Apple Account.

Open Console → Vel Unlimited and click Restore purchases. Make sure this Mac is signed in to the App Store with the Apple Account you bought it with.

Purchases are handled by Apple: request a refund at reportaproblem.apple.com.

Check that Vel is allowed in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring. If it is and the key still does nothing, quit Vel from the menu bar and open it again: macOS sometimes needs a restart of the app after this permission is granted.

Check System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone, and which microphone Vel uses (Console → Settings → Dictation → Microphone, with a Test button).

Check your internet connection, then try again in Console → Settings → Speech. The download is about 464 MB.

Only on your Mac. Vel never sends your voice or your words anywhere. The privacy policy has the details.

In Console → Settings → Data, click Delete all my data (you can Export your History first). Then drag Vel from Applications to the Bin.