Yakki 1.0: the iPhone companion to the Yakki Mac dictation app (voice-to-text keyboard, privacy-first)
Yakki is a voice notes and dictation keyboard for iPhone. Tap the mic from inside any app (Messages, Mail, Slack, Notes, Docs), talk, and clean, formatted text appears: punctuated, filler words stripped, structured for where you are. Some of you know Yakki as the Mac menu-bar dictation app; this is the iPhone half. I’m super happy to release version 1.0 on the App Store today. The headline features: Voice keyboard that works system-wide: it’s a keyboard, not a standalone app you have to copy-paste out of, so it works in every text field on the phone. 7 AI formatting modes: General, Email, Chat, Docs, Notes, Code, and Meeting. The same rambling voice input comes out casual in a Slack reply and professional in an email. Meeting mode with speaker labels: record a meeting, interview, or lecture of any length in the background (a Live Activity in the Dynamic Island keeps it alive when the keyboard loses focus) and get a who-said-what transcript you can translate and search. Already a Mac customer? Sign in on iPhone with the same Yakki account (the email you bought with) and Pro unlocks automatically — no second purchase. (Cross-device history sync between the two is coming in the next release.) It looks awesome (I am biased). The main app has a retro interface, inspired by the best industrial design out there, with some nice details. I wanted it to be unique and I believe I got it, I really enjoyed crafting this one. And more in the app: translation, replayable recordings, searchable history, re-formatting a past transcript into a different mode. Problem: Typing on a phone is the slowest thing you do on it - most people speak roughly 3x faster than they thumb-type. The built-in iOS dictation gives you an unpunctuated word-soup you then have to fix by hand, and it forgets everything the moment you tap out. The apps that fix this mostly route your voice through their servers, keep your transcripts, and lock you into a subscription. For example: “Hey, can we push the 3pm to tomorrow?” in Messages comes out as a clean, punctuated message. The same kind of rambling thought, dictated in Mail, comes out structured as an email instead of a text. Hold a meeting, hit record, and get a speaker-labeled transcript that you can search and translate. Re-run an old transcript through “Notes” mode to turn a meeting dump into bullet points. Comparison: The category leader here is Wispr Flow, excellent product, but subscription-only and cloud-centric. Yakki is the privacy-leaning, buy-it-once alternative, your data stays in your own iCloud instead of on a vendor’s servers, and there’s a lifetime option instead of a forced subscription. With the Mac app you can record meetings, get notes and insights, transcribe media, sync your Apple voice notes, all VERY fast and accurate. The privacy is slightly different from the desktop Mac app. The Mac version transcribes fully on-device (Parakeet/Whisper, etc). The iPhone version does not. iOS won’t let a keyboard extension run a model like that, so transcription runs in the cloud (ElevenLabs Scribe). The audio is transcribed and immediately discarded, nothing is retained on Yakki’s servers, and your transcripts and recordings live on your device and sync through your own private iCloud (CloudKit), not our database. We literally couldn’t read your history if we wanted to; there’s no account-side copy of it. No ad trackers, no selling your voice. On-device transcription on iPhone is on the roadmap as a Pro option, but I’m not going to claim it before it ships. Your data genuinely doesn’t sit on our servers, and you get a lifetime option if you do not like the subscription model. Pricing: Free - General dictation mode, 1,000 transcribed words / month, no account games Pro - everything (all 7 modes, unlimited words, Meeting mode, translation, sync): $9.99 monthly (7-day free trial) $99.99 yearly (7-day free trial) $149.99 lifetime, one-time, great investment Download Yakki on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yakki-voice-to-text-keyboard/id6754668404 Website to download the Desktop Mac app: https://yakki.ai Trust & transparency I go by Wu. I build all kinds of stuff, either by myself or with other people. The latest projects I made are Linger and Pathway. I have a portfolio of products and work as a consultant in parallel. Yakki started as a Mac app, which I sell directly (not through the Mac App Store) using Sparkle for updates. Some technical details of the desktop app made it a nightmare to distribute through the Apple Store, so I took the independent distribution route. The iPhone app you’re downloading here is normally available in the App Store (App Store ID 6754668404). It’s the same product line and the same person behind both — cross-device sync between them ships in the next release. A note for architecture nerds, since this is r/macapps: an iOS keyboard extension can’t record audio and runs under a 50-120MB memory cap, so Yakki’s keyboard hands off capture to the main app keeping the audio session alive in the background. Sync involves manual CloudKit operations against your private database; there’s no Yakki-owned server holding your transcripts. Privacy policy: https://yakki.ai/privacy Terms of service: https://yakki.ai/terms
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Congrats on the launch, this looks nicely thought through. Quick privacy question: when using the keyboard system-wide, is transcription/formatting handled locally on-device, or does audio/text get sent to a server depending on the mode? Im always curious how dictation apps draw that line, especially for email/docs style cleanup.
That's a great question. In the iOS app we cannot do it locally yet. The transcription and formatting both run in the cloud. The keyboard captures audio, hands it to the app, which uploads it to our backend for transcription (via providers), and the email/docs-style formatting modes are done server-side. Your recordings and transcripts are stored on-device and sync through your own private iCloud, they don't live on our servers. Audio/text only touch our backend in transit for the transcription/formatting request itself but are not stored. The provider's contract specify they cannot train their models with our data, they delete everything after 30 days automatically (I believe they have a legal obligation of storing it for that time, but might be wrong) This is mostly an iOS constraint, keyboard extensions are hard-capped on memory, so on-device models aren't viable in that sandbox yet. On-device transcription is on our roadmap as a premium option, but it's not shipped yet, so on iOS audio does leave the device for processing. In the desktop application the clean up and transcription is done locally, only some features require cloud processing (of the text, your audio never leaves your device) and can be disabled by the user.
I’m very interested in this and I’m using another app right now. However I saw that iOS 27 will fix their issues with dictation. What is your solution bringing more than a working Apple dictation (yes, big IF for now)? Not trying to troll but understanding the differentiation factor your app brings to the table. Thanks!
Thanks for the question, very valid. I'd say, "Finally!" We have suffered too long with the native dictation. The iOS app adds a layer of polish with the different modes (probably Apple will go there soon) but also has a couple of unique features. If you record meetings or long sessions with several participants, you can get the transcription in a conversational format (i.e., speaker A: blabla) and edit the speakers afterward. You can also set automatic translation to get the transcription of your recording in the language you choose. The desktop app is where the differentiation margin takes off. You can dictate locally, fast and accurately, polished, with modes. But you can also record your meetings with video included (without having to add a participant to your calls), extract notes and insights from the calls, next actions, quotes from the participants, or replay your call with a "karaoke" version that shows what every participant was saying. You can also transcribe your podcast or videos and get summaries. I believe there is enough value to stick around!
That’s clear thank you
Wow. It works really great!
Thanks! Happy it works that well for you!
Quick question: Which scribe model are you using for dictation? Is it v2 or v1? Also how quick is the dictation? Is it realtime?
it is V2! Desktop is sub 300ms, in iOS it is fast but a little less, as it needs to do round trips to the server!
Elevenlabs has realtime endpoints. You can use them to reduce the latency. But it's 2x the cost.
Yakki: Voice to Text Keyboard — by Julio Imazio Ratings: 0 (no ratings yet) Average: n/a ★ Age: released 1 day ago · rated 4+ Overall score: 0 / 100