Zarah AI is speech in both directions: it turns your voice into clean, typed text anywhere on your Mac — 100% on-device — and reads any selected text aloud with ⌃⇧R. Here's everything you need to go from download to dictating.
1
Install Zarah AI
Open the downloaded Zarah-AI.dmg and drag Zarah AI into your Applications folder. Then open it from Applications. Zarah lives in your menu bar — look for its icon at the top-right of your screen.
Don't have it yet? Download for macOS.
2
Sign in to start your free trial
Click Sign in. Zarah opens your browser so you can sign in securely — no password is ever typed into the app. Confirm the short code shown on your Mac by clicking “Approve this Mac.”
That's it — your 14-day free trial starts immediately, and the app unlocks. It keeps working offline for several days at a time between check-ins.
3
Grant three permissions
On first use, macOS asks Zarah for three permissions. Each one is necessary, and everything stays on your Mac:
MicrophoneTo hear you while you hold the hotkey. Audio is processed on-device and never leaves your Mac.
AccessibilityTo paste your text into whatever app holds your cursor.
Input MonitoringTo arm the press-to-talk hotkey system-wide.
If you miss a prompt, you can grant these anytime in System Settings → Privacy & Security.
4
Speak, and it's typed
Put your cursor anywhere you'd type — Mail, Slack, a browser, a document. Then:
- Hold your hotkey (default Fn). A floating capsule shows Zarah is listening.
- Speak naturally.
- Release. Zarah transcribes on-device, tidies grammar and filler if you've enabled it, and pastes clean text right at your cursor.
5
Listen with Read Aloud
Zarah speaks, too. Select text in any app — an email, a brief, a web page — and press ⌃⇧R:
- Free Apple voices, entirely on-device, are the default. Press the hotkey again to stop, or pause from the capsule; set the speed (0.5×–2×) in Settings.
- Grok voices (Ara, Eve, Leo, Rex, Sal) are an opt-in alternative that uses your own xAI key — the same key as the Grok AI-model option.
- Nothing selected? Zarah reads your last dictation back — a quick proof-listen before you hit send.
6
Make it yours (optional)
- Remap every hotkey in Settings — dictation, Read Aloud, Ask, and Re-paste each have their own recorder, and Zarah warns you if two shortcuts collide.
- Ask (off by default): select text, hold the Ask key, and say the change — "make it shorter", "insert my signature block" — and the selection is rewritten in place.
- Re-paste: press ⌃⇧V to drop your last dictation at the cursor again.
- Grammar cleanup turns filler into clean sentences — with guardrails that never change a number or drop a “not.”
- Encrypted local history keeps a searchable record of your dictations, on this Mac only.
- Bring your own AI (off by default): connect your own Claude, OpenAI, xAI, or Meta key for cleanup, Ask, and Grok voices. Only text is ever sent — never audio.
7
Keep going after the trial
When your 14 days are up, a subscription — $49/year per Mac (plus applicable sales tax) — keeps Zarah running. Subscribe from inside the app or on the site.
💡 One tip: subscribe with the same email you sign into Zarah with. That way your purchase unlocks the app automatically. If you used a different email, just email us and we'll link it.
Subscribe — $49/year
Your voice never leaves your Mac. Speech-to-text runs entirely on-device, and the only connection Zarah makes on its own is a license/update check — the in-app Trust panel keeps an honest count. See our Privacy Policy for details.