Support

Last updated 30 July 2026

Setting Slate up

• Open the downloaded file and drag Slate into your Applications folder.
• Open Slate from Applications. It has no window. Look for the waveform in the menu bar at the top of the screen.
• Slate asks for the microphone, then for accessibility. It needs both. There is a short setup guide on the first run that walks you through them.
• The speech model downloads once, about 600 MB. Settings › General shows the progress.
• Click into any text box, hold Right Option, and talk. Let go when you are done.

You can bring the setup guide back at any time from the menu bar: Show setup guide.

The talk key does nothing

• Open System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility and check that Slate is switched on. If it already was, switch it off and back on: macOS can hold on to a stale entry after an app is replaced.
• Check the menu bar. If the waveform is not there, Slate is not running.
• Try a different key in Settings › General › Talk key. Some keyboard tools take Right Option for themselves.
• If you prefer not to hold anything, set When pressed to tap once to start and tap again to stop.

The menu bar icon is missing

On a MacBook with a notch, a crowded menu bar can push the icon under the cutout, where you cannot see or click it. Quit Slate, run this in Terminal, then open Slate again:

defaults write com.slate.dictation "NSStatusItem Preferred Position Item-0" -float 250

That pins the icon to the right of the notch. Hiding a few other menu bar items helps too.

The text goes to the wrong place

Slate puts the text into the app you were in when you started talking, so switching apps mid-sentence does not send your words somewhere unexpected.

Some apps do not tell macOS where the cursor is. In those, Slate goes by the gap since you last spoke: a short gap carries the sentence on, a long one starts fresh. Click where you want the words before you talk and it is right every time.

A word keeps coming out wrong

Open Settings › Dictionary and add it: what you say on one side, what should be written on the other. Names, jargon, and shorthand all work. Your entries win over everything else, including the built-in spellings.

Turning the cleanup off

Settings › General › Cleanup before inserting. Each rule has its own switch: filler sounds, stutters, and spoken commands.

Speaking another language

Settings › General › Speech model. English is the fastest and most accurate. The multilingual model covers 25 European languages and works out which one you are speaking. It downloads once, about 460 MB. The cleanup rules are written for English, so most stand down in that mode.

What is kept, and where

Everything Slate keeps is on your Mac:

• ~/Library/Application Support/Slate/ holds your history (text only), your dictionary, your license record, and a plain text log for support.
• ~/Library/Application Support/FluidAudio/Models/ holds the speech models.

Settings › History lets you keep the history, keep it for a day, or keep nothing at all, and there is a button to clear it now. Audio is never written to disk. More detail is on the privacy page.

Uninstalling

• Quit Slate from the menu bar.
• Drag Slate from Applications to the Trash.
• Delete ~/Library/Application Support/Slate.
• Delete ~/Library/Application Support/FluidAudio to get the speech models back. That is about 1 GB if you used both.
• Remove Slate from System Settings › Privacy & Security, under both Accessibility and Microphone.

What you need

An Apple silicon Mac, M1 or later, and macOS 14.4 or later. Speech runs on the Neural Engine, which Intel Macs do not have. There is no Windows, iPhone, or web version.

Updates

Slate can update itself. Settings › About holds the switch and a Check now button, and the menu bar has Check for updates as well.

It is off until you say yes. Slate asks once and keeps whatever you answer. A check asks this site for one small file listing the newest version, and nothing about you or your Mac goes with it. A new version is installed only if it is signed with Slate's key.

You can also just download the new version from this site and drop it into Applications yourself. Either way your settings, dictionary, and history stay where they are.

What it costs

Nothing. Slate is free to use, with no subscription and no account to make. Nothing in the app is held back. If it saves you time and you want to say thanks, a tip jar is on the way.