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Set up blabe

Install blabe, open it once and step through the welcome window. Each step moves on by itself when it’s done.

What you need

  • macOS 14 or later, on Apple silicon or Intel.
  • A blabe trial, or a subscription and the license key from your purchase. Your account and license. Transcription is included within a fair-use monthly limit, so there’s no separate transcription bill.
  • An internet connection. blabe needs it to transcribe.

Install

Download blabe from the download page. Open the disk image and drag blabe to your Applications folder. Then open blabe from Applications.

blabe lives in the menu bar. It has no main window and no Dock icon.

First run

The first time you open blabe, a window called Welcome to blabe walks you through what’s missing. Each page moves on by itself as soon as its step is done, and you can skip any page. It shows only the pages you still need.

  1. Microphone. Click Allow Microphone and choose Allow when macOS asks. blabe records only while you hold the hotkey.
  2. Input Monitoring. Click Allow Input Monitoring, then turn on blabe in the list that opens. If macOS offers to Quit & Reopen blabe, choose Later. blabe picks up the permission on its own.
  3. Accessibility. Click Allow Accessibility, then turn on blabe in the list. blabe pastes for you by pressing ⌘V.
  4. The 🌐 key. Shown only if your hotkey is Fn. Click Open Keyboard Settings and set “Press 🌐 key to” to “Do Nothing”, so holding Fn doesn’t also open emoji or dictation.
  5. Start Your Free Trial. Click Start Free Trial, or paste the license key from your purchase and click Sign In. The trial starts when you click Start Free Trial: no card, email or signup. To buy a plan, choose See pricing. Choose Skip for now to do this later in Settings → Account.
  6. You’re all set. The page lists what’s set up, including a Trial or subscription started row. Click Start Using blabe. Hold Fn and speak; release to paste.

Why each permission is needed is on the permissions page.

Try it

  1. Click into any text field, for example in Notes.
  2. Hold Fn and say a sentence. A small pill at the bottom of the screen shows a live waveform.
  3. Let go. The pill says it’s transcribing, then your words are pasted where your cursor is.

Taps under 0.3 seconds and recordings with only silence are ignored. A recording stops on its own after 5 minutes and is transcribed.

If you skipped a step

The menu bar icon shows a warning, and the top item in its menu names what’s still missing: Grant Microphone Access…, Grant Input Monitoring…, Grant Accessibility…, Sign In to blabe… or Relaunch blabe to Finish Setup. Click it. Each one is explained in troubleshooting.

Settings

Open Settings… from the menu bar icon.

  • Hotkey: Fn (🌐) by default. See Hotkey options.
  • Clean up speech: on by default. Removes filler words like “um” and “uh”. MAI-Transcribe 2 also removes false starts.
  • Send automatically to coding agents: off by default. See Sending to coding agents.
  • Language: Auto-detect by default. Pin a language if auto-detection gets it wrong.
  • Words to recognize: names, products and jargon to spell right, separated by commas. The list holds 50 in all, and your words come first.
  • Include common developer terms: on by default. Adds terms speech models tend to mishear, such as Supabase, Vercel and kubectl.
  • Microphone: Built-in microphone (recommended) by default. System default follows System Settings → Sound.
  • Play start and stop sounds: off by default.
  • Launch at login: off by default. It works best when blabe is in Applications.
  • Account: sign in with your license key, see your plan and usage, and sign out. See Your account and license.