Glyph Jot

Glyph Jot is context capture for the Mac, and it never leaves your Mac. Hold Fn, talk, let go: the words are typed where your cursor is. Click Record: a meeting or a long conversation is recorded, transcribed and summarized. Notes, dictations and recordings live in one library, filed by people, accounts and tags. Speech is Apple's on-device model; summaries and clean-up use Apple Intelligence on the Mac. No account, no subscription, no cloud.

What it does

You do	Glyph Jot does
Hold Fn, talk, let go	Types it where your cursor is, in any app
Fn + Shift	Saves a note, types nothing
Click Record	Records the mic and the Mac's sound, then transcribes and summarizes on the Mac
Hold Fn while recording	Types where you are; the recording keeps going and that stretch stays out of its transcript and summary
Fn + Shift while recording	A note linked to that moment of the meeting
Double-press Fn	Hands-free until you press Fn again (Esc cancels)
Fn + Control	Command Mode: rewrites the selected text as you ask
Fn + Option	Asks your history: "what did I say about the launch date?"
Say "fill the form, name ..., email ..."	Fills every field of the form you're in

• One library. Recordings, Notes and Dictations in the sidebar, with Open tasks from every meeting, and People, Accounts and tags that link them.
• Typing never stops. Dictation runs as its own process inside the app (Contents/Helpers/Glyph Jot Dictation.app). If the rest of the app crashes, you keep typing.
• Cleans up while you talk, learns your words, knows terminals ("dash dash no dash verify" is --no-verify), styles per kind of app, snippets.
• Never loses a ramble or a meeting: drafts are saved while you talk; a recording is closed safely even when you quit mid-meeting.

Install

1. Download Glyph-Jot.dmg, open it and drag Jot to Applications. It's signed and notarized by Apple.
2. Open it. In Settings > General > Permissions, allow Input Monitoring (the Fn key), Accessibility (to type where you are) and Microphone. To record the other side of a call, allow Screen & System Audio Recording when you first record with the Mac's sound.
3. Hold Fn and talk, or click Record.

Updating from Glyph Dictate or Jot: it is the same app (Jot.app, same bundle id), so your settings, words and permissions carry over.

Needs macOS 26 or later on Apple silicon. Summaries, clean-up of corrections, Command Mode, asking your history and filling forms need Apple Intelligence; plain dictation and recording don't.

Your words stay yours

• Speech, summaries and clean-up run on your Mac. Glyph Jot makes no network requests.
• Dictation writes no audio to disk; a recording is an .m4a in your library folder, yours.
• What you jot during a recording is marked in the conversation's meta.json (jots) and left out of its transcript and summary.
• Every dictation is a line of JSON in ~/Library/Application Support/Jot/dictations/, with what was heard before clean-up. Notes are Markdown files. Recordings are plain folders (docs/vault-format.md).
• Choose any folder for notes and dictations in Settings > General (an Obsidian vault works) and any folder for recordings in Settings > Record.

Build from source

Needs Xcode 26 and XcodeGen (brew install xcodegen).

git clone https://github.com/fru-dev3/glyph-jot.git && cd glyph-jot
./scripts/install.sh        # builds, installs to /Applications, opens it
./scripts/check.sh          # the key timing and text-rule checks, no mic needed

Set DEVELOPMENT_TEAM to your Apple team ID to sign with it, so macOS keeps the permissions across rebuilds. scripts/release.sh builds releases (Developer ID, notarization, GitHub).

Code map: Record/ is the app (library, recorder, settings, Engine.swift starts the dictation engine); Mac/ is the dictation engine (FnKey.swift, Dictation.swift, Polish.swift, Rules.swift, Pill.swift, EngineLink.swift) and the settings both share; Mac/Link.swift is the pipe between the two; Packages/GlyphCore records, transcribes, summarizes and reads the library. Tests: the JotMac scheme and swift test in Packages/GlyphCore. Live checks on a quiet Mac: scripts/jot-while-recording-check.sh, scripts/engine-isolation-check.sh, and scripts/engine-restart-check.sh (safe any time).

Versions

• 0.7.13 (2026-10-25): every capture says where it came from. A recording's meta.json keeps the Mac's name as device, shown beside its date and length; each dictation line keeps it too. The sidebar opens with the app's icon, name and "Personal context".
• 0.7.12 (2026-10-25): Jot captures, Glyph Studio files. The sidebar is All (a summary with Ask), Notes, Dictations, Recordings, then the Studio Domains, People, Products and Projects a capture is filed under, with counts; tags stay plain. Recordings and notes link to Studio ids; older People and Accounts move onto them at launch. No task list: action items read in a recording's summary. Tests never touch the installed app's settings or its dictation engine.
• 0.7.11 (2026-10-25): meeting notes keep only the action items the conversation states: no "None" or "No other action items mentioned" rows, no tasks the on-device model made up.
• 0.7.10 (2026-10-25): design pass. A person's or an account's page lists the notes that name them; a note links to the recording it was said in; Dictations keeps its filter and Ask in its header and shows a row's actions on hover; the library opens with the app (not at login).
• 0.7.9 (2026-10-25): Glyph Dictate and Glyph Record are one app, Glyph Jot. Click Record for a meeting, hold Fn to jot even while recording (kept out of the meeting's transcript), and find notes, dictations and recordings in one library with People, Accounts and tags. Dictation runs in its own process inside the app, so nothing else in it can stop your typing.
• 0.7.8 (2026-10-25): Jot is now Glyph Dictate, with the Glyph family icon. The app is still Jot.app with the same bundle id, so your settings, words and permissions carry over.
• 0.7.7 (2026-10-23): Jot checks it still reaches Apple's speech service every two minutes and after the Mac wakes, and reconnects while you aren't talking, so a dropped connection never meets a dictation.
• 0.7.6 (2026-10-23): no more restarting over and over when macOS drops its speech model; Jot fetches it once, waits for it, and says so on the pill if it isn't ready yet.
• 0.7.5 (2026-10-23): the pill shows on the screen you're typing on, not wherever the pointer is.
• 0.7.4 (2026-10-22): a new icon, a "j" that speaks.
• 0.7.3 (2026-10-21): a running timer always means you're heard. When Apple's speech service stops answering, Jot starts it again on everything you said so far (kept in memory only, never saved), and if it still won't answer, says so on the pill and relaunches itself.
• 0.7.2 (2026-10-21): with no text field (Finder, a page, the desktop) your words always stay on the clipboard; any folder can hold your notes, an Obsidian vault too.

License

MIT. Made by fru.dev. If Glyph Jot saves you typing, a star helps others find it.