Getting started

chatFlow is a macOS app that lives in the menu bar. The core idea: you hold a key, speak, let go — and the text lands fully formatted at the cursor, in any app, without copying. Around that, a set of dedicated tools has grown: translation right while you dictate, a Voice-Memo Studio with an AI voice, a Voice-Clone Studio for training your own voice, an image command by voice, info cards, timers, a dictionary, typing suggestions and the prompt builder Spark. The text rules and the small language models run locally on your computer; the heavy features run in the cloud and cost credits.

chatFlow is a menu bar app and runs in the background so the dictation hotkey works everywhere — even without an open window. You open the main window from the menu bar icon.

The settings live on the tabs of the main window: under ‘General’ (gear icon) you'll find hotkeys, speech model, translation and ‘Flo & hints’; under ‘Styling’ the time format and the cancel command; under ‘Settings’ typing suggestions, launch at login, storage, import/export and updates. In the menu of the menu bar icon, ‘Settings’ (⌘,) takes you straight there.

To dictate, you hold down the record key, speak, and let go — then the text is pasted. You can pick any key you like in the “General” tab, in the “Record Hotkey” row. Tip: use a non-Cmd key (e.g. right Option), because pressing Cmd twice triggers macOS's own dictation/Siri. With Flow Max, the app keeps recording for a moment after you let go, so the last word makes it in.

Flo gives you a guided introduction: write ‘show me everything’ and he'll present the most important features to you one by one in the chat.