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Freshflo is in public beta. It's signed by its developer but not yet notarized by Apple, so macOS asks once before the first launch. To open it:

1. Open Freshflo from Applications. When you see “Freshflo” Not Opened, click Done (not Move to Trash).
2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and scroll to Security.
3. Next to “Freshflo” was blocked, click Open Anyway and confirm with your password or Touch ID.

On macOS 14 you can also right-click Freshflo in Applications and choose Open. You only do this once; updates open normally. Notarization is planned before 1.0.

Want to check your download? Run shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/Freshflo-*.dmg in Terminal and compare it with the SHA-256 on the download card.

Install: run Freshflo_0.5.0_x64-setup.exe. If Windows says “Windows protected your PC”, click More info → Run anyway. The app is new and not code-signed yet.

Set up: Settings opens on first launch with On this PC (offline) selected. Click Download for the offline model (190 MB, once). For the smartest clean-up, you can instead pick Groq and paste a free key from console.groq.com/keys.

Dictate: click into any text box, hold Ctrl + Win, talk, let go. Tap it once for hands-free; hold Alt too for Command mode on selected text. Change the keys in Settings.

Not working? Check Windows Settings → Privacy & security → Microphone → “Let desktop apps access your microphone” is on. Freshflo lives in the system tray (the ^ by the clock).

Not on Windows yet: meeting notes and live captions are Mac-only for now.

Freshflo needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later and runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. Check your version under → About This Mac. It's about 10 MB and uses almost no CPU while idle.

Freshflo offers to move itself to Applications when you open it from somewhere else. Say yes: macOS remembers permissions and installs updates reliably only for apps in Applications.

Freshflo types by acting like a keyboard, which needs Accessibility permission.

1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.
2. Turn on Freshflo. If it's already on, turn it off and on again.
3. Still nothing? Select Freshflo, click − to remove it, then quit and reopen Freshflo and allow it again.

Also check you clicked into a text box first. Without Accessibility, Freshflo copies the text instead so you can paste it with ⌘V.

1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone and turn on Freshflo.
2. Check Freshflo's Settings → General → Microphone. Automatic (the default) shows which mic it's using and picks the best one that's connected; choose a specific mic only if you need to.
3. AirPods or another Bluetooth headset? Their mic takes a moment to start and can deliver silence. Leave “Use the Mac's microphone instead of AirPods” on (Settings → General), which is the default from 0.12.1.
4. On macOS 14 and 15 the built-in engine also needs Speech Recognition permission in the same Privacy list.

macOS can give the fn (🌐) key its own job. Freshflo's setup offers to free it up for you. To do it yourself:

1. Open System Settings → Keyboard.
2. Set Press 🌐 key to to Do Nothing.
3. If Apple Dictation is on, change its shortcut away from fn in the same pane.

Prefer another key? Pick another Dictation key in Freshflo's Settings → General.

On MacBooks with a notch, a full menu bar hides icons behind it. Quit a few menu-bar apps, or hold ⌘ and drag icons to make room. Freshflo still works while hidden: hold fn and talk.

• Add names, brands and jargon in Settings → Dictionary. Freshflo snaps near misses to them, like “sharmar” to “Sharma”.
• Correct a word by hand right after Freshflo types it, and it learns it for next time.
• Speak at normal speed and keep the mic close. You don't need to pause between words.

Freshflo understands English, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Urdu and many more. For the best results, set Spoken language in Settings → General to your language instead of “Detect automatically”. Set Write in (Settings → Style) to English (or Hinglish) to speak in one language and get text in another.

For the best free accuracy, turn on Whisper on this Mac in Settings → General (Engine: Built-in). It downloads once (about 630 MB), then works offline with no key. Importing names in Settings → Dictionary helps with people's names. For the fastest cloud results, you can also add a free Groq key:

1. Create a free key at console.groq.com/keys.
2. In Freshflo's Settings → General → Transcription, set Engine to Groq and paste the key. It's stored in your Mac's Keychain.

Turning off Fix grammar also shaves a little time off each dictation.

That's Prompt mode. In AI tools, Freshflo writes a clear, structured prompt instead of a chat message. Turn off Prompt mode in AI tools in Settings → Style, or set a per-app tone for that app.

Yes. Settings → Style → Swear words: Clean up (replace them), Mask (f***) or Keep as said.

Say “first… second… third…” (or “step one…”, “number one…”) for a numbered list, or “bullet point… next point…” for bullets. “I need three things: eggs, milk and bread” becomes bullets too. Everything else stays as sentences. Turn it off in Settings → Style → Smart lists.

Turn on Live Captions in the menu-bar menu. A card above the bar shows your words as you speak, with filler words and corrected words struck through, and what Freshflo detected: a list, a question, a correction. After you let go it shows exactly what was typed. Captions are recognised on your Mac.

Yes. In Mail, Outlook, Spark, Superhuman, and Gmail or Outlook in your browser, “Hi Marcus … thanks, Priya” becomes a greeting line, short paragraphs and a sign-off. Turn it off in Settings → Style → Email formatting.

• “camel case user id” → userId, “snake case user id” → user_id, “pascal case”, “kebab case” and “constant case” work too.
• “package dot json” → package.json, “dot env” → .env, “user underscore id” → user_id.
• In Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT and terminals running Claude Code, Prompt mode turns rambling into a clear prompt.

Open Meeting Notes and choose Ask your meetings. Ask “What did we decide about pricing?” or “What are my action items?” and Freshflo answers from your notes, naming the meetings each point came from. If it isn't in your notes, it says so instead of guessing.

1. Open Settings → General → Use Freshflo in Claude and Cursor.
2. Click Connect next to Claude Desktop or Cursor (for Claude Code, copy the command and run it in Terminal).
3. Restart the app, then ask things like “What did we agree with Acme last week?”

The AI app reads your meeting notes from this Mac only when it needs them. Searching what you dictate is off unless you turn it on.

Settings → General → Sync and share. Choose iCloud Drive to keep your Macs in step, or a shared Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive folder to share names, jargon and snippets with your team. New items from anyone are added everywhere; there's no account.

Yes. Whisper mode is automatic: quiet or distant speech is boosted before it's transcribed, so you can talk softly in an open office or late at night.

With that app in front, open the menu-bar menu and choose Turn Off in [App]. Manage the list in Settings → General → Turned off in. Useful for games, remote desktops and password managers.

Menu → Scratchpad… is a notes window you can dictate into. Anything you dictate with no text field in front of you (the desktop, a Finder window) lands there too, as does text an app refused to paste, so nothing is lost.

While recording, Meeting Notes shows two meters: You and The call. If the call meter says “Not recording”, allow Freshflo in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording, then start again. Music and video apps are left out of the call recording, and nothing joins the meeting.

When a Zoom, Teams, Meet, FaceTime or Webex call starts, Freshflo shows a small prompt in the top corner: Start notes or Not now. It never records until you click Start. Turn the prompt off in Settings → General → Meeting notes, or click “Don't offer again”.

Yes. Your side is always “You”. The other people are told apart by their voices and labelled Speaker 1, Speaker 2…, and named when the call makes it clear, like “Hi, I'm Priya”. Click a speaker above the notes to rename them; the notes and transcript update. Very similar voices, or people sharing one microphone, may be grouped together.

The Transcript tab has a Clean version (grammar and fillers fixed) and the original As spoken. The Create menu writes a follow-up email, a Slack summary or an action list from the meeting.

Menu → Your Week… shows words spoken, time saved against typing, your speaking speed, your streak, where you dictate most and how much Freshflo cleaned up. It's counted on your Mac only.

Freshflo checks for updates a few times a day and offers to install them; each update is verified before it's installed. To check now, click the menu-bar icon → Check for Updates…. See what's new.

With the built-in engine, nowhere you didn't choose: on macOS 26 it stays on your Mac, and on older macOS it stays on your Mac whenever your language is available offline. Cloud engines like Groq receive the audio directly from your Mac. History shows which for every dictation. Read the privacy policy.

1. Click the menu-bar icon → Quit.
2. Drag Freshflo from Applications to the Trash.
3. Optional: delete ~/Library/Application Support/Freshflo to remove your history and dictionary too.