Beam

Start with Beam

Download to first dictation is about a minute. Here is the whole of it.

01

Install

Open the file you downloaded and drag Beam into Applications. Launch it once; it lives in your menu bar, quiet until you call.

02

Two permissions, both local

Beam asks for the microphone (to hear you) and accessibility (to place finished text at your cursor). Both stay on your Mac: no audio, no keystrokes, nothing ever leaves the machine. The privacy page carries the complete accounting.

03

Hold fn and talk

Put your cursor anywhere you can type: a message, an email, a document. Hold fn, say what you mean, let go. Finished writing lands where the cursor was, punctuation and all. Tap instead of hold and Beam keeps listening hands-free until you tap again.

04

The other two rooms

Meetings: press record and just attend. Beam hears you and the room as two named voices, and when you stop it writes the minutes: decisions, action items with owners, the numbers. Nothing joins the call.

Notes: press fn Z anywhere and talk a thought out. Beam removes the false starts and files the clean page, a Thought or a Journal entry, your choice.

05

Teach it your words

Correct Beam once and it stays corrected. Click the + in the menu bar popover, or open Dictionary in the app: what Beam heard on the left, what it should write on the right. Names, jargon, any language you mix in.

06

When you are ready

The first fourteen days are everything, free. After that, stay free at two thousand words a week, or pick a door under Settings → License in the app, or on the pricing page. Checkout opens in your browser and the license installs itself; there is no code to copy, ever.

Stuck on anything at all: [email protected]. A person reads it.