openless

From tool to infrastructure

Advanced systems all do the same thing: they turn today's communication into tomorrow's default rules. The Internet won not because HTTP was faster, but because no one negotiates how data is transmitted anymore. Git won not because the code was better, but because teams stopped coordinating versions every day. Stripe won not because payments were faster, but because developers stopped coordinating with banks.

What OpenLess does is not "faster dictation" — it eliminates every act of coordination between a thought and clean text. Turning what's in your head into usable text used to mean deciding, over and over: what tone for this one? how is that name spelled? which input field, copy or paste? where does the model's key live, and who has access? OpenLess sediments those repeated negotiations, layer by layer, into defaults:

• Tone sediments into a style pack — named, switchable, live at a keystroke, never re-decided.
• Proper nouns sediment into dictionary hotwords — recognized by the ASR, hinted to the polish model, never re-corrected.
• Where text lands sediments into a single insertion protocol — hold → speak → it appears at the cursor, with an automatic clipboard fallback.
• Model and credentials sediment into the OS vault — authorized once at launch, never renegotiated.

That is what authorizing the infrastructure once, at launch means: on first run you grant the microphone, accessibility, and cloud credentials exactly once; from that moment, "speak → clean text at the cursor" is no longer a negotiation you run each time, but a default protocol you can forget is even there. Judge OpenLess not by how much faster it is, but by how much coordination it removes.

Download & install (end users)

Go to Releases and download:

• macOS: OpenLess_<version>_aarch64.dmg (Apple Silicon) or OpenLess_<version>_x64.dmg (Intel). Open it, drag the app to /Applications, then run the following once in Terminal to bypass the Gatekeeper "damaged" warning (the build is ad-hoc signed, not Apple-notarized):

  xattr -cr /Applications/OpenLess.app
  

• Windows: OpenLess_<version>_x64-setup.exe — run the installer.
• Android (release APKs on GitHub Release; debug APKs via Actions artifacts):
  • Phones (recommended): OpenLess_<version>_arm64-v8a.apk
  • Older 32-bit ARM: OpenLess_<version>_armeabi-v7a.apk
  • 64-bit emulator: OpenLess_<version>_x86_64.apk
  • 32-bit emulator: OpenLess_<version>_x86.apk
  • In-app updates (Settings → About) use latest-android-{arch}.json manifests; Beta users join Beta in Advanced settings.
  • Debug smoke builds: OpenLess-android-debug-{abi}-*.apk from workflow_dispatch artifacts.
  • If unsure, run adb shell getprop ro.product.cpu.abi and pick the matching APK.
• macOS (Homebrew):

  brew tap Open-Less/openless https://github.com/Open-Less/openless
  brew install --cask openless
  xattr -cr /Applications/OpenLess.app
  
  # Upgrade to the latest version
  brew update && brew upgrade openless
  

On first launch, grant the permissions the app requests.

macOS:

1. Grant Microphone access.
2. Grant Accessibility access.
3. Quit and reopen the app — Accessibility only takes effect after a restart.
4. Open Settings and fill in your Volcengine ASR + Ark credentials.

Windows:

1. Grant Microphone access when prompted.
2. Open Settings → Permissions to verify the global hotkey listener is active.
3. Fill in your Volcengine ASR + Ark credentials in Settings.

For the full end-user walkthrough, see USAGE.md.

License

OpenLess is released under the MIT License.