Troubleshooting
Quick fixes for the most common problems.
The hotkey does nothing
Usually the Accessibility permission. The global key monitor only receives events while another app is focused when Ultra Whisper is trusted, and pasting won't work without it. See Permissions.
Recording won't start
If the active Profile's voice model isn't downloaded, recording won't start — you'll get a prompt to download it first. Download it (or switch the Profile to an installed model) and try again.
Nothing gets pasted
- Make sure a text field is focused in the target app.
- Re-check the Accessibility permission (it's required to paste text into apps).
- If the transcript was blank (silence), nothing is pasted by design.
- If pasting failed because of the Accessibility permission, a notice appears in the HUD and as a banner on the Home screen. The text is already on your clipboard and saved to History.
Cloud model fails
When cloud speech-to-text (OpenAI) fails, the cause (invalid API key, quota exceeded, network failure, …) is shown in the HUD and as a banner on the Home screen. Check the API key in LLM Models and your network connection.
A failed LLM refinement never blocks output: the unrefined transcript is pasted as-is, with a light notice.
Transcription is slow on an Intel Mac
Local Whisper can't use Apple silicon's accelerated path, so transcription may take longer on an Intel Mac.
- Picking a smaller voice model (
base/small) helps somewhat, but large, accuracy-focused models stay compute-heavy on an Intel Mac even after switching. - For a reliable speed-up, switch to cloud speech-to-text (OpenAI and others) — it's fast regardless of your Mac's processing power. Set the Profile's voice provider to a cloud provider and enter your API key in LLM Models (BYOK).
On Apple silicon Macs the default local model runs comfortably as-is.
It's using too much memory
Large voice models are heavy. Lower the Voice model active duration in Settings so idle models unload sooner, or pick a smaller model for that Profile.
Still stuck?
The app keeps logs of its activity and errors in a folder you can open or export from Settings → Error logging (no audio or transcript text is ever logged).