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Halopen for iTerm2

The best Mac dictation tool for iTerm2

Halopen lands voice-typed text at the iTerm2 cursor — commands, agentic prompts, commit messages — verbatim, system-wide, sub-second from speech to text.

Download Halopen See pricing

Free forever for the first 8,000 words a month · macOS 14.0+ · Apple Silicon & Intel

Why this fits

Halopen, paired with iTerm2.

Halopen is a native macOS dictation app that lands voice-typed commands at the prompt in iTerm2 — across zsh, bash, fish, and Nushell shells, inside tmux panes, screen sessions, and SSH connections. Hold the function key, speak the multi-flag rsync, the git commit message, or the Claude Code / Aider prompt, release; the verbatim text appears at the iTerm2 cursor through the macOS Accessibility API on Apple Silicon and Intel.

iTerm2 is the default safe choice among Mac terminals — fast, well-tested, deep on customization, the terminal serious developers reach for first. Whatever you do in a terminal, you do it in iTerm2 long enough that the friction in the workflow becomes the workflow.

Halopen is the Mac dictation tool engineered for that surface. Hold the function key, speak the command, the agentic prompt, or the commit message you would have typed; release. The text lands at the iTerm2 cursor verbatim. Native Swift, idle-quiet, no per-terminal configuration. The same hotkey that works in iTerm2 works in your editor and your browser the same way.

About iTerm2

What is iTerm2?

iTerm2 is the most-used third-party terminal app on macOS. Built on top of the same standard text-input substrate as Apple Terminal, it adds split panes, deep customization, search, autocomplete, profiles, and a hundred small affordances that make the daily terminal experience faster.

The workflow

How to use Halopen with iTerm2.

  1. 1

    Open iTerm2

    Halopen is already running in your menu bar; nothing to install on the iTerm2 side. The macOS Accessibility API is the universal interface that lets Halopen land text at any text cursor, including the iTerm2 prompt.

  2. 2

    Place the cursor in the iTerm2 prompt

    Standard shell prompt. Or the prompt of an agentic CLI tool — Claude Code, Aider, Codex CLI. Or the inside of a `cat << EOF` heredoc you started for a multi-line config file. All work the same way.

  3. 3

    Hold the function key

    The recording pill appears. Halopen is listening. The microphone is hot only while the key is down.

  4. 4

    Speak — command, prompt, or prose

    A short command ("git status one-line"), a long agentic prompt ("refactor the rate-limiter into a standalone module..."), or a paragraph-length commit message. Halopen handles all three.

  5. 5

    Release

    The full transcript lands at the iTerm2 cursor verbatim within tens to a few hundred milliseconds. Hit return; iTerm2 does what iTerm2 does.

What matters for iTerm2

The Halopen features that earn their place.

  • Verbatim by default — the prompt you spoke is the prompt iTerm2 receives

    A misread `--delete` flag in a `find` pipeline is the difference between a grep and a delete. Halopen captures the technical specificity you spoke; the live preview catches the rare misread on flag names and file paths before any text reaches the cursor.

  • Cursor-context biasing tuned for terminal idioms

    Halopen biases the transcription engine with cursor-adjacent text and the active app context, so terminal idioms — file paths, flag names, command verbs (`git`, `kubectl`, `docker`, `find`, `grep`) — tend to land correctly on the first pass.

  • Works in every iTerm2 mode

    Default profile, hotkey window, split panes, tabs, tmux/screen running inside an iTerm2 session. Halopen lands text wherever the active focus is — the multiplexer is transparent.

  • Native Swift, no resource competition

    Halopen idles in tens of megabytes; your iTerm2 session, the language servers your editor is running, and any local AI model server are all unaffected.

  • Hold-to-talk — bounded audio

    No wake word, no ambient listening. The microphone is hot only while the configured key is held; release stops capture immediately.

  • Free forever for the first 8,000 words a month

    Pro is $19/mo or $179/yr for unlimited.

A real Halopen session

A long-form `git commit -m` message dictated into iTerm2:

Halopen output

“"Move rate-limiter middleware out of express-app dot ts into a standalone middleware-rate-limit module under lib slash middleware. Per-route caps now read from a new RATE_LIMIT_CONFIG environment variable, JSON-shaped, keyed by route prefix. Backwards-compatible with the prior default of one hundred requests per minute as a fallback. The seven existing routes that used the inline limiter now import the new middleware; their behavior is unchanged. Tests added for the JSON-config parsing path and the fallback-default path."”

  • · 120-word commit message dictated in a single hold
  • · Module path articulated naturally; case-sensitive convention preserved
  • · Specific count ("seven routes") captured precisely
  • · Configuration defaults preserved verbatim
  • · The kind of commit message most engineers don't write because typing it costs 5 minutes

Why Halopen

The dictation tool that earns its place.

iTerm2 is where serious developers spend their day. The terminal is increasingly an AI-coding surface — Claude Code, Aider, Codex CLI, Continue's CLI all run there — and the surrounding work (commits, configs, READMEs piped through `cat`) is full-sentence prose work. Three categories of voice-typing demand, all routed through the same prompt-input.

Halopen earns its place by being the dictation tool whose wedge is exactly verbatimness. Native Swift so it idles quiet next to your shell session. Hold-to-talk so audio capture is bounded. Live preview so misreads on flag names and file paths get caught before they ship. System-wide so the same hotkey works in iTerm2, in your editor, in your browser, in the GitHub PR review you're writing — without per-app configuration.

The editorial deep-dive

Voice typing for Claude Code on Mac.

The cost-of-articulation thesis, the verbatim wedge applied to AI coding, and how Halopen + Claude Code works under the hood — with two real prompt walkthroughs (M-E-R-I-A schema migration, Postgres EXPLAIN ANALYZE refactor).

Read the long-form essay →

Halopen for iTerm2 — FAQ

Questions worth answering.

How do I voice type in iTerm2 on Mac?

Open iTerm2, place the cursor in the prompt, hold the function key, speak the command or prompt or commit message, release. The text lands at the cursor verbatim. Halopen runs system-wide via the macOS Accessibility API; nothing to install on the iTerm2 side, no per-terminal configuration.

What dictation app works best in iTerm2 on Mac?

Halopen. iTerm2 accepts standard CGEvent keystrokes — the universal Mac text-input interface — and Halopen lands voice-typed text into any Mac surface that does. Verbatim by default, cursor-context biased for terminal idioms, native Swift so it idles quiet next to your shell session.

How do I dictate prompts to Claude Code or Aider running in iTerm2?

Same as any other iTerm2 dictation. Open Claude Code or Aider in iTerm2, hold the function key, speak the multi-clause prompt as you would explain it to a senior engineer, release. The full prompt lands at the agent's prompt input verbatim. Hit return; the agent runs.

Mac dictation app that handles file paths, flag names, and `find`/`grep`/`awk` pipelines?

Halopen. Cursor-context biasing prefers terminal idioms; the live preview surfaces misreads on rare flag names before any text reaches the cursor. Speak the natural-language version of the pipeline ("find every typescript file modified in the last seven days, then grep for `useEffect`, then count lines"), then either type the command directly or pass the spoken version to an agent.

Will Halopen interfere with iTerm2 autocomplete or shell completion?

No. Halopen lands text as a single inserted run, not a per-character keystroke storm — completion engines see the prompt land at once and don't trigger mid-word. Tab-completion and shell history behave the same as before.

Does Halopen work inside tmux running in iTerm2?

Yes. tmux is a multiplexer — it runs inside iTerm2. Halopen lands text wherever the active focus is, which means tmux panes work transparently. Voice dictation across tmux panes works identically to voice across iTerm2 native splits.

How do I voice type into the terminal on Mac?

Open the terminal of your choice — iTerm2, Apple Terminal, Warp, Ghostty, Alacritty, kitty — hold the function key, speak, release. Halopen lands text via CGEvent keystrokes, which every macOS terminal accepts. No per-terminal configuration; the same hotkey behaves identically across all of them.

How much does Halopen cost?

Halopen Free is 8,000 words a month, forever. Pro is $19/mo or $179/yr for unlimited words.

More Halopen pairings

Halopen for whatever you use most on Mac.

See every Halopen pairing →

Power-user cheat sheet

Take Halopen with you when you work with iTerm2.

One short email, then the Halopen power-user cheat sheet — hotkeys, best-fit apps, custom vocabulary tips, voice patterns for prompt engineering. No spam. Unsubscribe in one click.

 

Try Halopen with iTerm2

Hold the function key. Speak.

Halopen Free is 8,000 words a month, forever. Open Halopen, hold the function key, and listen for what you sound like.

Download Halopen See pricing