Two Mac apps, from the first line of code to a free release.

Before and after

The first commit had 1,045 lines and a different name.

On day one, Nuppo was called NotchShelf: 11 files, 1,045 lines, a panel in the notch, screenshots and notes. Šeptem started two days later and was usable straight away. Its first commit had 29 files, 2,726 lines and dictation on the fn key.

Today they're two released apps with websites and automatic updates. The first commits had almost none of that: no name, no icon, no way to reach users. What survived is the core idea.

From first commit to product.

Phase 01Scope

The plan was bigger than the result. What's left is what held up.

The analysis for Šeptem, written on 24 September, planned five phases: more cloud transcription services, live transcription as you speak, an offline model, and custom commands including translation. The code ended up with one transcription service plus a fallback model, and history stored in files rather than a database.

Nuppo was meant to be paid: a licence, a trial period, a waiting list, notarisation. All of it was built. Then, on 1 November, we decided to make it free. It's a side project and a working tool, and we didn't want to pay Apple's annual fee or deal with selling it.

Šeptem, for its part, has no offline model, and the transcript arrives only after you let go of the key. Without internet, the recording is saved and waits. We'd rather say so than promise more than we can deliver.

We know how to cut.

Phase 02Choosing the tools

Native Swift without Xcode, because fn and the notch won't work any other way.

Both apps are written in Swift and built from the terminal, without Xcode. Not out of ideology: the fn key, Accessibility and text insertion only work reliably in native code. The cost: we had to draw Nuppo's Liquid Glass look ourselves, because the native interface wouldn't compile with our SDK version.

Vendors measure their models on Wikipedia text read aloud. We dictate casually, with anglicisms, names and numbers. So we dictated 35 sentences in our own voice and had them transcribed.

Two Whisper models on Groq made it to the final comparison. The larger got 11.7% of words wrong and responded in 0.85 s; the faster got 12.2% wrong in 0.55 s. Each user enters their own key, so Šeptem runs no server of ours and none of your voice reaches us.

A measurement decided it, not an advert.

Phase 03Brand

The name, the icon and the typeface each took several rounds.

Nuppo was renamed before release. NotchShelf, Nupo and Pluck all clashed with existing products. The rename cost a data migration and one rule: the identifier macOS knows the app by kept its old value, so nobody would lose their settings.

Nuppo's icon, a little figure hanging from the notch with a screenshot in hand, went through three versions in a single day. Šeptem had three logo drafts and settled on the háček as a wave. The typeface took two rounds, first four candidates, then six serifs, and Gloock won.

You can't design a look blind. Nuppo's first Liquid Glass came out washed out and flat, and it took four rounds of screenshots to get it right.

You don't argue a brand. You choose it.

Phase 04Build

The recording is on disk before it goes anywhere. That's all there is to reliability.

Šeptem is a chain of five steps: you hold fn, the app records, the audio is written to disk and sent off for transcription, and the finished text is inserted wherever your cursor is. The order is what matters. The recording is on disk before anything leaves the Mac.

That order takes care of whatever goes wrong. If the network drops, the recording waits and gets transcribed later on its own. If the insert misses the text field, the text stays on the clipboard and a card offers Copy. If it lands in the wrong place, fn+V inserts it again.

The model is wrapped in filters. Fed silence, Whisper invents sentences like “Subtitles by JohnyX”, and the app throws them away. Then the text gets its commas and Czech typography. Modern tools help us write code faster, but a person decided how much the app is allowed to lose: nothing.

No dictation gets lost.

Phase 05The test

Real use showed what the code didn't.

We started using Šeptem on day one. AirPods switch to call mode and the sound quality drops, so the app records from the built-in microphone. Later we had to stop the system from picking AirPods or an iPhone as the default input. On two-minute dictations Whisper also garbles stretches and drops diacritics, so the damaged parts are transcribed again.

Meeting notes were the worst. After a device was set up, the audio engine restarted about five times a second and the microphone barely recorded. And on a call in Safari, macOS suppresses echo, so the recording was missing the voice. We fixed the causes and added a warning for a muted microphone.

In Nuppo, the ⋯ button ignored clicks and more SwiftUI tinkering didn't help, so we dropped a layer down into AppKit. Full-screen detection only works for Chrome with a third signal. We don't know why, and we've noted that.

Every bug has a commit in the history.

Release

No Apple account: our own certificate, and updates via Sparkle.

Apple charges $99 a year for the Apple Developer Program. Both apps are free and Nuppo is a side project, so we decided not to pay. The cost shows up straight away: on first launch, macOS says it couldn't check the app, and only opens it if you explicitly ask.

We do sign the apps, though, with our own certificate valid for ten years, not a one-off signature for a single build. Not for Gatekeeper's sake, since it doesn't accept that certificate, but for permissions: a signature that changed with every build would wipe access to Desktop, Downloads or Accessibility after every update.

Updates go through Sparkle, and we sign them with our own key. The chain is the same every time: code signature, ZIP with a SHA-256 checksum, update signature, version list and a GitHub release. The source code stays private. Only what you can download is public.

Free doesn't mean sloppy.

Web

Two websites with no tracking, and a one-command install.

Both sites are static, built with Astro and hosted on Vercel. No analytics and no Google Fonts; the fonts ship with the site. Nuppo's site went up two days after the first commit, Šeptem's only in the last two days before release.

Alongside the ZIP, each app offers a one-command install. The script verifies the SHA-256 checksum, installs the app and removes the quarantine flag, so Gatekeeper doesn't step in. Installing from a script off the internet isn't for everyone, so there's also a guide to doing it by hand on macOS 14 and 15.

The sites show rather than tell. On Nuppo's you can try the demo without downloading anything, and the loops were recorded from the real app in demo mode. Šeptem's has a live text-editing demo.

Aftercare

The work doesn't stop at release.

Šeptem came out on 2 November as 0.9.0, and twenty-five minutes later as 0.9.1. The new icon, website and About window missed the first version, so they went straight into the second.

Then came real use. It showed that the settings held things an ordinary user shouldn't have to think about: models, the API address, language. We're tucking them into a collapsed Advanced section with a Restore Defaults button. On top of that comes a first-run guide that ticks off the microphone, Accessibility, the fn key and the API key.

And then the test we'd been waiting for. We downloaded the 0.9.0 ZIP from GitHub, opened it with a right-click and chose Check for Updates. Sparkle offered 0.9.1 with release notes, and after a relaunch the new version was running. No Apple, no app store, just GitHub and our own signature.

Release is the start, not the finish.