Installing MaxTalk on your Mac
MaxTalk is a developer preview: it is signed with a development certificate and not yet notarized by Apple. macOS stops it the first time you open it; the steps below get you through without turning off any system protection.
1. Drag it to Applications
Open the downloaded MaxTalk_x.y.z_aarch64.dmg and drag MaxTalk into the Applications folder. It needs a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 13 or later.
2. Open it the first time
- Double-click MaxTalk in Applications. When macOS says it can't verify the developer, click Done.
- Open System Settings › Privacy & Security, find the note about MaxTalk near the bottom, click “Open Anyway” and confirm.
If “Open Anyway” isn't there, clear the quarantine flag for MaxTalk alone in Terminal:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/MaxTalk.appThis affects MaxTalk only. It does not turn off Gatekeeper or touch any other app.
3. Want to check the app wasn't altered?
This command only reads the signature. Its output should show an Apple Development signature and the identifier app.maxtalk.placeholder:
codesign -dv --verbose=2 /Applications/MaxTalk.app4. Grant three permissions
The welcome window walks you through them, or turn them on in System Settings › Privacy & Security:
- Microphone: to hear you.
- Accessibility: to type into text fields and read the text you select.
- Input Monitoring: to notice your talk key. It starts working as soon as you allow it; no restart needed.
Reminders and Calendar access is asked for only when you add a reminder or an event.
5. Download the speech model
The welcome window downloads the recommended Whisper model, Large v3 Turbo (quantized), about 574 MB, in one click. From then on recognition runs on your Mac and works offline. Dictation alone needs no AI model and no API key.
6. Using Fn as a talk key?
First set “Press 🌐 key to” to “Do Nothing” in System Settings › Keyboard, or macOS acts on Fn before MaxTalk does.
Updating
Download the new installer and drag MaxTalk into Applications to replace the old one. The signing identity stays the same, so the permissions you granted are kept.