CLI reference¶
dictate¶
Start the macOS menubar app and hotkey listener in the foreground.
Sample output is minimal in normal operation; status appears in the menubar and logs.
dictate start / stop / restart / status¶
Manage a background dictate instance via a pidfile.
dictate start # detach into the background
dictate stop # SIGTERM, then SIGKILL after 8s if needed
dictate restart # stop + start
dictate status # show pid + pidfile path, exit 1 if not running
State lives at ~/Library/Application Support/dictate/ by default, override
with the DICTATE_STATE_DIR env var.
Background output is appended to ~/Library/Application Support/dictate/dictate.log.
dictate start --foreground runs in the foreground while still managing the pidfile,
so dictate stop / status from another terminal work against it.
dictate doctor¶
Print diagnostics for support and triage.
Sample output:
dictate doctor
==============
System
macOS: 14.5 (arm64)
Python: 3.12.3
Architecture: arm64
dictate version: 0.1.0
Permissions
Accessibility: granted
Microphone: granted
Input Monitoring: granted
dictate --version¶
Print version and platform information, then exit.
Sample output:
dictate --dry-run¶
Validate config, imports and required vocab files without starting the app.
Sample output:
On failure, the command prints the exception and exits non-zero:
URL arguments¶
The CLI also accepts startup URL arguments for development: