Roar for developers on a Mac

Your prompts are too short. Talk instead.

Coding agents do their best work with context, and nobody types five paragraphs. Talk through the whole problem, and Roar types it 3 times faster.

  1. Hold a key
  2. Explain the bug
  3. Let go. It’s typed.

Demonstration: a floating panel shows Roar listening, then a detailed prompt is typed into an AI chat window at about 150 words a minute while a counter shows the rate.

In the app you’re in

150wpm
ChatGPTNew chat

The checkout redirect fires before the session cookie is written, so slow clients land on the login page. Move the redirect after the await and add a regression test.

Message ChatGPT

29 words in 11 seconds. Typed, the same words take about 35.

Give your AI the full context

Download Roar for Mac. Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later and Apple silicon (M1 or newer).

First five dictations are free, no credit card needed.

Does it read my code? ↓

Context is everything

The best prompts are long. Typing them is the slow part.

A good prompt for a coding agent runs 150 words or more. That's 3 minutes of typing at 50 words per minute, or 1 minute of talking. Be honest, which one do you actually write?

Demonstration: the same fifty-word paragraph is revealed twice, at about 50 words a minute as typing and about 150 words a minute as talking. Talking finishes at twenty seconds, typing at one minute.

A real example. Typing vs Talking.

1:00.0

Typing

Done at 1:00

The checkout redirect fires before the session cookie is written, so slow clients land on the login page. Move the redirect after the await in the auth handler and add a regression test that simulates a slow connection. Leave the pricing table code alone, and explain the change in two sentences I can paste into the PR.

Talking

Done at 0:20

The checkout redirect fires before the session cookie is written, so slow clients land on the login page. Move the redirect after the await in the auth handler and add a regression test that simulates a slow connection. Leave the pricing table code alone, and explain the change in two sentences I can paste into the PR.

Same prompt, 3 times faster.

Better context in, better code out. Your agent finally knows what you know.

Get Roar for Mac

Download Roar for Mac. Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later and Apple silicon (M1 or newer).

First five dictations are free, no credit card needed.

It's not just prompts

Prompts, comments, reviews, Slack. The code is only half the typing.

Think about everything you typed yesterday that wasn't code. Roar takes all of it off your hands, and it knows the difference between a terminal and a chat window.

  1. 01AI prompts

    Explain the bug the way you would to a colleague.

    Your agent only knows what you tell it. Say the whole story: what broke, what you already tried, what it must not touch. Roar cleans up the prompt without changing what you are asking for.

    Demonstration: a detailed prompt to an AI assistant is typed into a chat window at about 150 words a minute.

    AI prompts

    150wpm
    ChatGPTNew chat

    The webhook handler retries forever when the payment provider sends a 409. Cap it at one retry, log the second failure with the request id, and do not change the success path.

    Message ChatGPT

    32 words in 12 seconds. Typed, the same words take about 38.

  2. 02Terminal

    In the terminal, no punctuation you did not say.

    Talking to an agent in Terminal or iTerm2? Roar uses its strictest style there: straight quotes and no invented full stops. It pastes the text and never presses Return for you.

    Demonstration: an instruction to a coding agent is typed into a terminal window without added punctuation.

    Terminal

    150wpm
    Terminal

    the checkout test is flaky because it depends on the clock so freeze time in the test setup and run the suite three times to prove it

    27 words in 10 seconds. Typed, the same words take about 32.

  3. 03Code comments

    The comment that explains why, in plain ASCII.

    The code says what. The comment says why, and nobody bothers to type it. In VS Code and Xcode, Roar writes plain ASCII with straight quotes and leaves identifiers exactly as you said them.

    Demonstration: a code comment is typed into a code editor window at about 150 words a minute.

    Code comments

    150wpm
    webhooks.ts

    Retry once on a 409. The provider sends it when two webhooks race for the same payment, and the second attempt always succeeds.

    23 words in 9 seconds. Typed, the same words take about 28.

  4. 04Code review

    Review comments your teammates actually learn from.

    The fix is one line. The reason it matters is three sentences. Say them while the diff is still on your screen, and the next person who touches the file will thank you.

    Demonstration: a pull request review comment is typed into a code review box at about 150 words a minute.

    Code review

    150wpm
    Cap webhook retries #418
    WritePreview

    This works, but the retry loop has no ceiling, so a provider outage turns into a thousand requests a minute. Cap it at one retry and log the request id on the second failure.

    Close pull request

    34 words in 13 seconds. Typed, the same words take about 41.

  5. 05Slack

    The update your PM asked for, done in one breath.

    Where are we, what is blocked, when does it ship. Hold the key, say it, let go. It is in the channel before you have switched back to your editor.

    Demonstration: a status update is typed into a chat channel at about 150 words a minute.

    Slack

    150wpm
    eng-payments

    Mara Okafor10:42 AM

    Webhook retries are capped and the fix is in review. Nothing blocking. It ships with tomorrow morning’s release once the regression test is green.

    Message #eng-payments

    24 words in 9 seconds. Typed, the same words take about 29.

Imagine a PR description your reviewers actually read.

Get Roar for Mac

Download Roar for Mac. Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later and Apple silicon (M1 or newer).

First five dictations are free, no credit card needed.

We know what you're thinking

Nobody dictates code.

You’re right, and you shouldn’t. Nobody wants to say “open bracket, const, user id, equals” out loud. Keep writing code with your hands, because that’s where precision matters.

Roar is for everything around the code, which is most of your typing now. The prompt that explains the bug to your agent, the review comment, the commit message, the answer in Slack. Say what the code should do in plain English, and let the agent write it.

Type the code. Talk through everything else.

Before you install

Four things you should know before you start using Roar for work.

Verified in Slack, ChatGPT, Claude, VS Code and Terminal

Roar knows VS Code, Xcode, Terminal and iTerm2 out of the box. Using Cursor, JetBrains or Warp? Add it once in Settings, under Dictation, then Style, and test it in your first 5 dictations.

Mac only

macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon. No Linux version. We are working on a Windows version. Let us know if you use Windows, and we will email you when it is ready.

Copy-only mode for locked-down laptops

Roar types by writing into the field your cursor is in, which macOS only allows with the Accessibility permission. If your company will not allow that, Copy-only mode puts the text on your clipboard and touches nothing else.

One account per person

If several people on your team want to use Roar, you will each need your own subscription. Get in touch if you would like a team plan with custom features and pricing.

Your code stays yours

Roar never reads your code. Your notes never leave your Mac.

Roar hears your voice while you hold the key, and it knows which app you're in. It never sees your screen, your files or your repository. Here is exactly what it does, in terms your security team can check.

Privacy promise one

Your notes stay on your Mac. They live in a local database on your machine and nowhere else. If you delete Roar and log in again with the same account on this Mac, your notes will still be there.

Privacy promise two

Roar is not always listening. It hears nothing until you press the hotkey. Then your voice goes to Roar's server, is transcribed, and is deleted. It's never stored.

More details about privacy

What is transmitted
Audio of your voice, while the trigger key is held. If AI proofreading is on, the transcribed text (never the audio) goes to an AI service to fix spelling and punctuation. And usage counts, such as how many words you dictated.
What is never transmitted
Your code, your files, your screen, your keystrokes, and the name of the app you are in.
What is retained
No audio. Roar keeps no server copy of the transcribed text.
Training
Neither the speech service nor the proofreading service may train on your audio or your text. That is written into our contracts with them.
What Roar reads on your Mac
The trigger key, and the name of the app you are in, to pick a style. Never the contents of your screen.
How text arrives
Written into the focused field, or pasted with a single Command-V where an app does not accept that. In a terminal it is always a paste, so nothing runs until you press Return.
Deletion
Delete your account and your details and usage history are removed from our servers. Invoices and payment records are the one exception, because tax law requires us to keep them.

Roar only listens when you press the hotkey.

It never reads your keystrokes, and never reads the content on your screen.

The full data path, hop by hop

Pricing

Download Roar. Your first five prompts are on us.

No credit card and no time limit. Just talk and watch Roar do the typing. Subscribe only if you are convinced.

Get Roar for Mac

Download Roar for Mac. Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later and Apple silicon (M1 or newer).

First five dictations are free, no credit card needed.

First five dictations free. Download Roar now.

Monthly

$12a month

Unlimited dictation

$12 billed monthly. $144 a year.

Cancel any time from inside the app.

Quarterly

$10a month

Unlimited dictation

$30 billed every three months. $120 a year.

$144You save $24 a year

Best value, 33% off

Annual

$8a month

Unlimited dictation

$96 billed once a year.

$144You save $48 a year

Questions

Answered as statements.

Does it work in Cursor
Yes. Roar types into any text field Cursor gives it. For the code editor style (plain ASCII, straight quotes, identifiers as spoken), add Cursor once in Settings, under Dictation, then Style.
Does it work with coding agents in the terminal
Yes. In Terminal and iTerm2 Roar uses its terminal style: straight quotes and no punctuation you did not say. It pastes the text, and nothing runs until you press Return.
Can I dictate code with it
Not well, and it is not meant for that. Say what the code should do and let your agent write it. Type the code yourself where every character matters.
Will it mangle my variable names
In VS Code and Xcode, Roar leaves identifiers exactly as you said them. Read the result before you commit it, as you would anything else.
Does it read my code or my screen
No. Roar reads the key you chose as a trigger and the name of the app you are in. It never reads the contents of your screen, your files or your repository.
Is my audio kept
No. It's transcribed and discarded. There is no audio store.
Is there a Linux or Windows version
No Linux version. We are working on Windows, and we will email you when it is ready if you ask us to.
Can my team buy it together
Each developer downloads it and each subscribes. For a team plan with custom features and pricing, get in touch.