MimicScribe

Troubleshooting

Can’t find what you need here? Email support@mimicscribe.app — I typically reply within a day.

Where is the app? I don’t see it in the Dock.

MimicScribe is a menu bar app — it appears as a small icon in the top-right area of your screen, not in the Dock.

How do I re-grant a permission I denied?

Go to System Settings > Privacy & Security, find the relevant permission (Microphone, System Audio Recording Only, or Accessibility), and toggle MimicScribe on. Accessibility takes effect immediately; for Microphone or System Audio Recording Only, you may need to quit and relaunch the app.

The model download failed. How do I retry?

A Retry button appears on the download card in the onboarding wizard. Click it to restart the download.

Once you’re past onboarding, the same controls live in Settings > General > Models. Each model has a row showing whether it’s on disk and how much space it’s using, with Show in Finder to open it and Re-download to fetch it again. A re-download asks for confirmation first and keeps your current copy until the new one succeeds, so a failed retry can’t leave you with nothing. Re-downloading is blocked while a recording — or a meeting’s post-stop processing — is still running.

No audio is being captured.

  • Microphone: System Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone — ensure MimicScribe is enabled
  • System audio (for meetings): System Settings > Privacy & Security > System Audio Recording Only — must be enabled
  • Wrong device: check Settings > General > Microphone and make sure the correct input is selected

Words are missing from the transcript.

When audio is captured but parts of what was said don’t show up, the input level is usually too low. Quiet voices, sitting back from a laptop mic, an external USB mic with low default gain, or a recently-changed audio device can all push the level below where the app reliably detects speech.

Settings > General > Microphone level has a built-in check. Click Test, read the prompt sentence aloud, and the row reports whether your peak speech level lands in the recommended -25 to -20 dB band. If it falls below the band, Boost mic to recommended level raises the input gain via Core Audio and re-measures.

Some devices ignore software volume changes — USB mics with hardware knobs, AirPods, headsets with fixed gain. The check reports that explicitly and points to System Settings > Sound > Input or the device’s own control.

Two different meters show you the level, and they don’t look the same:

  • On the meeting start screen, before you hit record, the mic meter has six segments: four green, one yellow, one red. Red only lights at clipping levels, so aim to light the greens and touch the yellow on your loudest words.
  • While a meeting is recording, the status bar at the top of the overlay shows a pair of four-segment meters — one for your mic, one for system audio. They run green to amber and have no red segment at all, so don’t go looking for one. Most of the four should light when you speak; one or two faint bars means you’re too quiet, and nothing lighting up means the channel isn’t reaching the app.

If either meter sits low, run the calibration check above.

Worth re-running:

  • After switching to a new microphone, headset, or pair of AirPods.
  • After moving farther from a laptop mic — laptop on a stand, leaning back, working from across the room.
  • In a new environment with different background noise (home office to coffee shop, quiet room to a car).
  • After a macOS update, in case input device defaults reset.

If the level is in band and words are still missing, the issue is downstream of capture — check that the right input device is selected in Settings > General > Microphone, and that nothing is muted at the system level.

My dictation isn’t appearing at the cursor.

Check the following in order:

  1. Wrong input selected — the target app’s text field may not have focus. Click into the text field where you want text to appear before dictating.
  2. Accessibility permission — Insert Mode requires Accessibility access. Go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility and ensure MimicScribe is enabled. After updating MimicScribe, you may need to re-grant this permission.
  3. Recover from the status panel — every dictation is saved to your history. Click the MimicScribe icon in the menu bar, find the transcription in the list, and click Copy to grab it. Then paste it wherever you need it.
  4. Re-paste your last result — turn on Double-Tap to Repaste in Settings > Voice Typing > Dictation first; it’s off by default so an accidental double-tap can’t drop old text somewhere you didn’t want it. With it on, tap the hotkey to start and stop again within 2 seconds without speaking, and your last result lands at the cursor. It covers both Dictation and Transform.

Meeting mode shows no speaker labels.

Speaker identification requires both system audio and microphone input. (Named speakers in the summary are free on every tier — no subscription is required for them.) Verify:

  • System Audio Recording Only permission is granted
  • Your video call app is producing audio
  • Your microphone is not muted at the system level

Free tier limits reached.

Free limits reset each Monday. Current usage is shown in Settings › Subscription. See the Free Tier page for details. Setting the dictation provider to None bypasses AI credits for raw transcription.

How do I capture a detailed log for a bug report?

If I’m looking into something with you and ask for a trace, this is the tool. It’s deliberately Terminal-only — there’s no switch in Settings, because it’s for a specific investigation rather than everyday use.

Turn it on, then quit and relaunch MimicScribe:

defaults write app.mimicscribe diagnosticLogging -bool YES

/Applications/MimicScribe.app/Contents/MacOS/mimicscribe --enable-diagnostics does the same thing and prints the log folder back to you. Logging starts at the next launch, not immediately.

Files land in ~/Library/Application Support/app.mimicscribe/DiagnosticLogs/, one per launch, named diag-app-… for the app and diag-mcp-… for the background agent server. The app keeps the 20 most recent and deletes anything over 7 days old, and a single session stops writing at 512 MB so a forgotten switch can’t fill your disk.

These files contain your transcript text. Debug lines quote what was said — that’s what makes them useful for a transcription bug and what makes them worth reading before you send one. They stay on your Mac unless you attach one to an email. Read it first if the meeting was sensitive.

Turn it back off with defaults delete app.mimicscribe diagnosticLogging (or --disable-diagnostics) and relaunch. That stops new logs; delete the folder yourself to remove the ones already written.

Does MimicScribe work on Intel Macs?

No. MimicScribe requires Apple Silicon (M1 or newer). The speech recognition model runs on the Neural Engine, which is only available on Apple Silicon.