Write papers by speaking.
You spend months designing experiments and collecting data, then lose weeks to the slowest part of the process: writing it up. Yaps lets you dictate paper drafts, lab observations, and grant proposals at over 150 words per minute — all processed on your Mac with zero cloud dependency. Capture findings the moment they form, whether you are at your desk or in the field.
Words per minute dictation
Offline — works in the field
Faster than typing first drafts
Research data sent to the cloud
Literature notes, spoken as you read
The research writing bottleneck
The Yaps approach
Built for the research workflow
Tools designed around how researchers actually think, write, and work.
Dictate Paper Drafts
Speak your introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections in a natural flow. Yaps transcribes at over 150 words per minute with auto-punctuation. Get a rough draft down in a single focused session instead of staring at a blinking cursor for days.
Voice Notes for Lab & Field
Record observations while your hands are occupied with equipment, specimens, or instruments. Voice notes are transcribed and stored locally — timestamped and searchable. Capture the detail that gets lost when you wait to type it up later.
Proofread by Listening
Select any section of your paper and have Yaps read it aloud with natural text-to-speech. Hearing your writing exposes run-on sentences, awkward transitions, and logical gaps that silent reading misses. Essential before submission.
Works Offline — Anywhere
Field research stations, remote archives, conference hotels with unreliable Wi-Fi — Yaps runs entirely on your Mac for core dictation and TTS. Voice commands use cloud AI for interpretation, but your core research workflow continues regardless of connectivity.
Searchable Research History
Every dictation is saved to Smart History with timestamps and app context. Search across months of dictated notes to find that insight from your Tuesday reading session or the observation from last week's experiment.
Reclaim Hours of Writing Time
Researchers who switch from typing to dictation for first drafts consistently report finishing sections in one-third the time. Spend those recovered hours on analysis, experiments, and the work that actually advances your research.
Voice workflows for every stage of research
From literature review to final submission.
Paper Drafts & Dissertations
Dictate entire sections of your manuscript by speaking through your argument. Many researchers find their writing is more fluid and natural when spoken first, then edited on screen.
Our findings suggest that the observed increase in cortical thickness is correlated with prolonged exposure to the intervention, consistent with previous work by Chen et al. However, the effect size in our sample was notably smaller, which may reflect differences in participant demographics.
”Lab & Field Notes
Speak your observations while working. Describe specimen characteristics, environmental conditions, experimental readings, or equipment states without putting down your instruments.
Sample 14-B, observation at T plus 45 minutes. Color has shifted from pale yellow to amber. Viscosity appears increased. Temperature holding steady at 37.2 degrees Celsius. Photograph taken. Will check again at T plus 90.
”Literature Review Notes
As you read papers, dictate your reactions, critiques, and connections in real time. Build a searchable archive of your literature engagement instead of scattered margin notes.
Reading Martinez 2025 on neural plasticity. Their methodology is solid but the sample size of 23 is concerning for the claims they make in the discussion. Compare with the Okafor replication study. Flag for inclusion in my review.
”Grant Proposals
Dictate your specific aims, significance sections, and research plans. Speaking your proposal helps you articulate the narrative arc that grant reviewers respond to — the why before the how.
Specific Aim 2: Determine the longitudinal effects of the intervention on working memory in adults aged 60 to 75. We hypothesize that participants in the treatment group will show measurable improvement on the N-back task at 12-month follow-up.
”Teaching & Lecture Prep
Dictate lecture outlines, exam questions, and student feedback. Prepare course materials faster by speaking your explanations naturally, then refining the transcript.
Peer Review & Revisions
Dictate your reviewer comments or revision responses point by point. Speaking your critique helps you articulate precisely what needs to change and why.
Response to Reviewer 2, comment 3. We have revised the statistical analysis as requested. The updated Table 3 now reports bootstrapped confidence intervals in addition to p-values. We believe this addresses the concern about distributional assumptions.
”Hear from people like you.
“I spent three years typing my dissertation and developed chronic wrist pain by the end of it. When I started my postdoc, I switched to Yaps for first drafts and it changed my entire workflow. I dictate paper sections while pacing my office — the ideas flow better when I'm not hunched over a keyboard. I also use voice notes constantly in the lab. Last month I was running a time-sensitive assay and dictated twelve observations in real time that I would have lost if I had waited to type them. The fact that everything stays on my Mac matters too — I work with unpublished genomic data and I cannot have that going through anyone's cloud.”
Dr. Priya Chandrasekaran
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Molecular Biology
Further reading for researchers
Write more, type less.
Dictate papers, capture lab notes, and proofread by listening. All on your Mac, all offline.
Requires macOS 13.0+ (Apple Silicon recommended)