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Halopen for iTerm2

Dictate straight into iTerm2 — commands, prompts, commits

Halopen lands voice-typed text at the iTerm2 cursor — commands, agentic prompts, commit messages — verbatim, system-wide.

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Free for 14 days · macOS 14.0+ · Apple Silicon & Intel

Why this fits

Halopen, paired with iTerm2.

Halopen is a native macOS dictation app that lands voice-typed commands at the prompt in iTerm2 — across zsh, bash, fish, and Nushell shells, inside tmux panes, screen sessions, and SSH connections. Hold the function key, speak the multi-flag rsync, the git commit message, or the Claude Code / Aider prompt, release; the verbatim text appears at the iTerm2 cursor through the macOS Accessibility API on Apple Silicon and Intel.

iTerm2 is the default safe choice among Mac terminals — fast, well-tested, deep on customization, the terminal serious developers reach for first. Whatever you do in a terminal, you do it in iTerm2 long enough that the friction in the workflow becomes the workflow.

Halopen is the Mac dictation tool engineered for that surface. Hold the function key, speak the command, the agentic prompt, or the commit message you would have typed; release. The text lands at the iTerm2 cursor verbatim. Native Swift, idle-quiet, no per-terminal configuration. The same hotkey that works in iTerm2 works in your editor and your browser the same way.

About iTerm2

What is iTerm2?

iTerm2 is the most-used third-party terminal app on macOS. Built on top of the same standard text-input substrate as Apple Terminal, it adds split panes, deep customization, search, autocomplete, profiles, and a hundred small affordances that make the daily terminal experience faster.

The workflow

How to use Halopen with iTerm2.

  1. 1

    Open iTerm2

    Try a short, harmless draft in the exact iTerm2 field you use. Halopen is designed for standard Mac text fields; permissions, focus, Secure Input and custom widgets can affect insertion. Confirm that the text arrived and review it before submitting.

  2. 2

    Place the cursor in the iTerm2 prompt

    Standard shell prompt. Or the prompt of an agentic CLI tool — Claude Code, Aider, Codex CLI. Or the inside of a `cat << EOF` heredoc you started for a multi-line config file. All work the same way.

  3. 3

    Hold the function key

    The recording pill appears. Halopen is listening. The microphone is hot only while the key is down.

  4. 4

    Speak — command, prompt, or prose

    A short command ("git status one-line"), a long agentic prompt ("refactor the rate-limiter into a standalone module..."), or a paragraph-length commit message. Halopen handles all three.

  5. 5

    Release

    Release the hotkey, wait for the completed transcription and check the text at the intended cursor. Review it before submitting.

What matters for iTerm2

The Halopen features that earn their place.

  • Verbatim by default — the prompt you spoke is the prompt iTerm2 receives

    For iTerm2, check names, identifiers and punctuation against your intended draft. Optional live partials are provisional and may differ from the final transcript; repeating a term does not guarantee replacement. Type or paste exact strings when needed.

  • Cursor-context biasing tuned for terminal idioms

    For iTerm2, check names, identifiers and punctuation against your intended draft. Optional live partials are provisional and may differ from the final transcript; repeating a term does not guarantee replacement. Type or paste exact strings when needed.

  • Evaluate your intended Mac app and input field

    Try a short, harmless draft in the exact iTerm2 field you use. Halopen is designed for standard Mac text fields; permissions, focus, Secure Input and custom widgets can affect insertion. Confirm that the text arrived and review it before submitting.

  • Evaluate your intended Mac app and input field

    Halopen is a native Mac app. Resource use depends on your hardware, recognition mode, model and other apps. Test a representative session before relying on it alongside your usual software.

  • Hold-to-talk — bounded audio

    No wake word, no ambient listening. The microphone is hot only while the configured key is held; release stops capture immediately.

  • Free for 14 days, no credit card

    Pro is $19/mo or $179/yr for unlimited.

Try it yourself

A long-form `git commit -m` message dictated into iTerm2:

Example to read aloud — not a recorded result

“"Move rate-limiter middleware out of express-app dot ts into a standalone middleware-rate-limit module under lib slash middleware. Per-route caps now read from a new RATE_LIMIT_CONFIG environment variable, JSON-shaped, keyed by route prefix. Backwards-compatible with the prior default of one hundred requests per minute as a fallback. The seven existing routes that used the inline limiter now import the new middleware; their behavior is unchanged. Tests added for the JSON-config parsing path and the fallback-default path."”

  • · Illustrative practice text, not a recorded Halopen result.
  • · Read a short section aloud, then check the inserted draft for errors.
  • · Keep exact names, numbers and formatting under your own review.

Why Halopen

The dictation tool that earns its place.

iTerm2 is where serious developers spend their day. The terminal is increasingly an AI-coding surface — Claude Code, Aider, Codex CLI, Continue's CLI all run there — and the surrounding work (commits, configs, READMEs piped through `cat`) is full-sentence prose work. Three categories of voice-typing demand, all routed through the same prompt-input.

Halopen earns its place by being the dictation tool whose wedge is exactly verbatimness. Native Swift so it idles quiet next to your shell session. Hold-to-talk so audio capture is bounded. Live preview so misreads on flag names and file paths get caught before they ship. System-wide so the same hotkey works in iTerm2, in your editor, in your browser, in the GitHub PR review you're writing — without per-app configuration.

The measured guide

Dictating Claude Code prompts on a Mac.

When Claude Code’s built-in /voice is enough, the four cases where it is not, and what a spoken flag, package name and file path came back as when we measured it.

Open the Claude Code guide →

Halopen for iTerm2 — FAQ

Questions worth answering.

How do I voice type in iTerm2 on Mac?

Open iTerm2, place the cursor in the prompt, hold the function key, speak the command or prompt or commit message, release. The text lands at the cursor verbatim. Halopen runs system-wide via the macOS Accessibility API; nothing to install on the iTerm2 side, no per-terminal configuration.

What dictation app works best in iTerm2 on Mac?

Try a short, harmless draft in the exact iTerm2 field you use. Halopen is designed for standard Mac text fields; permissions, focus, Secure Input and custom widgets can affect insertion. Confirm that the text arrived and review it before submitting.

How do I dictate prompts to Claude Code or Aider running in iTerm2?

Same as any other iTerm2 dictation. Open Claude Code or Aider in iTerm2, hold the function key, speak the multi-clause prompt as you would explain it to a senior engineer, release. The full prompt lands at the agent's prompt input verbatim. Hit return; the agent runs.

Mac dictation app that handles file paths, flag names, and `find`/`grep`/`awk` pipelines?

Halopen. Cursor-context biasing prefers terminal idioms; the live preview surfaces misreads on rare flag names before any text reaches the cursor. Speak the natural-language version of the pipeline ("find every typescript file modified in the last seven days, then grep for `useEffect`, then count lines"), then either type the command directly or pass the spoken version to an agent.

Will Halopen interfere with iTerm2 autocomplete or shell completion?

No. Halopen lands text as a single inserted run, not a per-character keystroke storm — completion engines see the prompt land at once and don't trigger mid-word. Tab-completion and shell history behave the same as before.

Does Halopen work inside tmux running in iTerm2?

Try a short, harmless draft in the exact iTerm2 field you use. Halopen is designed for standard Mac text fields; permissions, focus, Secure Input and custom widgets can affect insertion. Confirm that the text arrived and review it before submitting.

How do I voice type into the terminal on Mac?

Try a short, harmless draft in the exact iTerm2 field you use. Halopen is designed for standard Mac text fields; permissions, focus, Secure Input and custom widgets can affect insertion. Confirm that the text arrived and review it before submitting.

How much does Halopen cost?

Halopen is free for 14 days, no credit card. Pro is $19/mo or $179/yr for unlimited words.

More Halopen pairings

Halopen for whatever you use most on Mac.

See every Halopen pairing →

Power-user cheat sheet

Take Halopen with you when you work with iTerm2.

The Halopen power-user cheat sheet by email — hotkeys, the right mode for each app, dictionary tips, voice patterns for prompting. Four short notes over two weeks can follow, only if you ask for them. Unsubscribe in one click.

 

Try Halopen with iTerm2

Hold the function key. Speak.

Halopen is free for 14 days, no credit card. Open Halopen, hold the function key, and listen for what you sound like.

Download Halopen See pricing