A background macOS menu-bar app that proofreads, polishes, completes, and fixes punctuation in Hebrew and English — using AI models that run entirely on your Mac.
- macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
- Apple Silicon Mac recommended (models run much faster on Apple Silicon)
- Xcode 26 to build
- Open
Nikud.xcodeprojin Xcode. - Select the Nikud target → Signing & Capabilities → set your Team (or leave it on "Sign to Run Locally").
- Build and Run (⌘R).
The project is generated with XcodeGen
from project.yml. If you add or move files, run xcodegen generate to rebuild
the .xcodeproj. llama.cpp ships as a prebuilt xcframework in Frameworks/ —
there is nothing else to install.
Nikud has no Dock icon — it lives in the menu bar. Click the menu-bar icon for the composer; click the gear for Settings.
Open Settings → Models and click Get on a model. Models are a few GB and
download to ~/Library/Application Support/Nikud/Models.
| Model | Notes |
|---|---|
| DictaLM 2.0 | Recommended — best balance of Hebrew quality and speed |
| DictaLM 3.0 | Strongest Hebrew; needs more memory |
| Gemma 2 9B | Capable multilingual model |
| Qwen 2.5 7B | Faster multilingual model |
| Gemma 2 2B | Small and fast; basic Hebrew |
Until a model is installed, the built-in rules engine still handles Proofread and Punctuation (spacing, punctuation, capitalization). Polish and Complete require a model.
Select text in any app and press the shortcut (default ⌥⌘P) to work on it in place. This needs Accessibility permission:
System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → enable Nikud
Settings → Shortcut shows the permission status and lets you record a different shortcut.
As you type, Nikud can suggest the rest of the sentence as grey ghost text. Press Tab to accept one word at a time; the next words keep coming.
- In the composer — on by default while you type in Nikud's own window. Toggle it with Settings → Suggest completions.
- System-wide — turn on Settings → Autocomplete in other apps. It shows suggestions at the cursor in native Mac apps such as Notes, Mail, TextEdit, and Pages, and needs the same Accessibility permission as the shortcut.
Web-based apps (Claude, VS Code, Slack, browsers) don't report the cursor position to macOS, so system-wide autocomplete stays off in them rather than place a suggestion in the wrong spot. Both modes need a downloaded model.
- Complete — finish the current sentence naturally
- Proofread — fix grammar, spelling, and punctuation
- Polish — rewrite more clearly, in one of five tones (professional, friendly, concise, old-world, or playful)
- Punctuation — correct only punctuation and spacing
Inference runs locally with llama.cpp. Text you proofread never leaves your Mac. Only model downloads touch the network (from Hugging Face).
- The app is intentionally not sandboxed — that is required to read selected text system-wide — so it is meant for direct distribution, not the Mac App Store.
- Regenerate the app icon at any time:
swift Tools/GenerateIcon.swift.