Grant permissions

Two required permissions, one optional. Onboarding asks for them in order.

Microphone — required

Whiskers needs your mic to record speech.

Screenshot

macOS system dialog asking 'Whiskers would like to access the microphone' with OK and Don't Allow buttons

If you missed the prompt or denied it: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone, then enable Whiskers.

Accessibility — required

Accessibility covers two things Whiskers can't work without:

• Global hotkey detection — so Fn starts a recording from any app.
• Auto-paste — so transcripts land in the text field you're focused on.

Screenshot

System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility list, with Whiskers toggled on

To grant it: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility, find Whiskers, turn it on. Quit and relaunch Whiskers so it picks up the change.

If Whiskers isn't in the list, just press your dictation hotkey once — macOS will add Whiskers automatically when it tries to register.

Screen Recording — optional

Only needed for Screen Awareness, an AI Enhancement feature that reads visible text from your screen to improve accuracy (variable names while you code, colleague names in email).

Text only. On your Mac. Never stored. Extracted locally with Apple Vision, sent alongside your transcript as plain text, then discarded. No images, no screenshots, no video.

Enable in Settings → AI Enhancement → Screen Awareness. Skip if you don't use AI Enhancement.

Resetting

If a permission stops working — usually after a macOS update — toggle it off and back on in System Settings, then restart Whiskers.

For a full reset of one permission category across all apps:

tccutil reset Microphone
tccutil reset Accessibility

You'll need to re-grant every app afterward.