Daisy

Installation

Daisy ships as a signed, notarised DMG straight from mydaisy.io. No installer, no login, no telemetry hand-off — the same binary that runs on my Mac runs on yours.

Requirements

  • Apple Silicon Mac (M1 / M2 / M3 / M4). Intel Macs aren’t supported — on-device transcription needs the Neural Engine to be fast enough to feel instant.
  • macOS 14 (Sonoma) or newer. Apple Intelligence summaries additionally require macOS 26 (Tahoe).
  • About 500 MB of disk for the app + first-run Whisper model download.

Download

Pull the latest DMG from mydaisy.io/downloads/Daisy-1.0.7.3.dmg or grab any historical release from the GitHub Releases page.

Open the DMG, drag the Daisy icon into the Applications folder, eject the DMG. From here you can delete the .dmg file itself — the app is fully self-contained inside /Applications/Daisy.app.

First launch

Launch Daisy from /Applications or via Spotlight. macOS will check the notarisation signature and, on first run, ask you to confirm the open. This is one-time per Mac.

Daisy then walks you through three system permissions in sequence. Each is required for a specific feature — you can skip any of them, but the feature it gates won’t work until granted:

  • Microphone — required for recording your own voice. Without this, all recording modes return empty transcripts.
  • Screen Recording — required for system audiocapture (the other side of Zoom / Meet calls). Without this, Daisy records only your microphone, so meetings with remote attendees won’t capture what they said.
  • Accessibility — required only if you plan to use the Dictation mode (auto-paste at cursor needs to send ⌘V on your behalf). Optional otherwise.

Each permission opens the relevant pane in System Settings → Privacy & Security. Flip the toggle, return to Daisy, click Continue.

Sparkle auto-updates

Daisy uses Sparkle for in-app updates, signed with EdDSA. The first time the app starts it registers a daily check against mydaisy.io/appcast.xml. When a new release is available you’ll see a small prompt — review the changes, click Install Update, Daisy restarts on the new version.

To check manually: Daisy → About → Check for Updates. Disable auto-checks in Settings → General → Updates if you prefer manual.

If something goes wrong

“Daisy is damaged and can’t be opened” — the DMG download was incomplete or modified. Re-download from mydaisy.io. The signature check should succeed on a fresh copy.

App won’t launch / instantly quits— make sure you’re on Apple Silicon (Apple menu → About This Mac → Chip starts with “Apple”). If you are, the crash is likely a bug worth filing on GitHub Issues.

Permissions dialog never appears — open Daisy Settings → Permissions for the live status of all four (mic / calendar / accessibility / screen recording). Click the row to jump straight into the relevant System Settings pane.