Pixel pets that turn dictation into a daily habit
YappYapp comes with 15 pixel pets that grow as you dictate. They are there for one reason: talking to your Mac instead of typing is a habit, and a small creature that levels up every 250 words gives you a reason to press the key today.
Talking to your Mac is a habit
Speech can be a lot faster than thumbs. A study by researchers from Stanford, the University of Washington and Baidu found that speech input was 3.0x faster in English and 2.8x faster in Mandarin than a smartphone keyboard, with fewer errors in both languages. Most people still type anyway, because typing is what their hands already do without thinking.
So YappYapp borrowed the idea of the Tamagotchi and pointed it at your talking. You pick a pet, it grows when you dictate, and it gives you something small to come back for each day.
How your pet grows
- You start with an egg. On first launch you choose a starter: the cat, the dog or the crab. Every pet, the starter included, hatches after 300 dictated words.
- Words are food. Your active pet gains a level every 250 words you dictate while it is out.
- Levels unlock hats. Hats belong to the pet that earned them.
| Level | Hat |
|---|---|
| 3 | Beanie |
| 6 | Party hat |
| 10 | Halo |
- One quest a day. Each day picks one quest: dictate 300 words, finish 5 dictations, teach your pet a word (save one in WORDS), or dictate something before 10:00.
- Streaks. Dictate on consecutive days to build a streak. One missed day a week is covered by a streak saver, so a single busy day does not wipe it out.
If you would rather have a plain dictation app, one switch in Setup (PET AND QUESTS) turns off the pet, the quests and the celebrations. Your counters keep counting in the background.
All 15 pets and how to unlock them
Every requirement counts from the moment you chose your starter, and the PET tab shows your progress, such as 120/500.
| Pet | How it unlocks |
|---|---|
| Cat, dog or crab | The one you pick on first launch is yours right away |
| The other two starters | Any pet at level 6 |
| Ghost | 500 words |
| Fox | 25 dictations |
| Penguin | A 3-day best streak |
| Robot | 1,500 words |
| Frog | 3 daily quests |
| Duck | 100 dictations |
| Dino | 2,500 words |
| Snail | A 5-day best streak |
| Otter | 6 daily quests |
| Clawd | 5,000 words |
| Dragon | 10,000 words |
| Unicorn | Any pet at level 10 |
A newly unlocked pet arrives as an egg, and it hatches after 300 more words.
Meet Clawd
Clawd is the coral pixel creature that unlocks at 5,000 words. It is a fan tribute to the Claude Code mascot, drawn from the mascot's logo artwork, and YappYapp is not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.
Every word that feeds Clawd is transcribed on your Mac. The guide to offline dictation on Mac explains how that works.
The weekly recap card
From the PET tab you can save a recap card, a PNG that lands in Pictures/YappYapp and never overwrites an earlier one. It shows:
- your active pet, its name and its level;
- words this week (or words in your last active week, if this week has not started yet);
- your current streak, which shows 0 once a streak is broken;
- words all time;
- time saved typing, counted against a typist at 40 words per minute;
- your top pet by words, if it is a different one.
The card only shows numbers that are true right now. A broken streak reads as broken, and last week's words are labeled as last week's.
Your pet stays on your Mac
The pet's whole history is a small stats file in the app's support folder on your Mac, holding counts such as words, dictations, quests and streaks. It is never sent anywhere. The post on offline dictation lists every network call the app makes.
To hatch your first egg, download YappYapp for Mac, follow the setup guide and press the key.