Getting started

Yiddish Tools is a Windows program (Windows 10 or 11). Download the installer, run it, and it sets itself up in a few seconds — no choices to make. The app is code-signed, so Windows should not warn you about it.

The download itself is small (around 100 MB). The actual language models come later, one by one, from inside the app — so you only download the tools you own.

On first launch a short welcome card explains the three things worth remembering:

• Put your cursor in any program, hold F7, speak, release — the text is typed for you.
• Tap Space while holding to lock recording on, hands-free. Yiddish and English both just work.
• Select text anywhere and press F8 — it lands in the app, in the right tool.

Until a model is downloaded the app runs in a demo state: the screens are there, the tools wait for their model.

Open Models in the app’s sidebar. You will see the account card at the top. Two ways in:

• Sign in with browser — the app opens this website in your normal browser. Sign in however you signed up (Google, password, passkey, two-factor), approve the computer, and the browser hands you back to the app. This is the way to go if you signed up with Google, since those accounts have no password to type.
• Email and password — type them straight into the app.

Signing in links this computer to your account. An account can be signed in on up to two computers at once; signing out inside the app frees the slot.

Each tool is a one-time purchase in the store: Dictation, Translation, Nikud and Speak — or all four together as the bundle. Pay once, own it, no subscription.

After checkout the website hands you straight back to the app, on the card of the tool you just bought, ready to download. If the app was closed it opens by itself.

Back in Models, every tool you own shows a Download button with its size (each is measured in tens of megabytes, not gigabytes). Press it and watch the progress bar; you can keep using the other tabs meanwhile.

Downloads come in small chunks with automatic retries and resume, so slow or filtered office connections get there in the end. If your internet filter blocks the file server, the app tells you exactly which address to ask the filter to allow.

Once downloaded, a model lives encrypted on this computer and is unlocked in memory only when it runs. From this moment on the tool works with the internet unplugged.

Open your email, a document, a chat window — anything with a cursor. Hold F7, say a sentence in Yiddish, and let go. A small floating pill near the taskbar shows the recording, and the words appear right where your cursor was.

Say a sentence in English next. Nothing to switch — the app hears which language it was.

Closing the window does not quit the app — it tucks into the system tray and the keys keep working. Press F8 to bring the window back, or click the tray icon.

In Settings you can tell it to start with Windows (dictation is ready as soon as you sign in) and to start hidden in the tray.

The app checks for its own updates shortly after launch and every few hours after that. When one is ready you get a quiet notice and a banner on Home with an Install & restart button — nothing downloads behind your back, nothing interrupts a dictation.

Model updates show up on the Models screen the same way, as an Update button on the tool’s card. Every purchase includes all updates through and including the next major version.

Curious what changed? Click the version number at the bottom of the sidebar to read the release notes.