PaperKeys
The on-screen keyboard for Mac that finishes your words, learns the phrases you use and takes dictation right on your Mac. Made for people who type with a mouse, trackball, head pointer or eye tracker.
Requires macOS 26 Tahoe or later.
This is the app’s layout and English word list, ranked the way the app ranks it, running in your browser. Click a key, pick a word above the keys, or drag across the letters to swipe one.
Four ways to get words down, all in one keyboard that floats above every app.
A complete Mac keyboard, from esc to the arrow keys, in a panel that floats above every app and never takes focus from the one you’re typing in. A click on the edge of a key goes to the letter you most likely meant, and PaperKeys learns where you tend to aim.
Suggestions above the keys finish the word you’re typing, catch slips like “teh”, and guess the next word from the one before. Phrases you type often arrive as a single chip: one click and the whole phrase goes in.
Draw a line through the letters of a word and let go. PaperKeys puts in the word it thinks you meant and keeps the runners-up above the keys, one click away. Try it on the keyboard at the top of the page.
Dictation runs on your Mac: Parakeet for English, Whisper for Icelandic. Voice modes can tidy what you said, write it up as an email or translate it, using Apple’s on-device model or your own OpenAI or Claude key.
Small things that add up when every action is a click.
Holds ⌃⌥⇧⌘ at once, so shortcuts of your own never collide with an app’s. Put it where Caps Lock was, or beside the arrow keys.
Drag from it to scroll whatever sits under the keyboard. The farther you pull, the faster it goes; click to stop.
Every menu command of the app in front, searchable. Type “svas” and Save As… comes up; the commands you use most rise to the top.
Halves, thirds, two-thirds or the whole screen, picked from the number row.
Latch ⌘ and hover a key to see what that shortcut does in the app you’re using. It works on the keyboard at the top of this page, too.
Email fields get @ and .com, web addresses get /, number fields light up the digits. Hold .com for .org, .io or your country’s ending.
Latch Control and click. No second mouse button needed.
Up to five keys per app in the function row, like Build and Run in Xcode or Back and Reload in your browser. Import them straight from the app’s menus.
Fold the keyboard into one floating button. Hover it for Scroll, Undo, Voice and Return.
What’s on the clipboard and your last five dictations, a click away above the keys.
Select text and a bubble offers Copy, Search, Translate and more. With Pro and your own AI key, AI Edit rewrites the selection to an instruction you say out loud.
See how many clicks PaperKeys saved you today, this week and since you started. Only the counts are kept, never the text.
Eight themes, from plain System to a glowing CRT terminal. These are the app’s own, drawn live, so go ahead and type on them.
System is free. The other seven come with Pro.
A keyboard sees everything you write, so it owes you a straight answer about what it does with it. This is the whole list.
The free keyboard doesn’t expire and doesn’t need an account. Pro unlocks everything else.
$0forever
DownloadThe keyboard and the basics.
$9a month, billed monthly
Get ProEverything in Free, plus:
$295once
Get LifetimeEverything in Pro, for good.
Prices are in US dollars and include VAT where it applies. Billing, cancelling and refunds are covered in the terms of sale.
Anyone who can’t, or would rather not, type on a physical keyboard. That includes people living with ALS, MS, cerebral palsy, a spinal cord injury, RSI or a tremor, and anyone who types with a mouse, trackball, pen, head pointer or eye tracker.
Anywhere you can type on your Mac. PaperKeys sends real keystrokes, so it works in browsers, Terminal, Office, Xcode and everything else. The first time you open it, macOS asks you to allow it under Accessibility.
macOS 26 Tahoe or later. The dictation models download once; Parakeet, the English one, is about 450 MB. Voice modes that use Apple’s on-device model need a Mac with Apple Intelligence.
English and Icelandic, for suggestions, swipe and dictation. The key labels follow your macOS keyboard layout, so an Icelandic layout shows Þ, Æ and Ð.
Parakeet and Whisper run entirely on your Mac, and so does Apple’s on-device model. Text only leaves your Mac if a voice mode includes an OpenAI or Claude step, and then only to the service you chose.
Yes. Add an OpenAI or Claude API key in Voice settings and PaperKeys keeps it in your Mac’s Keychain. Or skip the keys and use Apple’s on-device model, which costs nothing.
A Pro or Lifetime license activates on up to three Macs. It’s checked once a day and keeps working offline for up to 30 days.
PaperKeys goes back to the free version. The keyboard keeps working, and the words it learned stay on your Mac.