Launching today
Cotypist is smart autocomplete for the Mac apps you already write in: Mail, Slack, Notes, docs, even AI prompts. Press Tab when a suggestion fits, or keep typing and watch it update in real time. Runs locally on your Mac. No cloud, no API calls.
Cotypist
Hey everyone, I'm Daniel, the developer behind Cotypist.
First, a quick thank-you to the Product Hunt team. After Cotypist launched back in May, they reached out and invited me back for a featured relaunch. I'm honestly a little stunned by that, and very grateful to be here again.
A few years ago, I noticed I'd developed a weird habit: copying conversations into Visual Studio Code, just to get GitHub Copilot's inline completions, then pasting them back into the app I should have been writing in. After enough of that, it clicked: autocomplete shouldn't live in one editor. It should work wherever you write.
So I built Cotypist. It's smart autocomplete that runs locally on your Mac (no cloud, no API calls), in basically every app you type into. Install it, give it a minute, and you're writing faster everywhere on your Mac. No long setup. Tab to accept a suggestion, keep going. Words still sound like you.
You can download Cotypist today from https://cotypist.app; there's a free 30-day trial with all the features, and there's also a free plan for casual use after that.
During early access, Cotypist has become a daily driver for founders, marketers, support folks, novelists, physicians, academics, and long-time Mac users. People who type a lot of email, Slack, and AI prompts. Plus a long tail I didn't see coming: non-native English speakers, one-handed typists, and (this still blows my mind!) not one but two Neuralink brain-implant wearers.
What still surprises me about Cotypist, even after building it, is how often it feels like it's reading your mind. Or almost like a colleague finishing your sentences.
Happy to take questions about the product, where it works (and where it doesn't), what's coming next, or anything else. I'll be here all day.
—Daniel
I was in on the early release of Cotypist and saw it had great potential. It was then over-eager in the same way that the usual auto-correct is, causing a lot of backspacing. That is now totally gone with the tab completion. Start typing and it will provide a suggestion and if you like it, just press tab, but if not just keep typing. There's some tweaking when using apps with competing auto-corrects but that's not hard. If you've ever been in a relationship with someone where you get to the point of being able to ccomplete each other’s sentences, this will feel familiar. This goes into the day one new computer setup toolkit.
Cotypist
@technocrat Thank you for the endorsement, Richard! I appreciate your support throughout the early access period and am glad to hear that the improvements I made have made a difference for you. Acknowledged on the conflicts with e.g. the built-in macOS autocorrect; I’ve been thinking whether to offer disabling macOS' built-in autocorrect when installing Cotypist, but didn’t want to mess with the user’s system settings too much. I’ll keep iterating on it, though!
You won't believe it, but recently I was looking for such a tool. I couldn't find something that would really work - just an autocomplete, without any other unnecessary functionality. And also that it would work quickly, and wouldn't eat up half of the computer's memory. It seems that this is what is needed. I will definitely try it and give my feedback.
I also have questions about this:
- What is the weight of the model that handles the autocomplete?
- Will this work in any input or text field? Or only in specific applications?
- What is the context for autocomplete? Is it the text that is previously entered into the text field, or does the application scan the entire page?
- After the trial period ends, if I like everything, can I buy the app permanently with a single payment? Is there or is there any plan to do so?
Cotypist
@oleg_tsizdyn Hi Oleg, thank you for the comment! This is the person I built Cotypist for: someone who wants autocomplete that just works, stays out of the way, and does this as efficiently as possible. Looking forward to your feedback. To your questions:
What model handles the autocomplete, and how heavy is it?
The default is Google's Gemma 4 E2B, running entirely on your Mac. The model file is a few gigabytes on disk, but only about 1 GB of it needs to be in active memory while it's generating. Even though it's a multi-billion-parameter model, Cotypist doesn't keep all of its weights resident at once: part of them are streamed in from disk only as they're needed, so they never have to sit in GPU memory. That's a big reason it punches above its weight, you get close to the quality of a much larger model for the footprint of a small one. On stronger Macs you get the larger E4B model (around 2.5 GB in memory) for even better suggestions.
Does it work in any field, or only specific apps?
It's system-wide. It works in most native macOS text fields and many web and Electron ones too: Mail, Slack, Notes, the major browsers, document editors, even AI prompt boxes. It isn't tied to a fixed list of apps. A handful of apps don't expose the information Cotypist needs to place a suggestion correctly, and those are listed on the compatibility page, but the large majority of where you write is covered. One notable exception is Ghostty; I submitted PRs to improve their support for Cotypist, but there hasn't been much progress on that front.
What context does it use?
Mainly what's visible on your screen as well as some information, plus some additional information. You can also provide custom instructions to tailor the suggestions to your writing style. All of that is processed on your Mac, and nothing you type is ever uploaded anywhere.
After the trial, can I buy it permanently with one payment?
Cotypist is subscription-based, and I don't offer a one-time purchase. The short reason is that the subscription is what keeps it in active development and support, faster completions, bug fixes, more app coverage, rather than a single payment that has to fund years of future work. That said, you're not forced to subscribe: after the 30-day Pro trial there's a capable free tier, so if it fits how you write, you can keep using it without paying anything.
Thanks again for giving it a try, and please do send your feedback once you've lived with it for a bit.
How Cotypist handles different writing styles across work emails, Slack messages, and personal notes??
Cotypist
@ankur_jeswani Excellent question! Cotypist lets you provide custom instructions to generally tune it to your writing style. In addition, you also have the option to provide additional instructions for specific apps, to e.g. follow a more casual tone in Slack while keeping your emails more formal. Plus, Cotypist is also generally quick to pick up on the style of the current conversation, and will also learn from your writing in each app over time.
What I found interesting is that typing is one of those things everyone does all day, yet most of us never think about improving it. Small gains in speed and accuracy can compound surprisingly fast over time. Nice reminder that productivity isn't always about adding more tools.
Cotypist
@harini_mukesh Indeed! The cool part about Cotypist is that it just accelerates a task you would do anyway — typing — without changing your workflow. Just install it, and gain a quick and easy speed boost throughout your day, without the time investment of learning new tools or setting up complex automations.
I love it so much I wish I had it on my phone.
Cotypist
@jathan_mccollum Thank you; I'll consider a version for iOS ;-)
GrowMeOrganic
Love the origin story. Copying text into VS Code for autocomplete is exactly the kind of workflow hack builders create.
Cotypist
@iamanantgupta Indeed! I also love the macOS platform for its expandability and "hackability"; tools like Cotypist would simply not be possible in this form on,say, iOS.