Limberwisk

A lightweight macOS menu bar app that turns a MuteMe USB button into a push-to-talk / tap-to-toggle control for Wispr Flow dictation, with the button's light showing whether you are dictating.

Limberwisk is an independent open-source project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by MuteMe or Wispr Flow.

Using it

• Tap the button to start dictating, tap again to stop (hands-free).
• Hold the button to dictate while you hold it (push-to-talk).
• The light shows what is going on:

Light	Meaning
Red	Idle
Green	Dictating
Blue	Wispr Flow is not running (touching the button does nothing)
Yellow	A problem: see the menu bar item, which says which (below)

The light is best-effort: Limberwisk cannot read Wispr Flow's real state, so if you start or stop dictation another way the light can lag until the next touch.

The menu bar item (a microphone) shows the status (for example Status: Ready (MuteMe connected) or Status: Dictating) and lets you choose how long a touch must last to count as a hold (250, 350 or 500 ms), turn on Start at Login, copy diagnostics for a bug report, open the help page, and quit. It has no Dock icon.

Installing

Download Limberwisk.dmg, the latest release (older versions are on the Releases page). You can also build it yourself; the DMG is written to dist/.

1. Open the DMG and drag Limberwisk to Applications.
2. A release that is not notarized (see the release notes) is refused by macOS the first time. On macOS 15 and later, try to open it, then go to System Settings > Privacy & Security and choose Open Anyway. On macOS 13 and 14, right-click the app and choose Open. Either way you are overriding Gatekeeper for an app that Apple has not checked, so only do it for a copy you trust.
3. Quit the official MuteMe app if it is running: it competes for the button and resets the light. Limberwisk notices and offers to quit it for you.

Requires macOS 13 or later and Wispr Flow.

Troubleshooting

You see	Likely cause and fix
Status: MuteMe not connected	The button is unplugged or on a charge-only cable
Status: Wispr Flow not running	Start Wispr Flow. Touches are ignored until then, on purpose, so the button never launches it
Status: Official MuteMe app is running	Click the warning row to quit it, or quit it yourself
Status: Cannot open device	Another program holds the button. Quit the official MuteMe app first
Status: Wispr command failed	Limberwisk could not reach Wispr Flow; check that it is installed and running
Start at Login (installed app only) is greyed out	It can only be turned on in the installed app, not when run from source

Still stuck? Choose Copy Diagnostics from the menu and paste the result into an issue. It contains versions, the device model and recent log lines (with your home folder removed), and never audio or dictated text. The full log is in ~/Library/Logs/Limberwisk/.

Supported devices

Device	USB ID	Status
MuteMe Original (current generation)	0x3603:0x0001	Verified on hardware
MuteMe Mini variants	0x3603:0x0002–0x0004	Untested
Legacy MuteMe Original / Mini	0x20A0:0x42DA / 0x42DB	Untested

The untested devices are enabled on a best-effort basis; reports from owners are welcome.

Development

The behaviour is specified in specs/spec.md. The pure-Python logic is covered by unit tests that need no device, no Wispr Flow and no macOS frameworks, so they also run on Linux CI.

nix-shell                      # tools: just, ruff, pytest, python
just validate                  # lint + format check + tests

To run against real hardware, set up the virtual environment described in docs/releasing.md, then:

.venv/bin/python -m limberwisk                  # the menu bar app
.venv/bin/pytest tests/test_appkit_contract.py   # checks the real macOS APIs (needs PyObjC)

• docs/manual-tests.md: everything that needs the real device
• docs/releasing.md: building the app and DMG, and cutting a release
• scripts/: build, signing, measurement and hardware test scripts
• spikes/: throwaway experiments that settled early questions

Repository tooling

• Git hooks (.githooks/, enabled by direnv allow): commit-msg enforces Conventional Commits titles and pre-commit runs just validate. They only run locally; the validate workflow (.github/workflows/validate.yml) runs the same checks in CI on every push and pull request as a backstop.
• Automated PR review (.github/workflows/pr-review.yml): needs the repository secret ANTHROPIC_API_KEY (or CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN) and/or OPENROUTER_API_KEY, and the action repository must be shared with this one under Settings > Actions > General.
• Beads issue tracking: .beads/ is gitignored; .envrc provisions a local database on cd into the repo.
• Template updates: the project was scaffolded with Copier; run copier update to pull upstream tooling changes.

License

MIT