Install the companion
Download the macOS app, install it, and give it the OS grants it asks for. It is also what flashes your board.
The companion is a macOS app. It pairs devices, routes audio, runs workflows and hosts extensions — and it carries the flasher, so it is what puts ZephOS on your board. Install it first; flash from inside it.
Downloads are gated. /download lists builds for an account with beta access, and shows the waitlist to everyone else. Access opens in waves.
Install it
Get on the waitlist
Sign up, and your account joins the list. When your turn comes, the beta flag flips on the account and /download turns into a list of releases.
Each artifact link is minted when you click it: the download route reads your session, re-checks the beta flag, and hands back a URL that lives for five minutes.
Download the disk image
Every release on the page carries its notes and a macOS artifact — a Zeph-<version>.dmg. You need macOS 14 or later.
The app inside is signed with a Developer ID, built with the hardened runtime, notarized and stapled — as is the disk image itself. It opens by double-click.
Drag Zeph to Applications
The image mounts with Zeph.app, an Applications shortcut, and Uninstall Zeph.app next to it. The uninstaller is a standalone signed app that runs straight from the disk image; it removes the Zeph audio driver, the privileged helper and Zeph's data.
Open Zeph
The first launch opens the setup wizard. Welcome is one screen: a line about what Zeph does, and a Continue. Continuing is the agreement — Terms, Privacy, and anonymous diagnostics you can switch off later.
From there the wizard walks Get your device, Set up Zeph audio, Choose what to do, Set up & try. See First run for what each one does.
What macOS asks you for
Four grants, and each is asked at the moment the thing that needs it comes up. Each arrives on a card that says what it is and why, with the button on the card — the wizard runs the request when you press it.
The setup wizard, and the four things it asks macOS for
The setup wizard
Opens on the first launch.
- asks forBluetooth
Finds and connects your device wirelessly.
GateTurn on Bluetooth or grant permission in System Settings. - installsThe Zeph audio driverOptional
Makes Zeph appear as audio devices on your Mac.
GateYour Mac will prompt for your password. - requestsAccessibility
Lets Zeph type transcribed text at your cursor.
GatemacOS will ask you to allow Zeph in System Settings. - readsThe microphone
The wizard listens back to prove the loop works.
GateThe standard macOS microphone prompt.
Bluetooth — finding your device
The Get your device step starts a scan and a Bluetooth check as it opens, so a device already in range shows up on its own. If Bluetooth is off or unpermitted, a card appears in place with a button that opens Bluetooth settings. macOS shows the reason Zeph declares: "Zeph uses Bluetooth to connect to your Zeph devices."
A board on the end of a USB-C cable is reachable over USB, so the wizard picks it up either way.
The audio driver — the wireless microphone and speaker
This is the step marked Optional. It installs the audio driver, and the driver is what makes your device show up in your Mac's audio device list as two things:
| It adds | What you get |
|---|---|
| A Zeph wireless microphone | Dictate into any app — your voice becomes text at the cursor. Pick it as the input in Zoom, Meet, or anything else that takes a mic. |
| A Zeph wireless speaker | Play audio through the device — alerts, replies, and app sounds. |
Your Mac asks for your password once, when you press Install driver. The step tells you that before the prompt fires. Type it, and the two audio devices appear.
Skip for now sits next to the Install button, and a feature that needs the driver offers it again later. If the driver is already there, the step passes silently and you never see it.
What the driver actually is
The driver is a CoreAudio plug-in, and it lands in
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/ — a directory only an administrator can write
to, which is the reason for the password prompt.
Writing there is privileged work, so the app does not do it itself: it ships
an install helper, registered with macOS through SMAppService, and the
helper performs the install. That is the one moment Zeph needs elevation, and
it is the only one. Nothing about the driver runs as an administrator
afterwards — once it is in place, macOS loads it like any other audio device.
Accessibility — typing at your cursor
This one belongs to the Transcribe at cursor path. Dictation inserts your transcribed words into whatever app is focused, and macOS Accessibility is the permission that allows it.
The card is titled "Allow Zeph to type at your cursor". Pressing its button asks macOS to prompt; macOS then asks you to allow Zeph in System Settings. Grant it once. If Accessibility is already trusted, the step passes silently.
The microphone prompt
The wizard's Try it step reads back from the virtual microphone to show you the loop working end to end. macOS shows the standard microphone prompt with the reason Zeph declares: "Zeph reads from the Zeph Wireless virtual microphone to drive its onboarding 'Try it' loop."
Diagnostics come last
The wizard asks about diagnostics and analytics near the end — after you are set up, on a screen of its own, just before the final one.
Next: put ZephOS on the board
The flasher lives inside the app. In the wizard, Set up a new device opens it right there without leaving the flow; afterwards, Devices opens the same flow for any board. It runs Device, Model, Prepare, Firmware, Flash.
Read Flash your device for the cable and the button choreography, and The companion for how the app behaves once it is running — the window, the menu bar, and the part that keeps going after you close it.