macOS asks about the keychain, or my key will not save
After an update, choose Always Allow when macOS asks once if the app may use your keys and license; this page also fixes a refusal and a key that will not save.
"Dictate Safe" wants to use your confidential information stored in "com.vibhaga.dictatesafe" in your keychain.Why: This is macOS, not Dictate Safe. Your keys and your license are kept in the Mac’s keychain, and so are your backup passphrase and the key to your history if you use those features. macOS remembers which version of an app saved each one. After an update it asks once whether the new version may use them.
Fix: Type your Mac login password and choose Always Allow. It will not ask again for this item, including after later updates. Choosing Deny keeps the item closed to Dictate Safe, which is what the next message is about.
macOS did not let Dictate Safe open your saved license. Quit Dictate Safe and open it again; when macOS asks, choose Always Allow.Why: Your license is saved and nothing was lost. macOS was asked whether Dictate Safe may open it, and the answer was Deny or the question was closed.
Fix: Quit Dictate Safe from the menu bar icon, open it again, and choose Always Allow when macOS asks. You do not need to sign in again.
Nothing was saved. macOS did not let Dictate Safe replace this saved item. After an update macOS asks once whether the new version may use it: choose Always Allow. If it does not ask, open Keychain Access, search for "com.vibhaga.dictatesafe", click each row and delete the ones whose Account (shown at the top) starts with "byok-groq", then save again.Why: macOS ties every saved password to the exact version of the app that saved it. An older version saved this key, and the current one has not yet been allowed to touch it, so macOS refuses to let it read, replace or delete that entry.
Fix: Dictate Safe already tries several other places to keep the key before showing this message, so seeing it means all of them were blocked too, which is rare. Quit and open Dictate Safe again and choose Always Allow if macOS asks. If it never asks, open Keychain Access and search for the name in the message. Click each row: the Account line at the top shows what it holds (for a Groq key byok-groq, for OpenAI byok-openai, with #1 to #3 on the spare ones). Delete those rows, then save the key again.
#What normally happens instead
Saving a key a second time, or after reinstalling Dictate Safe, quietly succeeds. If an old entry cannot be reused, the new key is kept under a different name behind the scenes and read back from there. You never see this happen. The last message above only appears when every option has failed.
- Open Cloud in the sidebar.
- Paste your key again under Provider keys, and save it.
The provider shows Key saved, with no error message.
Deleting these entries in Keychain Access affects only this app’s saved keys. It does not touch your history files, or anything belonging to another application. If one of them is your license (its Account says licence-token), you only need to sign in again on the Account page.
Two entries are different. Leave the one whose Account says history-key alone: if you turned on encryption, it unlocks your history, and without it the app asks for your backup passphrase (see why your history might say it is locked). The one that says backup-passphrase is the passphrase kept for automatic backups; deleting it stops them until you enter it again in Settings → Backup.