I’ve been typing on MacBook keyboards for over a decade. Always functional, never fun. Last week, while writing documentation at 2 AM, I found myself missing the satisfying clack of my old IBM Model M. That’s when I discovered Klack.
Twenty minutes later, my silent Magic Keyboard was producing the deep thock of Gateron Milky Yellow switches. Not through speakers - the spatial audio made it sound like the noise came directly from each key. I actually looked down at my keyboard, confused. The illusion was that good.
Klack offers several switch sounds: CherryMX Black, NovelKeys Cream, even something called “Flurples Cardboard” (sounds exactly as weird as you’d expect). I settled on the Oreo switches - a perfect crisp-but-not-annoying click that makes typing feel substantial again.
What sold me was the implementation quality. Each keystroke has slight pitch variation, so rapid typing doesn’t sound like a machine gun. The app responds instantly - zero lag between keypress and sound. Critical for maintaining flow when coding.
Resource usage? Essentially nothing. 20MB of memory, CPU usage so low it doesn’t register. Just sits in your menu bar, doing its one job perfectly.
The killer feature: ⇧⌘K instantly toggles sounds on/off. Late night coding session while family sleeps? Off. Morning email grind? On. Takes less than a second to switch contexts.
I’ve used this with three keyboards now - MacBook Pro built-in, Magic Keyboard, and a cheap Logitech. Sounds great with all of them. Though I’ll admit, adding mechanical keyboard sounds to an already mechanical keyboard creates a weird audio double-effect.
One minor gripe: no volume control within the app. You adjust through system volume, which means balancing Klack against music or calls. Would love a simple slider in the menu bar dropdown.
Klack costs $4.99 on the Mac App Store. Requires macOS 14 or newer. For less than a coffee, you get typing that actually feels good again. I’ve written more in the past week simply because typing became enjoyable.
Is it necessary? No. Does it make eight-hour typing sessions more bearable? Absolutely. Sometimes the small improvements matter most.
