This $5 macOS app makes typing a lot more fun

• Klack captures half of the keyboard experience
• Mechanical keyboards are about more than just sound
• Your Mac is more customizable than you might think

We are thankfully well past the days when making a laptop as thin as possible drove Apple to give its MacBooks truly terrible keyboards. At the time, the “butterfly switch” keyboard the company introduced on the 12-inch MacBook in 2015 seemed like a clever way to make a big part of laptops a lot smaller, but it was easy to ruin with a stray crumb or hair, rendering it useless. More importantly, it was hard to repair and Apple took a ridiculously long time to publicly acknowledge the problem.

Laptop keyboards from most major PC makers are on the up and up now, but they haven’t eliminated the desire for mechanical keyboards, which besides being fun to maintain and build, also provide a tactile experience laptop keyboards can’t really match. Klack, a macOS app, is trying to change that by simulating the sounds of a mechanical keyboard whenever you type, recreating the distinct sounds of different mechanical switches entirely virtually. It’s not the same thing as using a mechanical keyboard, but, surprisingly, it does get part of the way there, and that’s fun and satisfying.

Klack captures half of the keyboard experience

The app can simulate several different switches

Klack can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for $5 and lives as a menu bar app on the top right side of your macOS home screen. The app works by assigning a real, recorded and mastered key sound to each real key that you type. The sounds blend in or overpower the softer clacks of a MacBook’s built-in keyboard, and capture some of the experience of the clicks and clacks of a real-life mechanical keyboard. Klack does several things to make the sounds feel more realistic, like randomly pitching the sounds up and down as you type, and playing different sounds for up and down keystrokes.

For anyone who owns a mechanical keyboard of their own and has specific switches (the mechanical component that makes the biggest contribution to how a keyboard sounds) they prefer, Klack actually simulates specific real switches from companies like Cherry and Gateron. When it’s all working together, you’ll have the physical feeling of typing on a laptop, but with sounds that can get pretty close to tricking you that you’re using something else. And when you don’t want to use Klack, all you have to do is toggle it off from your menu bar until the next time you’re ready to use it. You can even adjust how loud Klack’s sounds are. The app isn’t perfect, but I was surprised to find how much of the time I preferred to have it on rather than off. It turns out mechanical keyboard sounds are satisfying in their own right.

Klack’s sound effects can be set to come out of specific speakers or headphones, depending on what you prefer.

Mechanical keyboards are about more than just sound

Klack is inherently limited by being an auditory experience

Besides only being able to capture half of the whole mechanical keyboard experience, Klack also has some technical limitations that are hard to overcome. For example, because of the latency of Bluetooth connections, Klack works best coming straight out of your MacBook’s speakers rather than wireless earbuds and headphones. That’s something the app’s developer, Henrik Ruscon, readily admits. “Klack does not add any latency. However, Bluetooth, on the other hand, does,” Ruscon writes on Klack’s FAQ page. “The current Bluetooth codec used in macOS is optimized for battery usage over latency. You could potentially reduce latency by up to 200ms while using Bluetooth by changing your codec to prioritize low latency.”

That doesn’t mean Klack isn’t worth trying or using, it just means that it’ll obviously never fully be able to replace what you’ll get out of building a mechanical keyboard of your own.

MacBook speakers, even though they’re much better than they used to be, can only do so much, too. Even with spatial audio, typing on a mechanical keyboard will sound more “real” than the simulated experience you’ll get through Klack. You’ll also have more options. Klack currently only offers six different switch options to choose from, while you could use many more if you’re willing to switch them out manually on your own keyboard. That doesn’t mean Klack isn’t worth trying or using, it just means that it’ll obviously never fully be able to replace what you’ll get out of building a mechanical keyboard of your own.

Your Mac is more customizable than you might think

Klack is just one option you can try

Even if Klack can’t completely transfer your MacBook keyboard on the cheap — we’ll need Apple to get more adventurous with its laptop design for that — the app is a good reminder that macOS is far more customizable than Apple’s other operating systems. MacOS 26 might look a lot like iPadOS 26 and iOS 26, but it’s still a mature operating system that gives you control over how it looks and works.

That goes beyond things like Shortcuts or Apple’s official app tinting and widgets options, and into third-party apps that legitimately change how your Mac works. Start with Klack, but know that there’s a whole world out there that’s worth exploring.