Alternatives
Products that do what PrivateWhisper does
Run Whisper locally on Mac. Fast, private transcripts.
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I wanted a voice-to-text app but didn't trust any of the proprietary ones with my privacy. So I decided to see if I could vibe code it with 0 macOS app & Swift experience. It uses a local binary of whisper.cpp (a fast implementation of OpenAI's Whisper voice-to-text model in C++). Github: https://github.com/richardwu/openwhisper I also decided to take this as an opportunity to compare 3 agentic coding harnesses: Cursor w/ Opus 4.6: - Best one-shot UI by far - Didn't get permissioning correct - Had issues making the "Cancel recording" hotkey being turned on all the…
Feb 2026 · github.com
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Hey HN! Braden here, creator of Whispering, an open-source speech-to-text app. I really like dictation. For years, I relied on transcription tools that were almost good, but they were all closed-source. Even a lot of them that claimed to be “local” or “on-device” were still black boxes that left me wondering where my audio really went. So I built Whispering. It’s open-source, local-first, and most importantly, transparent with your data. Your data is stored locally on your device, and your audio goes directly from your machine to a local provider (Whisper C++, Speaches, etc.) or your chosen…
2025 · github.com
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Hey HN, I built superwhisper out of frustration with the native dictation capabilities of macOS. Inaccurate, required manual punctuation, didnt activate in some contexts or would have audio capture issues. I wanted a replacement that worked offline, had cross language support, was configurable and worked in any application. Under the hood the app is using whisper.cpp, which runs really well on the Apple Silicon chips. You can use the base and standard size models for free, larger models sizes and languages other than english are paid. Let me know what you think! For context, I launched this…
2023 · superwhisper.com
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Schibsted created a transcription service for our journalists to transcribe audio interviews and podcasts really quick.
2023 · github.com
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Hello everyone. This is Yujong from the Hyprnote team (https://github.com/fastrepl/hyprnote). We built OWhisper for 2 reasons: (Also outlined in https://docs.hyprnote.com/owhisper/what-is-this) (1). While working with on-device, realtime speech-to-text, we found there isn't tooling that exists to download / run the model in a practical way. (2). Also, we got frequent requests to provide a way to plug in custom STT endpoints to the Hyprnote desktop app, just like doing it with OpenAI-compatible LLM endpoints. The (2) part is still kind of WIP, but…
2025 · docs.hyprnote.com
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Sep 2025 · github.com
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Transcribe locally, stay private – no cloud, no tracking
Jun 2026 · apps.apple.com
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On-device voice recorder that transcribes + exports Markdown
Jun 2026 · fieldbw.com
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I know there are various tools that are supposed to make this easy, but I couldn't find anything that did everything I wanted, so I made this today for fun. The web-based offerings all take forever and seem flaky, and you need to process one video at a time, with no control over the transcription settings. In contrast, my script lets you convert a whole playlist in bulk with full control over everything. It's truly easy to use-- you can clone the repo, install to a venv, and be generating a folder full of high quality transcript text files in under 5 minutes. All you need to do is supply the…
2023 · github.com
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