Alternatives
Products that do what WhisperCat – An Audio Recorder and Transcription Tool does
Hi HN, I wanted to share my first open-source project with you all: WhisperCat . WhisperCat is a small desktop application for recording audio and transcribing it using OpenAI's Whisper API. I built this because I needed something simple and reliable for my own transcription workflows, and now I'm hoping it might be useful to others as well. It's still pretty early stage, but it works well for basic audio recording and transcription tasks. What It Does: Lets you record audio with your preferred microphone. Transcribes audio files automatically via Whisper (OpenAI's transcription API).…
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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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2022 · freesubtitles.ai
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2022 · whispermemos.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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I've been obsessed for the past ~year with the possibilities of talking to LLMs. I built a bunch of one-off prototypes, shared code on X, started a Meetup group in SF, and co-hosted a big hackathon. It turns out that there are a few low-level problems that everybody building conversational/real-time AI needs to solve on the way to building/shipping something that works well: low-latency media transport, echo cancellation, voice activity detection, phrase endpointing, pipelining data between models/services, handling voice interruptions, swapping out different…
2024 · github.com
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I built Whispering because I believe transcription is too fundamental a tool to be locked behind paywalls. It's a cross-platform desktop and web transcription app that turns speech into text with a keyboard shortcut, among other things. The app lets you bring your own API key (OpenAI, Groq, etc.) and make direct calls. If you want complete privacy, it also supports local transcription. Either way, your audio never goes through any middleman servers. It's super lightweight (~22MB), built with Svelte 5 and Tauri, and works on Mac, Windows, and Linux. I've been using it daily for the past few…
2025 · github.com
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I originally added this to my site to speed up my video editing process. Last year I started a youtube channel and for some of my longer videos it's annoying to rely on youtube or capcut to transcribe when Whisper is open source. Capcut also recently updated their T&Cs to say they own your content if you use their app, so I cancelled my subscription. Another use-case I have is recording my claude prompts as audio, transcribing them, and then pasting them into my terminal. I mostly work on the CLI (claude, ffmpeg, whisper), but I wanted to make a browser version. Not reinventing the wheel…
2025 · meetcosmos.com
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Hey HN! I've been working on a side project to create an audio transcription API based on the OpenAI whisper model. Sign up link: https://whisperapi.com I tried to make the API really easy to use and get setup with. Also, because the Whisper model is so good, turns out I can offer the service for about 75% cheaper than what seems like the industry average. I'm always looking to make improvements, so would appreciate any feedback anyone has!
2022 · whisperapi.com
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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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Hello HN, This is my first Show HN and hopefully a fun one for y'all. Parrot is a web app for easily recording throwaway audio clips. It was originally intended for pronunciation practice but may find other uses. I got the idea to work on Parrot after reading the Launch HN of Issen [1]. Thinking about ways to help language learners improve their pronunciation, I remembered an easy method I've humbled myself with in the past: listening to a recording of my own voice. The idea is to repeatedly record and listen to yourself, adjusting your pronunciation until you get it right. What makes Parrot…
May 2026 · zkhrv.com
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Hello all, I made a small transcription app for your Mac based on OpenAI’s Whisper. Would love some feedback. My plan is to make it easy to load weights from any fine-tuned whisper model to enable specialized dictation for any subfield. It’s still early in development. Thanks!
2023 · twitter.com
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