OpenWhisper – free, local, and private voice-to-text macOS app

In plain words

OpenWhisper is a free macOS app that converts spoken words to text using a local version of OpenAI's Whisper model, keeping all processing private on the user's device. It's designed for anyone seeking voice-to-text functionality without sharing audio data with cloud services. The app runs whisper.cpp, a fast C++ implementation, eliminating privacy concerns associated with proprietary alternatives. The source code is available on GitHub.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

Contribute to richardwu/openwhisper development by creating an account on GitHub.

Local, private voice-to-text for macOS. Lives in your menu bar, transcribes with whisper.cpp , and pastes the result directly into any app. Download the latest .dmg from the Releases page — open it, drag OpenWhisper to Applications, and you're done. brew install xcodegen git clone https://github.com/richardwu/openwhisper cd openwhisper xcodegen generate xcodebuild -scheme OpenWhisper -configuration Debug -derivedDataPath .build build open " .build/Build/Products/Debug/OpenWhisper (Dev).app " To sign with your own Apple Development certificate (persists permissions across rebuilds): xcodebuild -scheme OpenWhisper -configuration Debug -derivedDataPath .build build \ CODE_SIGN_IDENTITY= "…from github.com

In the maker’s words, at launch

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…

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