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AI · August 21, 2023

superwhisper – AI powered offline voice to text for macOS

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…

superwhisper – AI powered offline voice to text for macOS launched on August 21, 2023 with 43 votes, #1,481 of 4,347 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 3 years on.

In plain words

Superwhisper is an offline voice-to-text application for macOS that addresses limitations in native dictation. Built on whisper.cpp technology, it offers accurate transcription with automatic punctuation, works across all applications, and supports multiple languages. The app runs efficiently on Apple Silicon chips, with base and standard models available for free and larger models requiring payment. It works entirely offline and provides configurable settings for different user needs.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

AI powered voice to text for macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. Dictate in any app with offline and cloud speech recognition, 100+ languages, and custom AI modes. SOC 2 Type II certified. HIPAA compliant.

In the maker’s words, at launch

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…

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  • OpenWhisper – free, local, and private voice-to-text macOS appFeb 2026 · github.com · ▲37

    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…

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  • TongueType for macOSMay 2026 · tonguetype.app · ▲109

    Hi HN, I'm a longtime web dev, but this is my first macOS app. Feedback is very welcome <3 I built TongueType because every dictation app I tried failed at least one of three things: it sent my audio to someone's cloud, it charged me monthly fee, or it felt clunky or enterprisy. The cloud thing kills it for anything sensitive. The subscription thing is insulting for what amounts to "Whisper + a hotkey." TongueType runs Whisper locally on Apple Silicon via CoreML. It's built to feel like a second keyboard: tap the hotkey, talk, let go, words appear. It sits in the menu bar (no dock icon, no…

  • DictatoFeb 2026 · dicta.to · ▲93

    I built a macOS dictation app where everything runs on-device. Transcription, auto-correct, translation. No audio or text leaves your machine. It ships with 4 transcription engines you can swap between: WhisperKit (99 languages), NVIDIA Parakeet TDT 0.6B (25 European languages, fastest of the bunch), Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (30 languages), and Apple Speech on macOS 26+. They all run through CoreML&#x2F;Metal. Whisper is the most versatile, Parakeet wins on raw latency for European languages, Qwen3 does better with CJK. I went with a protocol-based architecture so you pick the engine that fits your…

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