Whispering – Open-source, local-first dictation you can trust
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…
Whispering – Open-source, local-first dictation you can trust launched on August 18, 2025 with 591 votes, #25 of 8,530 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.
In plain words
Whispering is an open-source speech-to-text application that converts audio to text while keeping data on the user's device. Built for people who want transparent dictation software, it processes audio locally through providers like Whisper C++ or routes to cloud services of the user's choice. The software prioritizes data privacy and openness compared to existing closed-source transcription tools.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Open-source, local-first apps. Contribute to EpicenterHQ/epicenter development by creating an account on GitHub.
Whispering is a free and open source speech-to-text app. It records speech, transcribes it with a provider you choose, optionally polishes the transcript, and delivers the text. The same browser-hostable Svelte SPA serves two hosts: Whispering does not own a native shell. Epicenter owns the only Tauri runtime at apps/epicenter/src-tauri . apps/whispering/src |-- browser condition --> apps/whispering/build --> Cloudflare static assets `-- tauri condition ----> apps/epicenter/dist/whispering | `--> apps/epicenter/src-tauri native commands and windows The browser is a real product target, not a desktop fallback. It owns browser recording, IndexedDB blobs, browser auth redirects, and web-safe…from github.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
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…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →
Open-source transcription that costs $0.02/hour instead of $30/month2025 · github.com · ▲7I 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…
DictatoFeb 2026 · dicta.to · ▲93I 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/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…
OpenWhisper – free, local, and private voice-to-text macOS appFeb 2026 · github.com · ▲37I 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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