Push-to-talk voice typing for Windows that lands in any app: your terminal, editor, browser, chat box. Cloud with your key, free AI polish with Gemini, or go 100% offline so nothing leaves your PC. No account. No subscription. Ever.
one-click install · auto-updates itself · bring your own key, polish free with Gemini, or run 100% offline
See it in action
A real walkthrough: dictating a full build into Claude Code by voice, the settings tour, per-app profiles, and going 100% offline.
The honest comparison
The popular dictation apps are Mac-first, cloud-only, and cost up to $144/year. Here's the trade you're actually making.
| PipeVoice | Wispr Flow | Windows built-in | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free forever | $15/mo · $144/yr | Free |
| Your voice | Stays on your PC (offline option) | Uploaded to the cloud | Sent to Microsoft |
| Built for Windows | Native | Mac-first port | Basic |
| Types into any app | Yes | Yes | Limited |
| Works offline | Yes · local Whisper | No | No |
| Open source · auditable | Yes | No | No |
Comparison from public pricing & reviews, 2026. Bring your own key (cents/day) or run fully offline, free.
What it does
It types real keystrokes into the app you're already in, not a special box you paste from.
Terminal, editor, browser, chat box. Real keystrokes go to the focused window, nothing to copy or paste.
Run the fully offline path (Local Whisper plus a local Ollama model) and nothing leaves your machine. No account, no telemetry, no servers of ours. Open source, so verify it.
Dictate prompts straight into Claude Code, Cursor, or any terminal, 3 to 5 times faster than typing them. Talk the way you think.
Install once and you're done. PipeVoice checks for new versions in the background, verifies each one with SHA-256, and updates itself. Open the About window any time to see what's new or update on the spot. No uninstall, no reinstall.
A quiet tray app, not a memory hog. No Electron, no background bloat. It waits in the tray until you hold the key.
A hotkey for every Voice plus a picker, type or clipboard output, accent and language picker, free-text speech notes, vocabulary boosting and word-fixes for your jargon, push-to-talk or toggle, paste-or-type output, plus min-recording, paste-speed and Deepgram-timeout controls. Open source, so fork it.
Say "new line", "new paragraph" or "tab key" to format as you go. Say "scratch that" to discard the last bit, or end with "send it" to type and press Enter hands-free. Toggle it on or off.
Every transcript is saved locally on your PC. Open the tray History window to re-copy anything you dictated earlier, marked typed or clipboard. Stored only on your machine, nothing uploaded.
Per-app profiles. PipeVoice spots the focused window and switches behaviour to match: raw text and a hands-free Enter in your terminal, polished and auto-sent in chat, no cleanup in your editor. Set the engine, cleanup, Enter and output once per app.
Your stack, your call
Two stages, your choice at each. Pick where your words go on a spectrum: use the cloud you already pay for, run it free, or keep every byte on your machine. Same hotkey, same typing, different trade.
The default is one free Gemini key — it transcribes and polishes, no card. Want zero internet? Pair Local Whisper with Ollama for a 100% offline, key-free pipeline. Cloud connectors use your own key, so audio goes only to the provider you picked, never to us. Privacy.
Made for the terminal
Anthropic shipped /voice in 2026, but it only types inside the Claude CLI. Your editor, browser, Slack, Jira and terminal panes are still keyboard-only.
PipeVoice types your words into all of them. Hold a key, say the prompt, release, and it lands wherever your cursor is. You think at ~150 wpm and type at ~40. Close the gap.
A key for every voice
Your main key types into whatever app is focused; a second copies to your clipboard instead. Then bind any Voice to its own key — Social, Professional, Code — to dictate in that style instantly. Or hold the picker key to pop up the list and choose a voice on the fly.
Every voice
Pick your English in the tray (British, US, Australian, Indian, New Zealand) and the engine loads the matching model. Not a native English accent? Just describe it in plain words, like "native Russian speaker" or "I stutter and use a lot of fillers", and the AI cleanup corrects for it.
App Profiles + Voices
You talk the same way everywhere — PipeVoice decides how it lands. Voices are named polish presets you build once and reuse: Tidy Professional Code · Prompt. PipeVoice watches the focused window and applies that app’s Voice automatically — or bind one to a key.
A key always wins over the app’s default — drop into Professional for one sentence, then go back to talking normally. Profiles auto-detect the focused window and reset the moment you switch.
Setup
Download, run the installer. It opens quietly to your system tray.
Two stages, your call at each. Transcribe with free Gemini, Groq Whisper, Deepgram or local Whisper, then polish with free Gemini, OpenAI, OpenRouter or local Ollama. The default is one free Gemini key for both — or pair local Whisper with Ollama to stay fully offline.
Hold the hotkey, speak, release. Your words type where your cursor is.
Stay in the loop
I ship updates often: new connectors, better accuracy, and a managed-key Pro for people who'd rather not touch an API key. Drop your email and I'll keep you posted. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
no spam · just shipping updates
Good to know
Yes, free forever. Run the fully offline path (local Whisper plus Ollama) at zero cost, polish for free with Google Gemini or OpenRouter community models, or bring your own Groq or Deepgram key and pay the provider directly (cents a day). A managed-key Pro is coming later for people who want zero setup, but the core tool stays free.
PipeVoice is free (no $144/yr subscription), built Windows-first instead of a Mac port, and fully open source so you can read every line. It also gives you the choice Wispr Flow doesn't: pick your transcription engine and your AI-polish provider separately. Use the cloud with your own key, polish for free with Gemini or OpenRouter, or run the whole pipeline 100% offline with local Whisper and Ollama.
Yes. PipeVoice types real keystrokes into whatever window is focused: a terminal running Claude Code, Cursor's chat, your editor, the browser. Anything you can type into, you can talk into.
Pick your English variant in the tray (British, US, Australian, Indian, New Zealand) and the engine switches to the matching model. For a non-native accent, a stutter, or heavy filler words, add a line of "speech notes" like "native Russian speaker" and the AI cleanup adjusts for it. The engines are trained on a wide range of accents to begin with.
Yes. A second hotkey (Right Ctrl + Shift by default, and configurable) records and copies the result straight to your clipboard without typing into the focused window. Handy for giving feedback while you read one window, then pasting into another.
Yes. That SmartScreen warning shows for any app without a paid code-signing certificate. Click More info → Run anyway. It's open source, read every line on GitHub.
Only to the connector you pick, and never to us. A cloud transcription engine (Gemini, Groq or Deepgram) sends your audio to that provider on your key. Local Whisper sends nothing. The optional polish stage only ever sends text, not audio: OpenAI, Gemini and OpenRouter receive the transcript to clean up, while a local Ollama model keeps even that on your machine. Pick local Whisper plus Ollama and zero bytes leave your PC. PipeVoice has no servers and no telemetry.
It's a two-stage choice. For transcription: free Gemini is the default (one key also polishes), Groq runs Whisper fast and cheap, Deepgram streams live words as you speak, and local Whisper runs fully offline with no key. For optional polish: free Gemini by default, OpenAI if you keep a key, OpenRouter, or local Ollama to stay offline. Pair local Whisper with Ollama and the whole pipeline is free, key-free and 100% offline. Switch either stage any time from the tray.
Yes. Voice commands are built in and toggleable: say "new line", "new paragraph" or "tab key" to format, "scratch that" or "cancel that" to discard, and end with "send it" or "press enter" to type your text and submit hands-free.
Yes. Every transcript is saved locally on your PC. Open the History window from the tray to re-copy anything you dictated earlier, marked typed or clipboard. It's local only, with nothing uploaded, and you can clear it whenever you like.
Yes, that's per-app profiles. PipeVoice sees which app is focused and applies that app's settings automatically: the transcription engine, whether the AI cleans up your text, whether it presses Enter for you, and whether the words are typed or sent to your clipboard. Set your terminal to raw text with a hands-free Enter, your chat apps to polished and auto-sent, your editor to no cleanup, then never think about it again. Add a profile from the tray and pick the app from a searchable list.