Show HN: EnviousWispr, an open-source Wispr Flow alternative for macOS EnviousWispr, a free open-source AI dictation app for macOS, launches as a privacy-focused alternative to cloud-based services. The app runs entirely on-device using Apple Silicon, offering sub-second transcription with optional AI polish, and requires no account or subscription. Talk naturally. Paste perfectly. Free, on-device AI dictation and speech-to-text for macOS. Powered by Apple Silicon. No cloud, no account, your voice never leaves your Mac. ew-demo-tmp.mp4 EnviousWispr is a free AI dictation app for macOS that runs entirely on-device. It uses Whisper and Parakeet speech-to-text models on Apple Silicon to transcribe your voice locally, polishes the output with an optional LLM, and pastes clean text into whatever app you're working in. Transcription is sub-second; with optional AI polish, the full hotkey-to-paste flow typically lands in around a second and a half. No cloud. No account required. No subscription. No audio ever leaves your Mac. Works fully offline. It is open source under the GPLv3, actively maintained, and built to be a tool you can rely on every day. | EnviousWispr | Cloud dictation services | | |---|---|---| Privacy | 100% on-device transcription | Audio uploaded to servers | Speed | Sub-second transcription, paste-on-stop | Network round-trip latency | Models | Parakeet v3 NVIDIA NeMo + WhisperKit OpenAI Whisper | Single vendor model | Polish | Optional. Fully on-device EG-1, Apple Intelligence, Ollama or bring-your-own-key cloud GPT, Gemini | Cloud polish, included in subscription | Cost | Free. No account, no subscription | Monthly subscription | Works offline | Yes, fully functional without internet | No | php Press hotkey -- Record -- Transcribe -- Polish optional -- Paste ~0ms live ~400-800ms ~200-500ms instant Press your hotkey from any app. Push-to-talk, toggle, or hands-free double-press to lock for long-form , your choice. Speak naturally. Silero VAD detects when you stop talking and ends recording automatically. On-device transcription. Choose Parakeet v3 fastest, 25 European languages or WhisperKit 99 languages, with automatic language detection . AI polish optional . Clean up grammar, punctuation, and formatting. Runs fully on-device with EG-1 our own custom model , Apple Intelligence macOS 26+ , or Ollama, or in the cloud via OpenAI or Gemini with your own API key. Text lands in your clipboard and optionally auto-pastes into the active app. See the full interactive pipeline demo at enviouswispr.com/how-it-works Dictation is only useful if you can trust it mid-sentence, every time. EnviousWispr keeps the critical path record, transcribe, paste deliberately separate from every optional enhancement, so a hiccup in a "nice to have" can never swallow your words. When an optional step cannot run, you simply get your raw transcribed text instead of an error. | What we hardened | What it means for you | |---|---| Delivery survives non-critical failures | If saving to your history cannot complete full disk, permissions , your dictation is still pasted. The save is best-effort and never blocks delivery. | Paste that actually lands | A multi-step delivery path tries the fastest reliable method first and falls back automatically, so text lands even in apps that resist the usual paste Word, Excel, Pages, Numbers, and more . | Onboarding that won't leave you half-set-up | Setup won't let you start until Accessibility is granted, and it re-checks if you later revoke permission. | Clear answers when AI polish has a problem | If a cloud or local model fails OpenAI, Gemini, Ollama , you get a specific, plain-language message, and your raw text still arrives. | Deterministic cleanup before AI | For English, numbers, dates, and money are formatted by a fixed, predictable step, even when AI polish is off or unavailable. | Fast recovery after idle | After the app sits idle, it re-wakes in a fraction of a second so your next press, and its first word, are not lost. | Privacy-safe diagnostics | Crash reports carry counts and context, never your transcript or audio, and are redacted before they are sent. | Hardened releases | Every build is signed, notarized, and Gatekeeper-checked before it ships. | | Model | Best for | Languages | Disk space | Runs on | |---|---|---|---|---| Parakeet TDT v3 | Fastest dictation default | 25 European languages | ~460 MB | Apple Neural Engine | WhisperKit Whisper Large v3 Turbo | Broadest language coverage and automatic language detection | 99 languages | ~1.6 GB | Apple GPU | Both models run entirely on-device on Apple Silicon using CoreML. Parakeet runs on the Apple Neural Engine, which is what makes the default engine near-instant; WhisperKit runs on the GPU for broad-language accuracy. First launch downloads and compiles the model; subsequent launches are instant. Transcription gets your words down. AI polish cleans them up: it drops filler, fixes grammar and punctuation, and structures rambling speech into readable text. This step is optional, and by default it never leaves your Mac. | Polish engine | What it is | Runs on | Extra download | |---|---|---|---| EG-1 recommended | Our own model, custom fine-tuned for dictation cleanup | On-device, macOS 14+ | ~2.9 GB optional | Apple Intelligence | Apple's on-device model, no extra download | On-device, macOS 26+ | none | Ollama | Bring your own local model 3B or larger recommended | On-device | varies | OpenAI / Gemini | Bring-your-own-key cloud polish, text only | Cloud your key | none | EG-1 is our own AI model, fine-tuned specifically for dictation cleanup and optimized for Apple Silicon. It runs entirely on your Mac with no internet required, and it closes the gaps a general on-device model leaves: reliably turning a spoken list into a real list, splitting a wall of speech into clean paragraphs, and keeping only the corrected version when you fix yourself mid-sentence. Because it is our own model rather than Apple's, it works across the full supported range macOS 14 and later , not just macOS 26. EG-1 is distributed under its own model license, not the GPLv3 that covers the app code see License license . On our own benchmark of 1,890 real dictation-cleanup cases, EG-1 passed 93.7%, ahead of both GPT-5.4-mini 83.8% and Gemini 3.5 Flash 92.6% on the same cases with the same judge. This is our own benchmark, not an independent review. The eval harness and the exact prompts are public in scripts/eval/ /saurabhav88/EnviousWispr/blob/main/scripts/eval so you can inspect or rerun them; the test cases are personal dictations and stay private. - 🎙️ Dual ASR engines with Parakeet v3 https://github.com/FluidInference/FluidAudio NVIDIA NeMo and WhisperKit https://github.com/argmaxinc/argmax-oss-swift OpenAI Whisper - ✨ AI polish that respects your words : strips filler words and false starts, fixes grammar and punctuation, formats numbers, dates, and URLs, and honors your custom vocabulary, all in your spoken language never translated or rewritten - 🔒 Polish that can stay private : run it fully on-device with EG-1 our own custom model , Apple Intelligence macOS 26+ , or Ollama, or in the cloud via OpenAI GPT / Google Gemini with your own API key - 🌍 Multilingual with automatic language detection : speak in any supported language and EnviousWispr detects it, then offers to lock it in for faster, more accurate transcription - 😀 Speak an emoji : say the emoji's name followed by "emoji" like "thumbs up emoji" and the glyph drops right in - ✋ Voice Activity Detection via Silero VAD that stops recording automatically when you stop talking - 📚 Custom vocabulary and vocabulary packs for names, brands, and technical terms the ASR might miss, plus one-tap import of names from your Contacts which never leave your Mac - ⌨️ Global hotkey with push-to-talk, toggle, and hands-free modes double-press to lock for long-form dictation - 📋 Auto-paste directly into the active app, or just copy to clipboard - 🕘 Transcript history for browsing, searching, and reviewing past dictations - 🧭 Menu bar native with minimal footprint - 🔄 Auto-updates via Sparkle EnviousWispr ships often. A few of the user-facing improvements from recent releases: Pasting lands in more apps. Text now reliably reaches apps that previously said "Copied" but never pasted Word, Excel, Pages, Numbers, OneNote, and others . v2.1.4 Vocabulary packs and Contacts import. Turn on a pack for brands and jargon, or import the names of people you know in one tap, so hard-to-spell names come out right. Your contacts never leave your Mac. v2.1.3 No swallowed first word after a break. After idling, the engine re-wakes in a fraction of a second and captures your words, including the very first one. v2.1.2 and v2.1.3 Soft and distant speech captured. Quiet, whispered, or far-from-the-mic speech is now transcribed instead of dropped. v2.1.2 Automatic update checks. The app looks for new versions on its own, with a clear "Check for Updates" control in Settings. v2.1.2 Clearer AI polish errors. Cloud and local polish failures OpenAI, Gemini, Ollama now show a specific, actionable message, and your raw text still arrives. See the full release history https://github.com/saurabhav88/EnviousWispr/releases for every version. Install with Homebrew https://brew.sh : brew install --cask saurabhav88/tap/enviouswispr Or download manually: - Download EnviousWispr.dmg https://enviouswispr.com/download?source=github readme&utm source=github&utm medium=referral&utm campaign=enviouswispr-evergreen-readme from the latest release - Drag to Applications, launch - Grant Microphone , Accessibility , and on first paste fallback Automation permissions when prompted - Set your preferred hotkey in Settings Shortcuts - Start talking Optional: Turn on AI polish in Settings AI Polish. Keep it fully on-device with Apple Intelligence macOS 26+ or Ollama, or add an OpenAI or Gemini API key. - macOS 14 Sonoma or later - Apple Silicon M1 or newer Core dictation works across the full supported range. The built-in Apple Intelligence polish option requires macOS 26 or later; on earlier versions dictation works normally and you can use Ollama or a cloud key for polish instead. git clone https://github.com/saurabhav88/EnviousWispr.git cd EnviousWispr swift build compiles the Swift packages dependencies resolve via SPM The runnable .app is assembled by the Xcode build engine via Tuist, not by swift build . Use ./scripts/build-dev-app.sh for a local dev build, or the release path below. First build takes several minutes as ML models compile. For a distributable .app bundle and DMG: ./scripts/build-release-dmg.sh