This looks great! What’s missing for me to switch from something like Wispr Flow is the ability to provide a dictionary for commonly mistaken words (name of your company, people, code libraries).
Creator of OpenWhispr here! Honoured to be compared to Handy!
I built OW because I was tired of paying for WisprFlow. I'd say it is more flexible by design: Whisper.cpp (CPU + GPU) for super fast local transcription, Parakeet in progress, local or cloud LLMs for cleanup (Qwen, Mistral, Gemini, Anthropic, OpenAI, Groq etc.), and bring-your-own API keys!
I just set this up today. I had Whispering app set up on my Windows computer, but it really wasn't working well on my Ubuntu computer that I just set up. I found Handy randomly. It was the last app I needed to go Linux full-time. Thank you!
On a M4 Macbook Air, there was enough lag to make it unusable for me. I hit the shortcut and start speaking but there was always a 1-2sec delay before it would actually start transcribing even if the icon was displayed.
I have dystonia which often stiffens my arms in a way that makes it impossible for me to type on a keyboard. TTS apps like SuperWhisper have proven to be very helpful for me in such situations. I am hoping to get a similar experience out of "Handy" (very apt maming from my perspective).
I do, however, wonder if there is a way all these TTS tools can get to the next level. The generated text should not be just a verbatim copy of what I just said, but depending on the context, it should elaborate. For example, if my cursor is actively inside an editor/IDE with some code, my coding-related verbal prompts should actually generate the right/desired code in that IDE.
Perhaps this is a bit of combining TTS with computer-use.
I made something called `ultraplan`. It's is a CLI tool that records multi-modal context (audio transcription via local Whisper, screenshots, clipboard content, etc.) into a timeline that AI agents like Claude Code can consume.
I have a claude skill `/record` that runs the CLI which starts a new recording. I debug, research, etc., then say "finito" (or choose your own stopword). It outputs a markdown file with your transcribed speech interleaved with screenshots and text that you copied. You can say other keywords like "marco" and it will take a screenshot hands-free.
When the session ends, claude reads the timeline (e.g. looks at screenshots) and gets to work.
I can clean it up and push to github if anyone would get use out of it.
Does anyone have a similar mobile application that works locally and is not too expensive? Mostly looking to transcribe voice messages sent over Signal which does not offer this OOTB
Love it. I had been searching for STT app for weeks. Every single app was either paid as a one off or had a monthly subscription. It felt a bit ridiculous having to pay when it’s all powered by such small models on the back end. So I decided to build my own. But then I found “Handy” and it’s been a really amazing partner for me. Super fast, super simple, doesn’t get in my way and it’s constantly updated. I just love it. Thanks a lot for making it! Thanks a lot
P.S. The post processing that you are talking about, wouldn’t it be awesome.
It’s incredibly fast on my MacBook m1 air and more accurate that the native speech to text.
The ui is well thought out, just the right amount of setting for my usage.
Incredible !
Btw, do you know what « discharging the model » does ? It’s set to never by default, tried to check if it has an impact on ram or cpu but it doesn’t seem to do anything.
As a Mac user, am I missing something? macOS has Dictation built-in, when you short press F5 it should start transcribing your spoken words into text in real time. It even does non-English languages.
Besides being trash as others said, there’s a trade off with real time transcription word by word - there’s no opportunity for an AI to holistically correct/clean up the transcription
Nice. I spent most of Christmas vibe coding with Google Antigravity with one hand while holding a sleeping baby in the other. MacOS built in dictation is OK, but struggles with technical language.
I’ve tried several, including this one, and I’ve settled on VoiceInk (local, one-time payment), and with Parakeet V3 it’s stunningly fast (near-instant) and accurate enough to talk to LLMs/code-agents, in the sense that the slight drop in accuracy relative to Whisper Turbo3 is immaterial since they can “read between the lines” anyway.
My regular cycle is to talk informally to the CLI agent and ask it to “say back to me what you understood”, and it almost always produces a nice clean and clear version. This simultaneously works as confirmation of its understanding and also as a sort of spec which likely helps keep the agent on track.
UPDATE - just tried handy with Parakeet v3, and it works really well too, so I'll use this instead of VoiceInk for a few days. I just also discovered that turning on the "debug" UI with Cmd-shift-D shows additional options like post processing and appending trailing space.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 74.7 ms ] threadHandy first release was June 2025, OpenWhispr a month later. Handy has ~11k GitHub stars, OpenWhispr has ~730.
I built OW because I was tired of paying for WisprFlow. I'd say it is more flexible by design: Whisper.cpp (CPU + GPU) for super fast local transcription, Parakeet in progress, local or cloud LLMs for cleanup (Qwen, Mistral, Gemini, Anthropic, OpenAI, Groq etc.), and bring-your-own API keys!
Handy is more streamlined for sure!
Would love any feedback :)
How have your computing habits changed as a result of having this? When do you typically use this instead of typing on the keyboard?
I do, however, wonder if there is a way all these TTS tools can get to the next level. The generated text should not be just a verbatim copy of what I just said, but depending on the context, it should elaborate. For example, if my cursor is actively inside an editor/IDE with some code, my coding-related verbal prompts should actually generate the right/desired code in that IDE.
Perhaps this is a bit of combining TTS with computer-use.
I have a claude skill `/record` that runs the CLI which starts a new recording. I debug, research, etc., then say "finito" (or choose your own stopword). It outputs a markdown file with your transcribed speech interleaved with screenshots and text that you copied. You can say other keywords like "marco" and it will take a screenshot hands-free.
When the session ends, claude reads the timeline (e.g. looks at screenshots) and gets to work.
I can clean it up and push to github if anyone would get use out of it.
They also have a voice input only version if you still would like to keep your typing keyboard: https://voiceinput.futo.org/
P.S. The post processing that you are talking about, wouldn’t it be awesome.
The ui is well thought out, just the right amount of setting for my usage.
Incredible !
Btw, do you know what « discharging the model » does ? It’s set to never by default, tried to check if it has an impact on ram or cpu but it doesn’t seem to do anything.
My regular cycle is to talk informally to the CLI agent and ask it to “say back to me what you understood”, and it almost always produces a nice clean and clear version. This simultaneously works as confirmation of its understanding and also as a sort of spec which likely helps keep the agent on track.
UPDATE - just tried handy with Parakeet v3, and it works really well too, so I'll use this instead of VoiceInk for a few days. I just also discovered that turning on the "debug" UI with Cmd-shift-D shows additional options like post processing and appending trailing space.