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Show HN: Ghost Pepper – Local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS (github.com)

467 points by MattHart88 ↗ HN
I built this because I wanted to see how far I could get with a voice-to-text app that used 100% local models so no data left my computer. I've been using a ton for coding and emails. Experimenting with using it as a voice interface for my other agents too. 100% open-source MIT license, would love feedback, PRs, and ideas on where to take it.

86 comments

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charlietran
Thank you for sharing, I appreciate the emphasis on local speed and privacy. As a current user of Hex (https://github.com/kitlangton/Hex), which has similar goals, what are your thoughts on how they compare?
ipsum2
Parakeet is significantly more accurate and faster than Whisper if it supports your language.
goodroot
Nice one! For Linux folks, I developed https://github.com/goodroot/hyprwhspr.

On Linux, there's access to the latest Cohere Transcribe model and it works very, very well. Requires a GPU though. Larger local models generally shouldn't require a subordinate model for clean up.

Have you compared WhisperKit to faster-whisper or similar? You might be able to run turbov3 successfully and negate the need for cleanup.

Incidentally, waiting for Apple to blow this all up with native STT any day now. :)

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mathis
If you don't feel like downloading a large model, you can also use `yap dictate`. Yap leverages the built-in models exposed though Speech.framework on macOS 26 (Tahoe).

Project repo: https://github.com/finnvoor/yap

hyperhello
Feature request or beg: let me play a speech video and transcribe it for me.
aristech
Great job. How about the supported languages? System languages gets recognised?
guzik
Sadly the app doesn't work. There is no popup asking for microphone permission.

EDIT: I see there is an open issue for that on github

parhamn
I see a lot of whisper stuff out there. Are these the same old OpenAI whispers or have they been updated heavily?

I've been using parakeet v3 which is fantastic (and tiny). Confused why we're still seeing whisper out there, there's been a lot of development.

71bw
I'm also wondering whether or not it would be beneficiary for my workload to switch over to Parakeet. Problem is, I'm using a lot of lingo - and in Polish, as well! - so it's not exactly the best case and whisper (v3), so far, works.
gegtik
how does this compare to macos built in siri TTS, in quality and in privacy?
Supercompressor
I've been looking for the opposite - wanting to dump text and it be read to me, coherently. Anyone have good recommendations?
ericmcer
I see quite a few of these, the killer feature to me will be one that fine tunes the model based on your own voice.

E.G. if your name is `Donold` (pronounced like Donald) there is not a transcription model in existence that will transcribe your name correctly. That means forget inputting your name or email ever, it will never output it correctly.

Combine that with any subtleties of speech you have, or industry jargon you frequently use and you will have a much more useful tool.

We have a ton of options for "predict the most common word that matches this audio data" but I haven't found any "predict MY most common word" setups.

__mharrison__
Cool, I've been doing a lot of "coding" (and other typing tasks) recently by tapping a button on my Stream Deck. It starts recording me until I tap it again. At which point, it transcribes the recording and plops it into the paste buffer.

The button next to it pastes when I press it. If I press it again, it hits the enter command.

You can get a lot done with two buttons.

coldfoundry
This is exactly what I am building right now, Stream Deck with two buttons too (push to talk and enter)! It's a sweet little pet project, and has been a blast to build so far. Excited to finally add it to my workflow once its working well.
purplehat_
Hi Matt, there's lots of speech-to-text programs out there with varying levels of quality. 100% local is admirable but it's always a tradeoff and users have to decide for themselves what's worth it.

Would you consider making available a video showing someone using the app?

douglaswlance
does it input the text as soon as it hears it? or does it wait until the end?
romeroej
always mac. when windows? why can you just make things multios
primaprashant
Speech-to-text has become integral part of my dev flow especially for dictating detailed prompts to LLMs and coding agents.

I have collected the best open-source voice typing tools categorized by platform in this awesome-style GitHub repo. Hope you all find this useful!

https://github.com/primaprashant/awesome-voice-typing

ArlenBales
Can you explain how exactly dictation is used for development? I type about 120 WPM so typing is always going to be way faster for me than talking. Aside for accessibility, is dictation development for slower typers or is it more so you can relax on a couch while vibe coding? If this comes off as condescension it's not intended, I am genuinely out of the loop here.
rcarmo
Not sure why I should use this instead of the baked-in OS dictation features (which I use almost daily--just double-tap the world key, and you're there). What's the advantage?
rane
- Way more accurate, especially with technical jargon. Try saying JSON as part of a sentence to macOS dictation and see what comes out.

- macOS dictation mutes other sounds while it's running. This is a deal-breaker for me.

atlgator
This thread is a support group for people who have each independently built the same macOS speech-to-text app.
jannniii
github.com/randomm/kuiskaus
perelin
I recently attended a agentic SWE workshop and the starter project was this, whispr style, local voice dictation app. Took everybody around 30mins. tbh: i was kinda impressed.
nidnogg
NGL had me chuckling a bit there when I remembered I had one of these to code on my backlog
tito
This is great. I'm typing this message now using Ghost Pepper. What benefits have you seen from the OCR screen sharing step?
dakila5
MacWhisper is also a good one
arkensaw
This is great, and I'm not knocking it, but every time I see these apps it reminds me of my phone.

My 2021 Google Pixel 6, when offline, can transcribe speech to text, and also corrects things contextually. it can make a mistake, and as I continue to speak, it will go back and correct something earlier in the sentence. What tech does Google have shoved in there that predates Whisper and Qwen by five years? And why do we now need a 1Gb of transformers to do it on a more powerful platform?

artdigital
macOS and iOS can do that to with the baked in dictation. Globe key + D on Mac
vharish
IMO.. one of the best. It was surprisingly good. Yet they can't even replicate in on their own systems
pushedx
It's the same model used for the WebSpeech API, which can operate entirely offline.

Google mostly funded the training of this model around 10 years ago, and it's quite good.

There are many websites that are simple frontends for this model which is built into Webkit and Blink based browsers. However to my knowledge the model is a blob packed into the apps which is not open source, hence the no Firefox support.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Speech_...

https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/demos/speech.html

arkensaw
fun fact: voice typing also worked excellently on Windows Phone, although only in the SMS app