Show HN: BetterWispr – Free, open-source dictation for Mac

What’s really shocking is this and many of the competitors are all using OpenAI whisper - which came out in 2022. (Once upon a time, OpenAI really did open research)

It’s surprising in 2026 this is still the default “best” all rounder. Kudos to the early OpenAI team and the open community efforts / improved models since then.

As much as I like seeing this, the space is really crowded, and I think the real value is not in single dictation for input, but in two other things: diarization (essential for call recordings, and a staple in video calling services, but hardly touched for in-room meetings and brainstorming) and the next step, which is cleaning it all up for actually useful notes. Not just the transcript, but better variations on meeting notes that you can customize, link to previous existing information, etc.

I think we're about to see a dictation revolution.

I've been coding with Claude, and I pretty much do it exclusively by voice now, simply because it's so much faster. And I kind of feel like Scotty from Star Trek IV, when he holds up a Mac mouse to try to talk into it.

I've been using VoiceInk [1] which looks like it's basically the same as this, but has been around for longer.

What has really made it work for me is using a Bluetooth media control like [2], where I use Karabiner Elements to remap its play/pause button to the dictation keyboard shortcut. I map rewind to option-backspace to delete the last word, fast-forward to shift-enter to insert a newline, a lower button to enter to submit my prompt, and the volume up/down buttons to scroll up/down. I've also just ordered to Xiaomi Bluetooth remote [3] that includes a microphone itself to see if I can get it to work by speaking directly into it and using it as the microphone -- there are a couple of open source projects to turn it into a Mac microphone directly. Since I'd like to be able to talk more quietly instead of into my Mac.

But what I'm REALLY waiting for is the ability to use one button for dictation, and a second button for issuing commands for a local LLM to interpret. So I hold down the voice button which transcribes "I think we need to catch that" and then the second button and go "change catch to cache, like c-a-c-h-e". Or hold down the second button and go "switch to VS code". I don't want something as finicky as macOS Voice Control, I want a local LLM I can speak naturally to.

I can very much see a future where I spend the majority of my "work" time using a Apple TV-type remote.

[1] https://github.com/Beingpax/VoiceInk

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Satechi-Bluetooth-Multimedia-Remote-C...

[3] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Xiaomi-Bluetooth-Remote-2-Pro-...

This reminds me very much in terms of features as https://github.com/cjpais/Handy https://handy.computer , what's the use case for this over that?

If folks like local-AI dictation, but want it optimized for meetings recordings (like Granola/Otter/Notion) check out Biscotti. Free, local, separates voices, voice identification, AI summaries, etc.

https://github.com/scosman/Biscotti

Seems everyone is cobbling these together. Here's a local-only one from Google: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google-ai-edge-eloquent/id6756...

Been using Handy I am pretty happy but good to see more options, specially OSS.

This came up a month ago - I forked from something now gone - https://github.com/NickJLange/parrot

And if MacOS 26 does it right - all of this is no longer necessary for us to vibe fork/ code on weekends :-)

P.S. Handy looks slick. May be able to ditch mine

This is cool. I also built a dictation app that has advantage of using three state-of-the-art models in parallel. Which increases accuracy and reduces p95 significantly. You can check it out at https://zwhispr.com/

The native / built-in API SpeechAnalyzer (introduced last generation on iOS and MacOS) works quite well.

Are folks finding it lacking / needing alternatives?

This is awesome. I really want to get something like this integrated directly into my agent IDE (https://getness.dev).

The main thing I need is some way of auto-sending a "end of message" button (like a newline would do) at the end of the message so that it auto-sends the chat.

Not sure the exact right way to implement that, but it seems like something that could be general purpose. Maybe a setting per-active app?

How are you handling local transcription? We opted for an offline-first for FetchMark archiver for same privacy reason and it doubled our retention.

Congrats on shipping!

I expected dictation to be much more useful on the computer, but since I can type decently fast I find myself using it far less than I expected.

I'm a bit confused, isn't "Wispr" a trademarked term? Why would you pick a name that could easily be shut down?

This is pretty neat, I built something similar a couple months ago. I'd say try to support Windows or Linux next.

I've been trying to figure out how to code and build while on the bike /treadmill at the gym.

Want a remote terminal into my Mac that I can voice control.

How does it compare to handy ?

To be honest, I used Wspr so much I only recently started realizing just HOW bad it gets trying to 'improve' your diction, especially coding. I have seen totally opperate directives. I had no idea it was potentially occuring, but it gets past a point where it is WAY to confident in guessing what you meant, sometimes to the extent of changing DON'T to DO, for example.

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