Open Wispr

Open Wispr is a free, open source voice dictation tool for people who want to speak into Mac apps without sending recordings to a cloud service. It inserts transcribed speech at your cursor, so you can dictate email, notes, terminal input or coding prompts in the app you're already using. It doesn't require an account.

Transcription runs locally through whisper.cpp with Metal acceleration on Apple Silicon. It works offline after the model download, and neither audio nor text goes to a cloud service for processing. The tool requires an M1 or later Mac running macOS 13 or later; Intel Macs aren't supported.

You can hold a chosen hotkey while speaking or use a toggle to start and stop recording. Whisper adds punctuation automatically, with spoken punctuation available if you prefer to dictate it yourself. English-only and multilingual models let you choose between speed, accuracy and memory use, including base.en, large-v3-turbo and large-v3. Quantized models reduce disk and RAM needs.

Open Wispr stays in the menu bar as a background service. Its focus is speech-to-text rather than AI rewriting or an assistant that edits what you say. It works across editors, browsers, Slack and other apps without plugins, and you can copy the last dictation from the menu bar if it lands in the wrong place.

The MIT license allows you to inspect and modify the code. By default, the tool deletes temporary audio after transcription. You can also retain recordings locally and transcribe them again from the menu bar.