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This tutorial introduces Handy, which the presenter describes as a free, open source dictation app for Mac, Windows and Linux. The demonstration uses the Windows 64-bit version. According to the presenter, Handy transcribes speech offline on the user's machine without sending recordings to a server or requiring Windows online speech recognition.
The setup covers downloadable speech models, with ratings for accuracy, speed and download size. The presenter uses an English-only model of about 700 MB at the time of recording. Other available models support other languages. Settings include microphone selection, a configurable transcription shortcut and push-to-talk behavior.
In the Notepad demonstration, holding Control and the Windows key records speech, and releasing them pastes the transcription. The history tab provides a way to copy text if automatic pasting fails and access saved WAV recordings. A mistaken transcription of "testing" as "tasting" leads into the custom words dictionary.
The presenter also explains a limitation in his coding assistant workflow: Handy does not paste directly into his Claude Code terminal during the demonstration. He dictates into Notepad and copies the text across. He compares this workaround with built-in dictation options and reports microphone and recognition problems in his earlier use of Claude Code.
