Free Dictation Software for Every App You Use
Press a hotkey, speak, and clean, punctuated text appears anywhere — email, docs, Slack, your editor or an AI chat. Run it privately on your device, or switch on OpenWhispr Cloud for top accuracy on any machine. Either way, your audio is never stored.
Free to start on macOS, Windows & Linux · No card, no account
Type a message…
Press your hotkey and speak…
Dictate into every app you already use
Why people switch
Most dictation software makes you trade something away.
Speed for privacy, privacy for accuracy, or your whole workflow for one company’s cloud. OpenWhispr is built so you don’t have to choose.
Your ideas outrun your fingers.
You speak several times faster than you type. OpenWhispr turns speech into clean text at the speed you think, so email, prompts and drafts stop getting squeezed through a keyboard.
You can’t see what most voice tools do with your voice.
Most dictation software is closed and cloud-only. OpenWhispr is open source, and whether you run it locally or on OpenWhispr Cloud, your audio is transcribed and never stored, sold, or used for training — verifiable in the code.
Your setup shouldn’t be locked to one app or OS.
Closed tools trap your workflow in their cloud and their platform. OpenWhispr runs on Mac, Windows and Linux, works in every app, and lets you bring your own AI keys — your workflow stays yours.
Built-in dictation isn’t enough.
Apple Dictation and Windows Speech are inaccurate, online-dependent and locked to one OS. OpenWhispr runs Whisper-class voice recognition on all three platforms, with a custom dictionary for your names and jargon.
What you get
One hotkey between your voice and every app.
Dictation software that works wherever your cursor is — dictate emails, prompt AI, and capture ideas with no destination app to copy and paste from.
Dictate into any app
Press the hotkey, speak, release. Punctuated text appears wherever your cursor is — email, docs, Slack, your code editor. Nothing to copy and paste.
Talk to AI instead of typing at it
Speak long, context-rich prompts into ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor. Dictation is the fastest way to give AI the detail it needs for a better answer.
Accurate in your words
Teach OpenWhispr your names, jargon and acronyms with a custom dictionary, then pick the engine that fits — run locally, or switch on OpenWhispr Cloud for top accuracy on any machine.
Dictate in
100+
languages, with translation built in
Recordings stored
0
local audio never leaves your device; cloud audio is transcribed, then discarded
Setup takes
5 min
from download to your first dictated sentence
How it works
Talk to your computer in three steps.
No cloud account, no signup. Just software on your machine, running in about five minutes.
Download for free.
Mac, Windows or Linux. Pick a local model, or use OpenWhispr Cloud — no account, no card.
Set your hotkey.
One shortcut — hold-to-record or push-to-toggle — working system-wide across every app.
Press. Speak. Done.
Clean, punctuated text lands wherever your cursor is, in 100+ languages.
No convincing needed
10 reasons people make OpenWhispr their dictation software
Switching is a trust decision. Every claim here is verifiable in the open-source repo.
Works in every app
A system-wide hotkey. If you can place a cursor there, you can dictate there.
Private by design, and auditable
Open source with zero data retention — local audio stays on your device, and cloud audio is transcribed then discarded.
Local or cloud — your call
Run on-device for full privacy, or switch on OpenWhispr Cloud for top accuracy and speed on any machine.
Whisper-class and Parakeet accuracy
The leading open speech-to-text models, plus a cloud option that keeps up on modest hardware.
A custom dictionary for your words
Teach it names, jargon and acronyms so your transcripts come out right the first time.
100+ languages plus translation
Speak one language, output another — set a language or auto-detect on the fly.
Bring your own AI keys
Use your own OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini or Groq keys for unlimited cloud transcription, no markup.
Clean up as you speak
A built-in AI writing assistant reformats and polishes raw dictation — locally or in the cloud.
Mac, Windows & Linux
One of the only dictation apps that runs natively on all three, with the same features everywhere.
Easier on your hands
If typing is slow, tiring or painful — RSI, fatigue, long days — your voice does the work instead.
Before you download
Common questions about OpenWhispr dictation software
What users say
People who stopped typing.
My favorite thing on @producthunt today is OpenWhispr. I love @aquavoice_ but really need a local model for when I'm traveling or don't have WiFi. This perfectly solves it. UI and Performance are great.
Reading is faster than listening, and speaking is faster than writing. Makes me think the highest throughput person-to-AI mode will be voice to text and reading / evaluating outputs. I'm trying this with OpenWhispr for voice to text.
I think it's changed the game when you can talk to it and then it can talk back. I'm using OpenWhispr (found on GitHub) with OpenAI Whisper Turbo and it works seamlessly.
Started using OpenWhispr with my local models & hardware, I have to say this is better than typing.
Pricing
Start free. Upgrade for cloud speed and more.
Unlimited local dictation is free forever. Pro and Business add unlimited OpenWhispr Cloud, meeting hours, mobile, and team features.
FreeFor everyone
- OpenWhispr Cloud
- 2,000 words/week transcription
- 5 hours of meeting recordings/month
- Always free
- Unlimited local AI models
- Unlimited cloud transcription with your own API keys
- 100+ languages supported
- Custom dictionary
- Zero data retention
- Community support
ProFor individuals and teams
$80/user billed annually
All Free features +
- Unlimited cloud transcription
- 20 hours of meeting recordings/month
- Sync across devices
- Personal API access
- MCP integration in all your apps
- Mobile app (iOS Coming Soon)
- Email support
BusinessFor individuals and teams
$200/user billed annually
All Pro features +
- Unlimited meeting recordings
- Speaker labels
- Agent mode
- Chat over your data
- Priority support
EnterpriseFor advanced security & support
All Business features +
- Team features & admin
- SSO, SAML & SCIM
- Audit logs & retention controls
- Dedicated support
Built in the open
Your voice, handled the way you would handle it.
OpenWhispr started with a simple objection: most dictation software listens to everything you say from behind closed source. So we built ours in the open — every release and every line of code is on GitHub, where 3,100+ engineers have starred, forked and audited the project. Local or cloud, we never store, sell, or train on your data, and you can prove it by reading the code.
Your next sentence doesn’t need a keyboard.
Download OpenWhispr and dictate into any app on your computer — in 100+ languages, private by design, five minutes from now.
Free to start on Mac, Windows & Linux · No card, no account