Handy
Hold a shortcut, speak, release — Whisper runs on your own machine and the text lands in the focused field.
What it does
Handy is dictation with nothing around it. A configurable shortcut records — held, or tapped to toggle — silence is trimmed with Silero voice activity detection, and the audio is transcribed locally before being pasted wherever the cursor is. No account, no cloud leg, no subscription.
Models are a choice rather than a fixed cost: Whisper Small through Large, GPU-accelerated when the hardware allows, or Parakeet V3, which is CPU-friendly and detects the language itself. The larger Whisper builds are better on technical vocabulary; the smaller ones are faster to load and quicker to return.
It is the open-source answer to Wispr Flow, and the comparison next door is FluidVoice, which adds a local language model to clean up filler words, and VoiceBox. All three transcribe on device; Handy is the one with no paid tier at all, and the one that also runs on Windows and Linux.
Notes
- Needs Microphone and Accessibility permissions — the second is what allows inserting text into another application.
- The Homebrew cask is not maintained by the project. It installs the same release as the site.
Alternative to
| Alternative | Type | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Wispr Flow | Freemium | The best-known commercial dictation app; cloud transcription |
| Superwhisper | Freemium | Whisper-based, with local and cloud modes |
| VoiceInk | Open source | Local |
| MacWhisper | Freemium | Strong on transcribing files, less on live dictation |
| macOS Dictation | Built in | Weaker on technical vocabulary and punctuation |
Install
brew install --cask handy