If you don't feel like downloading a large model, you can also use `yap dictate`. Yap leverages the built-in models exposed though Speech.framework on macOS 26 (Tahoe).
Project repo: https://github.com/finnvoor/yap
Show HN: Ghost Pepper – Local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS
11–20 of 233 posts
Re: Show HN: Ghost Pepper – Local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS
#12Nice one! For Linux folks, I developed https://github.com/goodroot/hyprwhspr . On Linux, there's access to the latest Cohere Transcribe model and it works very, very well. Requires a GPU though. Larger local models generally shouldn't require a subordinate model for clean up. Have you compared WhisperKit to faster-whisper or similar? You might be able to run turbov3 successfully and negate the need for cleanup. Incid…
I've been running whisper large-v3 on an m2 max through a self-hosted endpoint and honestly the accuracy is good enough that i stopped bothering with cleanup models. The bigger annoyance for me was latency on longer chunks, like anything over 30 seconds starts feeling sluggish even with metal acceleration. Haven't tried whisperkit specifically but curious how it handles longer audio compared to the full model.
Re: Show HN: Ghost Pepper – Local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS
#13That’s awesome! Do you know how it compares to Handy? Handy is open source and local only too. It’s been around a while and what I’ve been using. https://github.com/cjpais/handy
I love and have been using handy for a while too, what we need is this for mobile apps I don't think there's any free apps and native dictation is not always fully local and not as good.
Re: Show HN: Ghost Pepper – Local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS
#14That’s awesome! Do you know how it compares to Handy? Handy is open source and local only too. It’s been around a while and what I’ve been using. https://github.com/cjpais/handy
Handy is awesome! I used it for quite a while before Claude Code added voice support. Solid software, very good linux and mac integration. Shoutout to Parakeet models as well, extremely fast and solid models for their relatively modest memory requirements.
Re: Show HN: Ghost Pepper – Local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS
#15Feature request or beg: let me play a speech video and transcribe it for me.
Re: Show HN: Ghost Pepper – Local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS
#16Great job.
How about the supported languages?
System languages gets recognised?
Re: Show HN: Ghost Pepper – Local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS
#17[dead]
Re: Show HN: Ghost Pepper – Local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS
#18Sadly the app doesn't work. There is no popup asking for microphone permission.
EDIT: I see there is an open issue for that on github
Re: Show HN: Ghost Pepper – Local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS
#19I see a lot of whisper stuff out there. Are these the same old OpenAI whispers or have they been updated heavily?
I've been using parakeet v3 which is fantastic (and tiny). Confused why we're still seeing whisper out there, there's been a lot of development.
Re: Show HN: Ghost Pepper – Local hold-to-talk speech-to-text for macOS
#20Feature request or beg: let me play a speech video and transcribe it for me.
I like this idea and it should work -- whatever microphone you have on should be able to hear the speaker. LMK if not (e.g., are you wearing headphones? if so, the mic can't hear the speaker)