Utter uses your OpenAI key (~$1/month). https://utter.to/. Has an iPhone app.
Show HN: Free alternative to Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and Monologue
51–60 of 139 posts
Re: Show HN: Free alternative to Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and Monologue
#52i've used macwhisper (paid), superwhisper (paid), and handy (free) but now prefer hex (free):
https://github.com/kitlangton/Hex
for me it strikes the balance of good, fast, and cheap for everyday transcription. macwhisper is overkill, superwhisper too clever, and handy too buggy. hex fits just right for me (so far)
Re: Show HN: Free alternative to Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and Monologue
#53Saved you a click: Mac only and actually Grok; local inference too slow.
Won't be free when xAI starts charging.
Re: Show HN: Free alternative to Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and Monologue
#54Do any of these works as an iOS keyboard to replace the awful voice transcription Apple is currently shipping?
utter (utter.to) does.
Re: Show HN: Free alternative to Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and Monologue
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just learned about Handy in this thread and it looks great! I think the biggest difference between FreeFlow and Handy is that FreeFlow implements what Monologue calls "deep context", where it post-processes the raw transcription with context from your currently open window. This fixes misspelled names if you're replying to an email / makes sure technical terms are spelled right / etc. The original hope for FreeFlow…
Could you go into a little more detail about the deep context - what does it grab, and which model is used to process it? Are you also using a groq model for the transcription?
It takes a screenshot of the current window and sends it to Llama in Groq asking it to describe what you’re doing and pull out any key info like names with spelling.
You can go to Settings > Run Logs in FreeFlow to see the full pipeline ran on each request with the exact prompt and LLM response to see exactly what is sent / returned.
Re: Show HN: Free alternative to Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and Monologue
#56Why do people find the need to market as "free alternative to xyz" when its a basic utility? I take it as an instant signal that the dev is a copycat and mostly interested in getting stars and eyeballs rather than making a genuinely useful high quality product.
Just use handy: https://github.com/cjpais/Handy
Re: Show HN: Free alternative to Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and Monologue
#57Why do people find the need to market as "free alternative to xyz" when its a basic utility? I take it as an instant signal that the dev is a copycat and mostly interested in getting stars and eyeballs rather than making a genuinely useful high quality product. Just use handy: https://github.com/cjpais/Handy
Really good to know Handy exists; it's the first I'm hearing about it. I use a speech-to-text app that I built for myself, and I know at least one co-worker pays $10 a month for (I think) Wispr. I think it's possible there was no intention to market, and the creator simply didn't know about Handy, just like me.
Re: Show HN: Free alternative to Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and Monologue
#58Was searching for this this morning and settled on https://handy.computer/
Big fan of handy and it’s cross platform as well. Parakeet V3 gives the best experience with very fast and accurate-enough transcriptions when talking to AIs that can read between the lines. It does have stuttering issues though. My primary use of these is when talking to coding agents.
But a few weeks ago someone on HN pointed me to Hex, which also supports Parakeet-V3 , and incredibly enough, is even faster than Handy because it’s a native MacOS-only app that leverages CoreML/Neural Engine for extremely quick transcriptions. Long ramblings transcribed in under a second!
It’s now my favorite fully local STT for MacOS:
Re: Show HN: Free alternative to Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and Monologue
#59Re: Show HN: Free alternative to Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and Monologue
#60For those using something like this daily, what key combinations do you use to record and cancel. I’m using my capslock right now but was curious about others
Great question. I'd love to know if anyone has had any success with handheld buttons/bluetooth remotes or similar, too.