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Handy – Free open source speech-to-text app

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Re: Handy – Free open source speech-to-text app

#111

Post by Esus-ai »

bogtap82 wrote: post #40
bn-usd-mistake wrote: post #39

Does anyone have a similar mobile application that works locally and is not too expensive? Mostly looking to transcribe voice messages sent over Signal which does not offer this OOTB

There is one single app I've been able to find that offers Parakeet-v3 for free locally and it's called Spokenly. They have paid cloud models available as well, but the local Parakeet-v3 implementation is totally free and is the best STT has to offer these days regardless. Super fast and accurate. I consider single-user STT basically a solved problem at this point.

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Re: Handy – Free open source speech-to-text app

#112

Post by jborichevskiy »

mrroryflint wrote: post #74
jborichevskiy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious if you were using AirPods or other Bluetooth headphones for this? If so, there should be "keep microphone on" or similar setting in the config that may help with this, alternatively, I set my microphone to my MacBook mic so that my headphones aren't involved at all and there is much less latency on activation

Airpods Max (is that the name?) - the big ones.

Makes sense. If you enable the Debug menu (Shift+CMD+D), there is an option for "Always-On Microphone". Might be worth a try to remove that latency.

Re: Handy – Free open source speech-to-text app

#114

Post by swah »

thethimble wrote: post #90
d4rkp4ttern wrote: post #63

I’ve tried several, including this one, and I’ve settled on VoiceInk (local, one-time payment), and with Parakeet V3 it’s stunningly fast (near-instant) and accurate enough to talk to LLMs/code-agents, in the sense that the slight drop in accuracy relative to Whisper Turbo3 is immaterial since they can “read between the lines” anyway. My regular cycle is to talk informally to the CLI agent and ask it to “say back to…

I wish one of these models was fine tuned for programming. I want to be able to say things like "cd ~/projects" or "git push --force".

Or just enjoy your last days of cd'ing, this shall pass soon!

Re: Handy – Free open source speech-to-text app

#115

Post by mrroryflint »

sipjca wrote: post #100
mrroryflint wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airpods Max (is that the name?) - the big ones.

Yeah like the other commenters mentioned, using Bluetooth devices does not work super well at the moment. Hopefully I’ll have a fix at some point. There’s just some time over bluetooth to negotiate the connection and everything, and the app doesn’t do a good job showing this at all right now On a Mac I definitely recommend using the internal mic even if wearing airpods

Thank you!

Re: Handy – Free open source speech-to-text app

#116

Post by gabrielste1n »

PhilippGille wrote: post #17

Has anyone compared this with https://github.com/HeroTools/open-whispr already? From the description they seem very similar. Handy first release was June 2025, OpenWhispr a month later. Handy has ~11k GitHub stars, OpenWhispr has ~730.

Creator of OpenWhispr here! Honoured to be compared to Handy!

I built OW because I was tired of paying for WisprFlow. I'd say it is more flexible by design: Whisper.cpp (CPU + GPU) for super fast local transcription, Parakeet in progress, local or cloud LLMs for cleanup (Qwen, Mistral, Gemini, Anthropic, OpenAI, Groq etc.), and bring-your-own API keys!

Handy is more streamlined for sure!

Would love any feedback :)

Re: Handy – Free open source speech-to-text app

#117

Post by ryanshrott »

I've been going down this rabbit hole too. I ended up building DictaFlow (https://dictaflow.vercel.app/) because I needed something that specifically works in VDI/Citrix environments where clipboard pasting is blocked (I work in finance).

It uses a 'character-typing' method instead of clipboard injection, so it's compatible with pretty much anything remote. Also kept it super lightweight (Cool to see Handy using the newer models—local voice tech is finally getting good.

Re: Handy – Free open source speech-to-text app

#118

Post by ryanshrott »

blutoot wrote: post #33

I have dystonia which often stiffens my arms in a way that makes it impossible for me to type on a keyboard. TTS apps like SuperWhisper have proven to be very helpful for me in such situations. I am hoping to get a similar experience out of "Handy" (very apt maming from my perspective). I do, however, wonder if there is a way all these TTS tools can get to the next level. The generated text should not be just a verba…

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