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  • This came up a month ago - I forked from something now gone - https://github.com/NickJLange/parrot

    And if MacOS 26 does it right - all of this is no longer necessary for us to vibe fork/ code on weekends :-)

    P.S. Handy looks slick. May be able to ditch mine

  • If folks like local-AI dictation, but want it optimized for meetings recordings (like Granola/Otter/Notion) check out Biscotti. Free, local, separates voices, voice identification, AI summaries, etc.

    https://github.com/scosman/Biscotti

  • On MacOS, dictation was solved a while back with Parakeet V3, and I haven't seen anything that has a better speed/accuracy tradeoff when talking to AIs, where slight inaccuracies are ok since they can "read between the lines".

    I got annoyed by various UI and other things in tools like VoiceInk, Handy etc and Claude-Coded my own CLI dictation tool called VoxType that uses parakeet-mlx:

    https://pchalasani.github.io/claude-code-tools/tools/voxtype...

    Install this skill for your coding agent and let it help you set it up, there are many config options:

        npx skills add pchalasani/claude-code-tools -s voxtype-install -g
    
    Or if you must do it yourself,

        uv tool install voxtype
    
    This is just an example of where we are today with software today: people building their own tools, and not bothering to market it (or perhaps I'm contracting myself here ;).
  • What’s really shocking is this and many of the competitors are all using OpenAI whisper - which came out in 2022. (Once upon a time, OpenAI really did open research)

    It’s surprising in 2026 this is still the default “best” all rounder. Kudos to the early OpenAI team and the open community efforts / improved models since then.

  • As much as I like seeing this, the space is really crowded, and I think the real value is not in single dictation for input, but in two other things: diarization (essential for call recordings, and a staple in video calling services, but hardly touched for in-room meetings and brainstorming) and the next step, which is cleaning it all up for actually useful notes. Not just the transcript, but better variations on meeting notes that you can customize, link to previous existing information, etc.
  • This reminds me very much in terms of features as https://github.com/cjpais/Handy https://handy.computer , what's the use case for this over that?
  • I think we're about to see a dictation revolution.

    I've been coding with Claude, and I pretty much do it exclusively by voice now, simply because it's so much faster. And I kind of feel like Scotty from Star Trek IV, when he holds up a Mac mouse to try to talk into it.

    I've been using VoiceInk [1] which looks like it's basically the same as this, but has been around for longer.

    What has really made it work for me is using a Bluetooth media control like [2], where I use Karabiner Elements to remap its play/pause button to the dictation keyboard shortcut. I map rewind to option-backspace to delete the last word, fast-forward to shift-enter to insert a newline, a lower button to enter to submit my prompt, and the volume up/down buttons to scroll up/down. I've also just ordered to Xiaomi Bluetooth remote [3] that includes a microphone itself to see if I can get it to work by speaking directly into it and using it as the microphone -- there are a couple of open source projects to turn it into a Mac microphone directly. Since I'd like to be able to talk more quietly instead of into my Mac.

    But what I'm REALLY waiting for is the ability to use one button for dictation, and a second button for issuing commands for a local LLM to interpret. So I hold down the voice button which transcribes "I think we need to catch that" and then the second button and go "change catch to cache, like c-a-c-h-e". Or hold down the second button and go "switch to VS code". I don't want something as finicky as macOS Voice Control, I want a local LLM I can speak naturally to.

    I can very much see a future where I spend the majority of my "work" time using a Apple TV-type remote.

    [1] https://github.com/Beingpax/VoiceInk

    [2] https://www.amazon.com/Satechi-Bluetooth-Multimedia-Remote-C...

    [3] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Xiaomi-Bluetooth-Remote-2-Pro-...

  • Interested to give this a try. I've tried Wispr Flow and found it to be quite good, but a bit pricey for my taste. I guess I assumed there were equally good models that were cheaper, and I suppose this is one of them.

    I'll be curious to see how the existence / popularity of tools like this end up affecting the pricing of paid tools like Wispr Flow.

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