GitHub - MrPrinceRawat/OpenWhispr: Open source WhisperFlow alternative for Mac. Hold Fn, speak, release — transcribes and pastes into any app. Runs fully on device, nothing leaves your machine.

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OpenWhispr

Open-source alternative to WhisperFlow. Voice-to-text that runs locally on your Mac.

OpenWhispr demo

What is this

If you've used WhisperFlow, you know the experience — hold a key, speak, release, text appears. It's great. But it's closed-source, costs money, and sends your audio to the cloud.

OpenWhispr is the same thing, but open-source and local. Hold Fn, speak, release, text gets pasted wherever your cursor is. Same floating pill UI, same feel. Recording, transcription, polishing, pasting — all happens on your Mac.

It uses WhisperKit for transcription (runs on Apple Neural Engine) and Qwen3 0.6B for cleaning up grammar and tone. Both run on-device.

Features

  • Hold Fn to dictate, release to transcribe and paste
  • Double-tap Fn to lock recording hands-free
  • Ctrl+Fn for summarize mode
  • Option+Fn to ask a question
  • Escape to cancel
  • Per-app tone — professional in email, casual in chat, raw in code editors
  • Custom dictionary — edit a word after dictating and it learns the correction
  • Transcription history — searchable, stored locally
  • Ctrl+Cmd+V to re-paste the last transcription

How it works

  1. Hold Fn, it starts recording
  2. Voice activity detection strips silence
  3. WhisperKit transcribes on the Neural Engine
  4. Qwen3 0.6B cleans up grammar, punctuation, and tone
  5. Custom dictionary corrections applied as a final pass
  6. Text pasted into the focused field via Accessibility API

Takes a couple seconds. Short dictations feel instant.

Install

From source

git clone https://github.com/MrPrinceRawat/OpenWhispr.git
cd OpenWhispr
open OpenWhispr.xcodeproj

Build and run in Xcode. Whisper model downloads on first launch (~500MB).

Download

Pre-built .dmg on the Releases page.

Requirements

  • macOS 14.0+
  • Apple Silicon (M1+)
  • Microphone permission
  • Accessibility permission (for auto-paste)

Shortcuts

Shortcut Action
Hold Fn Start dictating
Release Fn Stop and paste
Double-tap Fn Lock recording
Ctrl+Fn Summarize mode
Option+Fn Ask a question
Escape Cancel
Ctrl+Cmd+V Paste last transcription
Click menubar icon Open app window

Built with

  • Swift, SwiftUI, AppKit
  • WhisperKit — speech recognition
  • SwiftLlama — LLM inference via llama.cpp
  • Qwen3 0.6B Q4_K_M — text polishing

License

Free for personal and non-commercial use. Cannot be sold. See LICENSE.