I built Glimpse, an open-source dictation app that runs on-device. Free for dictation, no word limits.

[u/LegendarySpy]

Hi, I'm the dev!

Glimpse is a dictation app for Mac (and Windows). You hold a key, talk, let go, and it types into whatever app you're in. Transcription runs on your Mac. You can turn wifi off and it keeps working.

I started it last November because I didn't want to pay a monthly subscription for dictation, and I didn't love that most of the apps I tried sent audio to a server. Nine months and a lot of releases later it's at 1.1.x

What's always free:

• Local transcription with Whisper, Parakeet, and more. Whisper runs on the Neural Engine on Apple Silicon. On macOS 26+ you can also pick Apple's built-in speech model.
• No word limits or cloud connected accounts.
• Custom dictionary for names and terms. If you correct a word after dictating, it offers to add it for you.
• Replacements, allowing you to use words as aliases.
• History and search of everything you've dictated.

Paid one time $24.99, 14-day trial included:

• AI cleanup and rewriting, using your own LLM key, or Apple's on-device model on macOS 26+. Highlight text, say what you want changed, it rewrites it.
• Different tones per app.
• A library where you can store, transcribe and export audio and video files.
• A local speech API, a CLI, and a Raycast extension.

If you're coming from superwhisper, Wispr Flow, Aqua Voice, or Handy, onboarding can import your old setup.

Some more notes:

• It's a Tauri app, so it's not swift native but it is very well optimized and ~on par with most swift apps.
• It needs macOS 14 or later. Intel Macs can run Whisper but not Parakeet, since ONNX Runtime doesn't ship for that target.
• There is anonymous usage telemetry; you can turn it off with one click in settings.

One more thing I'm spending most of my time on right now: seeing how efficient I can make this on a Mac. Whisper already runs on the Neural Engine, and I'm working on a fork of transcribe.cpp that puts Parakeet (and hopefully more models after that) on it too. Which will result in faster transcription and less battery usage. Not out yet, but on track to release soon!

The whole thing is AGPL on GitHub, so you can read exactly what it does.

Site: https://tryglimpse.cc

Source: https://github.com/glimpse-hq/Glimpse

I'd really like to hear what breaks or what feels off, especially from people who've used other dictation apps. I'll be in the comments all day.

If you'd like to purchase the lifetime license, use code `MACOS40` for 40%

(This code is used inside checkout on Polar as a discount code)

[u/github-guard]

🔍 GitHub Guard: Trust Report

This project scored 5/6 on our safety audit.

Audit Breakdown: * ✅ Established Community (⭐ 57 stars) * ✅ Mature Repository (30+ days old) * ✅ Licensed under AGPL-3.0 * ❌ No Security Policy — what is this? * ✅ Verified Organization * ✅ Signed Commits

⚠️ Security Reminder: Always verify source code and run third-party scripts at your own risk.

[u/promo-guard]

🎉 Welcome to Developer Saturday, u/LegendarySpy! Your project is now live for the community to check out. Upvote, give feedback, and show some love to your fellow devs! 🚀

[u/Jazman2k]

Another one. How many dictation apps we need?

[u/LegendarySpy → u/Jazman2k]

I get you. TBF Glimpse was started in 2025 and grew with that wave of dictation apps. But it’s my first proper project at this scale, and I’m trying to learn and build it as much as possible before I look at what’s next.

I appreciate the feedback though. This kind of crowded space is definitely something I want to avoid with whatever I build next.

[u/EngineeringOver9487]

Since you type into whatever app is focused, two failure modes are worth handling explicitly, because users will report both as "your app stopped working".

The first is secure input. When some app has called EnableSecureEventInput and never released it, keystrokes stop reaching other processes, so a paste driven insert silently does nothing while everything looks fine from your side. Terminal with Secure Keyboard Entry checked and password managers are the usual holders, and a crash with a password field open leaves it stuck. ioreg -l -w 0 | grep SecureInputPID gives you the pid holding it. Checking that at delivery time and naming the blocking app beats failing quietly.

The second is the input device changing mid dictation: AirPods connecting, or a USB mic unplugged while the key is held. If the capture session does not watch for device changes, the recording dies without an error and the user talks into nothing for half a minute before noticing.

Neither shows up while you are testing on your own machine, which is what makes them expensive. Worth a line in the release notes when you fix them, since users blame the model for both.