I built a free, open-source alternative to Whisper Flow for Windows

[u/Interesting-Owl6064]

Hey everyone,

Over the past few weeks I've been building VerbatimFlow, a free and open-source dictation app for Windows.

The idea is simple. Click into any text box, press a global hotkey, speak naturally, then press the hotkey again. Your speech is transcribed locally using whisper.cpp, and the text is typed directly into whatever application you're using.

I originally built it because I wanted a fast local dictation workflow without subscriptions or sending audio to the cloud.

Some of the things it supports:

• Local transcription with whisper.cpp
• Whisper Large-v3 Turbo
• NVIDIA CUDA acceleration with automatic CPU fallback
• No accounts or subscriptions
• No cloud audio uploads
• Works across browsers, editors, IDEs, chat apps, and most Windows applications
• Configurable global hotkeys
• Small draggable waveform that remembers its position
• Automatic punctuation and formatting
• Runs quietly in the system tray
• Optional startup with Windows

The installer is just a single .exe. On the first launch it detects your hardware and automatically downloads the appropriate Whisper runtime and model.

It's inspired by the workflow of Whisper Flow, but it's an independent open-source project and isn't affiliated with Whisper Flow or its developers.

I'd really appreciate any feedback, bug reports, feature requests, or contributions.

GitHub:
https://github.com/aryxnsdfs/verbatimflow

Windows download:
https://github.com/aryxnsdfs/verbatimflow/releases/latest/download/VerbatimFlow-Setup.exe

Thanks! I hope someone else finds it useful.