What it does
OpenQuack is a small menu-bar app for macOS. You press a hotkey, speak, and press it again, and the transcript is pasted at the cursor in whatever app you are typing in, or left on the clipboard if you would rather paste it yourself. Speech recognition uses Whisper through WhisperKit on Apple Silicon and runs on the Mac by default, so recording and transcription need no account, cloud service or telemetry. The page says a remote OpenAI-compatible transcription endpoint can be configured as an opt-in, and that the recording overlay shows when it is in use. Beyond plain dictation, the page lists language auto-detection across 99 languages, automatic capitalisation and punctuation, filler-word cleanup, a custom dictionary for names and project terms, and an experimental opt-in polish step through a small on-device model with an editable prompt. The project is MIT licensed and installs with Homebrew or a downloadable DMG.
Capabilities
- Starts and stops dictation with a configurable hotkey
- Pastes the transcript at the cursor in any app, with a clipboard fallback
- Local Whisper speech recognition with no account or telemetry
- Auto-detects among 99 languages
- Custom dictionary for proper nouns and project names
- Optional on-device LLM polish with an editable prompt (experimental)
When to use it
- Dictating into any Mac app without sending audio to a cloud service
- Voice-typing prompts, notes or messages into editors and chat windows
- Dictating confidential material or working offline
Alternatives to explore
- Wispr Flow
- Typeless
