FnScribe - Private, offline dictation for macOS
Show HN: FnScribe – Open-source, offline dictation for macOS
FnScribe is an open-source, offline dictation tool for macOS that transcribes your voice locally and inserts the text into any app. Hold the fn/Globe key, speak, and release—or use hands-free mode for longer thoughts. It runs entirely on your Mac with a bundled Whisper model, ensuring privacy with no cloud services or data transmission. Smart cleanup removes fillers, understands formatting commands, and supports custom dictionaries. FnScribe lives in the menu bar, stays out of the way, and works with any app that accepts text.
FnScribe transcribes your voice locally and inserts the result into the app you are using—private by design, with no account, cloud service, or transcription history.
- djx22
You may want to look into different models that are more accurate and maybe an AEC layer to remove background noise. Or at the very least a RNN de-noiser on the mic channel. Also, you may want to stream audio to the model instead of holding it all in memory and transcribe at the very end as that can potentially allow you to take the app much further than it is now.
I see Claude implemented a very crude upsampling/downsampling algorithm, which is what LLMs usually do when prompted to handle such a problem. But I would suggest restraining the model from implementing DSP processing on their own and instead use battle tested libraries. You can use rubato's FFT Resampler.
Audio processing is genuinely a hard engineering problem, LLMs usually don't get it right. If you decide to get deep into it, the knowledge you'll get is very rewarding.
- zackify
There's so many of these, at this point I've seen 10 clones make the front page each time as if there never existed local only options before.
Also whisper is pretty outdated vs parakeet
- ahaferburg
Are you aware of https://handy.computer/?