WhisperDictate

WhisperDictate turns your voice into text without the customary detour through someone else's server. It is a macOS menubar app running whisper.cpp locally. Use the hotkey as a press-on, press-off toggle, or enable hold-to-dictate so recording lasts only while you hold it. Either way, the transcription lands back in the application where you started.

Choose from base, small, medium, and large-v3-turbo Whisper models, with Metal acceleration on Apple Silicon. Your recordings and transcripts stay on-device, which in 2026 apparently qualifies as a feature rather than a baseline expectation.

The screenshot here doesn't show much because the system runs only on the menubar. Lean and clean.