5 ms·

Show HN: FnScribe – Open-source, offline dictation for macOS

36 points by modagent 21d ago

I built FnScribe because I'm pretty privacy concious and wanted a wispr flow-like app that kept everything local and on device. Currently works for Mac (sillicon and intel). It's dead simple. Hold the fn key, speak and release. I use a quantized Wisper small.en model for transcription. It inserts the text into the active application. There's also a hands-free model for longer dictation. Audio transcription is kept in memory. There's no account or transcription history. Clipboard contents are restored after it inserts it. GPLv3, Mac-only, English only..still in alpha. Hope you enjoy it! Would love some feedback.

vancekai 15d ago
[dead]
vancekai 15d ago
[dead]
deleted 21d ago
[deleted]
diwash007 21d ago
nice one.
itsdesmond 21d ago
I see that it changes the menu bar icon to indicate status. How is this communicated when windows are full screen and the menu bar isn’t visible?
djx22 21d ago
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 21d ago
https://voxtype.io/ https://voxtype.io/ https://tryvoiceink.com/ https://tryvoiceink.com/ 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 Also whisper is pretty outdated vs parakeet
- djx22 21d ago
  It's because vibe coded apps have flooded the internet. This one is no exception. The feedback loop is now real: LLMs train from github on their own produced slop which they feed into the apps people build and publish on github to show off their "skills". In 2 years from now LLMs will become dumber and dumber as the rate of quality code vs. slop will be greatly imbalanced so, naturally, the more slop you have the more probable is that the LLM will use it for its answers. The death of software engineering is real.
  - modagent 21d ago
    I’ve been a software dev for 15 years. Def not trying to show off my skills This is just a little side-project. I have no plans to monetize it. Totally - much of this is vibecoded. It’s been fun building and customizing this for myself rather than paying wisprflow, and thought other people might find it useful
    - djx22 21d ago
      Sorry about that, didn't mean to attack the person behind it. But anyone can build such an app within a day by prompting Claude. I think what I was more alluding to was the engineering value such a project brings. But once again, sorry about the messaging.
  - roni2k1b 20d ago
    That model collapse argument assumes pre-training teams are just scraping raw web garbage without curation.
  - velocityNote 17d ago
pitop64 21d ago
[flagged]
ahaferburg 21d ago
Are you aware of https://handy.computer/ https://handy.computer/?
- CharlesW 17d ago
  Or the excellent Ghost Pepper*, or many, many other options. *https://matthartman.github.io/ghost-pepper/ https://matthartman.github.io/ghost-pepper/
  - arach 17d ago
    there's one of these just about every other week since early this year i think it's incredible because however saturated I feel this space has become, highly likely the vast majority of the world has no idea how good models have become, let alone local models I've added local voice support for all apps/webapps I've built this year Local TTS is on the cusp of a breakout too, basically a year behind ASR imo in terms of adoption, understanding, size and quality
- dfltr 17d ago
  Or https://github.com/FrigadeHQ/yap https://github.com/FrigadeHQ/yap which is the only one I've seen so far that uses the new/improved speech-to-text API in MacOS 26 that outperforms the Whisper models. I expect most dictation software is going to start supporting the local API pretty soon, it's free real estate.
e40 21d ago
Are you aware of Spokenly? It has a local mode that uses Apple’s built in services. I bind it to right command and use it frequently for hard to spell words.
DzHiBaS 21d ago
also handy.computer is awesome. local. choose your own model. multilingual. bind to any shortcut. works on arm silica
- modagent 21d ago
  Thanks! Will check it out
swapnilbh 21d ago
[flagged]
vivzkestrel 21d ago
- tonnes of these get released daily but I ll give you the guys on HN an awesome idea - havent seen a single one on HN yet in the last year (i read HN twice a day like brushing my teeth) - When I input my voice into the mic, I want an AI voice as output converting my words in real time in AI voice - Use case: gaming, I have a terrible voice and dont want to do a voice over with that but at the same time I would love to if I could - Know any github projects capable of pulling this off? maybe direct integration as an OBS plugin would make it godtier
roni2k1b 20d ago
Are you running the Moonshine model via ONNX/CoreML or native ggml/mlx bindings? how is the first token latency and memory footprint compared against Whisper small.en on Apple Silicon
youniverse 19d ago
I really need one on the app store or sideload for iOS. I am not a fan of Apple's dictation.
browningstreet 18d ago
How is this different than Hex?
velocityNote 18d ago
[dead]
- velocityNote 18d ago
  I did AEC and other DSP to ensure good audio quality.
bluber84 17d ago
Is it multilingual?
cheesecakegood 17d ago
So many of these apps in fact that the relevant subreddit has a literal spreadsheet to keep track of them all and if memory serves last time I checked, there were over two dozen entries. Does no one even check the space before building an app these days? This is almost literally the MOST saturated Mac app in existence… In fact I will go farther. It is actively bad to release something like this, because it clogs up the space and makes picking an app more difficult for everyone just by virtue of its mere existence adding to cognitive load.
marcoparisi 17d ago
[dead]
vtpro 17d ago
[flagged]
affluentlabs 17d ago
[flagged]

36 points by modagent 21d ago

vancekai 15d ago

[dead]

vancekai 15d ago

[dead]

deleted 21d ago

[deleted]

diwash007 21d ago

nice one.

itsdesmond 21d ago

I see that it changes the menu bar icon to indicate status. How is this communicated when windows are full screen and the menu bar isn’t visible?

djx22 21d ago

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 21d ago

https://voxtype.io/ https://voxtype.io/ https://tryvoiceink.com/ https://tryvoiceink.com/ 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

djx22 21d ago
It's because vibe coded apps have flooded the internet. This one is no exception. The feedback loop is now real: LLMs train from github on their own produced slop which they feed into the apps people build and publish on github to show off their "skills". In 2 years from now LLMs will become dumber and dumber as the rate of quality code vs. slop will be greatly imbalanced so, naturally, the more slop you have the more probable is that the LLM will use it for its answers. The death of software engineering is real.
- modagent 21d ago
  I’ve been a software dev for 15 years. Def not trying to show off my skills This is just a little side-project. I have no plans to monetize it. Totally - much of this is vibecoded. It’s been fun building and customizing this for myself rather than paying wisprflow, and thought other people might find it useful
  - djx22 21d ago
    Sorry about that, didn't mean to attack the person behind it. But anyone can build such an app within a day by prompting Claude. I think what I was more alluding to was the engineering value such a project brings. But once again, sorry about the messaging.
- roni2k1b 20d ago
  That model collapse argument assumes pre-training teams are just scraping raw web garbage without curation.
- velocityNote 17d ago

pitop64 21d ago

[flagged]

ahaferburg 21d ago

Are you aware of https://handy.computer/ https://handy.computer/?

CharlesW 17d ago
Or the excellent Ghost Pepper*, or many, many other options. *https://matthartman.github.io/ghost-pepper/ https://matthartman.github.io/ghost-pepper/
- arach 17d ago
  there's one of these just about every other week since early this year i think it's incredible because however saturated I feel this space has become, highly likely the vast majority of the world has no idea how good models have become, let alone local models I've added local voice support for all apps/webapps I've built this year Local TTS is on the cusp of a breakout too, basically a year behind ASR imo in terms of adoption, understanding, size and quality
dfltr 17d ago
Or https://github.com/FrigadeHQ/yap https://github.com/FrigadeHQ/yap which is the only one I've seen so far that uses the new/improved speech-to-text API in MacOS 26 that outperforms the Whisper models. I expect most dictation software is going to start supporting the local API pretty soon, it's free real estate.

e40 21d ago

Are you aware of Spokenly? It has a local mode that uses Apple’s built in services. I bind it to right command and use it frequently for hard to spell words.

DzHiBaS 21d ago

also handy.computer is awesome. local. choose your own model. multilingual. bind to any shortcut. works on arm silica

modagent 21d ago
Thanks! Will check it out

swapnilbh 21d ago

[flagged]

vivzkestrel 21d ago

- tonnes of these get released daily but I ll give you the guys on HN an awesome idea - havent seen a single one on HN yet in the last year (i read HN twice a day like brushing my teeth) - When I input my voice into the mic, I want an AI voice as output converting my words in real time in AI voice - Use case: gaming, I have a terrible voice and dont want to do a voice over with that but at the same time I would love to if I could - Know any github projects capable of pulling this off? maybe direct integration as an OBS plugin would make it godtier

roni2k1b 20d ago

Are you running the Moonshine model via ONNX/CoreML or native ggml/mlx bindings? how is the first token latency and memory footprint compared against Whisper small.en on Apple Silicon

youniverse 19d ago

I really need one on the app store or sideload for iOS. I am not a fan of Apple's dictation.

browningstreet 18d ago

How is this different than Hex?

velocityNote 18d ago

[dead]

velocityNote 18d ago
I did AEC and other DSP to ensure good audio quality.

bluber84 17d ago

Is it multilingual?

cheesecakegood 17d ago

So many of these apps in fact that the relevant subreddit has a literal spreadsheet to keep track of them all and if memory serves last time I checked, there were over two dozen entries. Does no one even check the space before building an app these days? This is almost literally the MOST saturated Mac app in existence… In fact I will go farther. It is actively bad to release something like this, because it clogs up the space and makes picking an app more difficult for everyone just by virtue of its mere existence adding to cognitive load.

marcoparisi 17d ago

[dead]

vtpro 17d ago

[flagged]

affluentlabs 17d ago

[flagged]