Private voice-to-text for macOS using Apple's SpeechAnalyzer
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I built a menu bar app for voice typing on macOS that's 100% on-device. No cloud, no subscription, no data collection. It uses Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer framework (macOS 26 Tahoe), which means: - Speech models are system-managed, not bundled – the app is just 1.5MB - Models run outside your app's memory space - Automatic punctuation and optional emoji conversion Press a hotkey, speak, and your words appear in real-time in whatever app has focus. An audio-reactive screen border shows you're recording. MIT licensed: https://github.com/leftouterjoins/voicewrite I built this because I wanted voice typing that doesn't send my audio to someone else's servers. The new SpeechAnalyzer API made it possible without bundling a 1GB+ Whisper model. Its also very fast, IMO. Happy to answer questions about the SpeechAnalyzer API or the implementation.
HN · launched Jan 4, 2026 · 9 upvotes (top 54%) · 0 views
Niche: voice dictation software · 224 launches, 16 in the last 7 days ▼ -30% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Prosumer
- AI-native
- Commercial product
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 224 launches in voice dictation software →
Could you build this?
Yes This is a lightweight macOS menu bar utility written in Swift that acts as a wrapper around Apple's built-in SpeechAnalyzer framework and macOS accessibility APIs.
Discussion
2 comments analyzed.
Concerns raised: Missing notarization
Feature requests: SpeechAnalyzer API support on iOS
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 960 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #506 of 961 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 59 days after the earliest competitor.
- Murmur · ph · 2026-11-02 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.65
- WhisperWrite · ph · 2026-10-09 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.65
- VoiceNoodler · ph · 2026-10-26 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.64
- Yap · hn · 2026-07-27 · 104 upvotes · similarity 0.63
- Speaklively · ph · 2026-11-11 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.61
- Wordmate · hn · 2026-09-03 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.60
- Cadenza · ph · 2026-10-11 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.59
- speakeasy. · ph · 2026-10-01 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.59
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