Hey ProductHunt! 👋
I'm CJ, an independent developer who loves open source and making things.
I built Handy when I broke my finger and needed an open-source speech-to-text app that I could modify and customize.
At its core, Handy lets you speak directly into any text field on your computer when you're coding, writing emails, filling out forms, or doing anything else.
How it works: Press a shortcut, speak, press again. Your words appear wherever you're typing. Runs completely offline with Whisper, works cross-platform, no subscriptions or cloud processing.
My approach: This isn't trying to be feature-complete—it's designed to be easily modifiable. I needed something I could customize to experiment with new ways of using my voice with the computer. The codebase is intentionally simple so others can build on it, fork it, and adapt it for their specific needs.
Current status: This is beta software with known issues. I'm actively looking for:
- Users to try it and report bugs they encounter
- Rust contributors to help fix those bugs and improve the architecture
- Anyone who wants a speech-to-text foundation they can actually modify
Whether you need accessibility tools you can customize, want to experiment with voice computing, or just think speech-to-text should be simple and offline—this is a starting point to build from.
The goal is making this genuinely useful through real feedback and collaborative improvement. What problems do you run into? What would you want to modify?
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@cj_pais really cool mate !!! Its in the Voiceaispace.com, I'll share in the newsletter if ok for you. Happy to have a chat when Launch is finished :)
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I don't know why there are so few upvotes and comments for this app. To me, it is one of the best, if not the best, offline transcription apps for the Windows operating system. Sadly, it doesn't have any Android app yet. First of all, it is free of cost and works offline perfectly. The accuracy level for English is more than decent—not perfect, but good enough.
I am a non-native speaker of English, so it makes mistakes from time to time. If I were a native speaker, I don't think it would make mistakes. Anyway, I'm a fan of it and regularly use it. There are just two things I want to point out: - The speed is not great. It is good, but not great. When you finish speaking, it takes quite a few seconds to return the text. Sometimes it takes 10 to 15 or even 20 seconds, depending on how long I have spoken. This is a big problem. - Another problem is that it works only for English. Most people perhaps do not need more than that, so I don't think it is a big problem. - Another complaint, or I should say requirement, is that the developer should introduce an Android app as soon as possible.
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Nice. I used a few such tools before and without them , its honestly difficult to type and talk to an LLM properly. Going to give this one a try. Does this run offline?
This is truely awesome! The offline, open-source aspect is killer – so many speech-to-text tools are cloud-dependent, right? Being able to customize it myself is a huge plus. How customizable is it for different voice profiles, though?
No way, this is genius! I’m always fumbling between dictation apps and text fields—being able to just speak anywhere would save me so much hassle. Does it work across all browsers?
I've been using it for a few weeks. It's just simple enough to do everything I need and not cluttered with complicated things that I don't care about. Big thanks to CJ for pulling this together. I was using SuperWhisper before this and was put off by the inability to add a feature that I cared about and subscription-gating simple things like re-running a transcription. This review dictated with Handy.
Handy is the best example I've seen of what local AI actually looks like in practice. Fast, private, completely free, and it just works. No cloud, no subscriptions, no compromises. Exactly the kind of software that should exist more.
OpenWhispr
Handy
@cj_pais really cool mate !!! Its in the Voiceaispace.com, I'll share in the newsletter if ok for you. Happy to have a chat when Launch is finished :)
I don't know why there are so few upvotes and comments for this app. To me, it is one of the best, if not the best, offline transcription apps for the Windows operating system. Sadly, it doesn't have any Android app yet.
First of all, it is free of cost and works offline perfectly. The accuracy level for English is more than decent—not perfect, but good enough.
I am a non-native speaker of English, so it makes mistakes from time to time. If I were a native speaker, I don't think it would make mistakes. Anyway, I'm a fan of it and regularly use it.
There are just two things I want to point out:
- The speed is not great. It is good, but not great. When you finish speaking, it takes quite a few seconds to return the text. Sometimes it takes 10 to 15 or even 20 seconds, depending on how long I have spoken. This is a big problem.
- Another problem is that it works only for English. Most people perhaps do not need more than that, so I don't think it is a big problem.
- Another complaint, or I should say requirement, is that the developer should introduce an Android app as soon as possible.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
It looks really simple. Does it recognise only English language or also other languages?
Handy
@busmark_w_nika It's multilingual and can translate into English as well!
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@cj_pais Thank you for clarifying :)
GPT-4o
This is truely awesome! The offline, open-source aspect is killer – so many speech-to-text tools are cloud-dependent, right? Being able to customize it myself is a huge plus. How customizable is it for different voice profiles, though?
AltPage.ai
No way, this is genius! I’m always fumbling between dictation apps and text fields—being able to just speak anywhere would save me so much hassle. Does it work across all browsers?
Handy
@joey_zhu_seopage_ai It should work everywhere there is a text field! It's a desktop application
ZapDigits
I do like this! That's also a pretty cool logo.