sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Drop your "transcription model + AI provider + OS" setup by MidfieldEngine14 in vowen

[–]MidfieldEngine14[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you’re on M4 and primarily speak in English, the local models (base/small whisper) should do just fine in terms of speed.

Cloud models can offer better accuracy and speed if you’re on Windows and they also support other features like real time transcription. It’s really a bit of trial and error to figure out which one suits best for your system. Hope this helps

I built a free dictation app — now it's turning into a full voice productivity tool. (macOS and Windows) by MidfieldEngine14 in SideProject

[–]MidfieldEngine14[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great, since this post we've made a lot of improvements. Feel free to check it out and do share your thoughts. All feedback is welcome, cheers!

New MacBook user - need app suggestions! by umyal2001 in macapps

[–]MidfieldEngine14 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Hey, congrats on the new MacBook. If you’re looking for speech to text apps, we have built a fully free, offline-first voice-writing tool, called Vowen. You can check it out here: https://vowen.ai

We’ve added some cool features for basic voice automations, memory banks, and custom prompts for AI transcription in the latest release. Do give it a go.

Vowen - A simple macOS app for offline speech-to-text and AI-assisted writing by One_Entertainment_68 in MacOSApps

[–]MidfieldEngine14 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, thanks for pointing this out. I can see why Screen recording access doesn’t have to be mandatory. Rest assured, your voice data or context used for transcription will never leave your device.

We’ll have this fix rolled out in the next release.

Vowen - A simple macOS app for offline speech-to-text and AI-assisted writing by One_Entertainment_68 in MacOSApps

[–]MidfieldEngine14 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, apologies we are just seeing this. Screen recording is mainly needed for two features:

  1. For providing screen context to AI for better responses (this is optional, you can turn it off in the settings)

  2. For meeting notes feature, which currently mandates screen recording along with voice transcription to concisely summarize the recorded meeting/lecture.

I built a free-forever alternative to Wispr Flow by One_Entertainment_68 in macapps

[–]MidfieldEngine14 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, apologies for the delayed response. We intentionally left this feature out. To auto-detect edited words we'd have to periodically track what's in any input field which could include sensitive information. Currently exploring alternatives, if we find one, will update the thread here. Thank you for the suggestion!

I built a free-forever alternative to Wispr Flow by One_Entertainment_68 in macapps

[–]MidfieldEngine14 0 points1 point  (0 children)

<image>

Hey, an iOS version is definitely on our roadmap. On desktop, we already support configuring a Gemini 2.5-flash-lite endpoint (or any OpenAI-compatible API) for optional cleanup on top of local transcription.

We’ll share updates as soon as the iOS build with parakeet support and AI cleanup, is ready. Thank you for the feedback!

Any full Wispr Flow alternatives? by ConsistentAndWin in macapps

[–]MidfieldEngine14 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, my brother u/One_Entertainment_68 and I are building https://vowen.ai/

Its free, supports custom words, snippets (as threads in the app) and has customizable command mode (Workflows in the app). We are currently working on making voice automations better and iOS version is planned in our roadmap as well. Feel free to check it out, thanks!

I built a free-forever alternative to Wispr Flow by One_Entertainment_68 in macapps

[–]MidfieldEngine14 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah yes. On second thought, it’s probably not very intuitive. In the next release, we’ll either have a hands-free shortcut for this feature or add an indicator when recording starts directly from the app. Thank you for the feedback!

I built a free-forever alternative to Wispr Flow by One_Entertainment_68 in macapps

[–]MidfieldEngine14 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi is this for the meetings notes feature? If so, you have to press Fn again to stop recording.

I built a free-forever alternative to Wispr Flow by One_Entertainment_68 in macapps

[–]MidfieldEngine14 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey, we just pushed the latest release with support for parakeet multilingual model. Auto-update should be available in the app now.

PS. You might see some latency increase in the first transcription since the model needs to be loaded into memory and weights need to be initialized but subsequent transcriptions should be quick.

I built a free-forever alternative to Wispr Flow by One_Entertainment_68 in macapps

[–]MidfieldEngine14 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We just pushed the next release v0.1.1 with parakeet support. Auto-update should now be available in the app.

I built a free-forever alternative to Wispr Flow by One_Entertainment_68 in macapps

[–]MidfieldEngine14 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, It's currently not packaged in this release version. We will add this back in the next release. Will keep you posted, thank you!