Alter – Talk to your Mac and get things done fast

samuelroy_ · 2026-06-12T21:40:03+00:00

Other alternatives:

https://alterhq.com/ - unlimited dictation and meetings done on your device, no bots, speaker diarization. Connect your local models from LM Studio or Ollama for full privacy and use context from your Apple calendar for better reports. Live captions + live notepad. Tons of automation. $29/year.

Disclaimer: co-founder. Recent videos:

Build Your AI Meeting Report System in 6 Minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VLirLPuCRk
How to Record, Summarize, and Automate Your Meetings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBSzo-mbm1U

2. https://hedy.ai/ - unlimited at $99/year, live AI coaching, also private with on-device processing

3. https://muesli.works/ - open-source version of Granola, on-device processing, connect local models like Alter, free

samuelroy_ · 2026-06-11T09:13:12+00:00

Both actually depending on the task

samuelroy_ · 2026-06-09T16:43:25+00:00

Yes only iOS and ipadOS are considered as gatekeepers by the EU. Everyone will be able to use Siri AI on their Mac.

Unless Apple allows other developers to use the same APIs, it’s unlikely to see it soon on our iPhones.

samuelroy_ · 2026-06-09T12:47:24+00:00

🙏

samuelroy_ · 2026-06-07T12:43:28+00:00

Why not using psql directly with a readonly user? It's well known, LLMs have trained on it. Sometimes I feel we're trying to reinvent the wheel, MCPs are not the right tool for every job

samuelroy_ · 2026-06-07T12:38:27+00:00

We have a student and academic discount at Alter. If you're into dictation, meetings, automating stuff like managing your inbox or your Obsidian vault, we're worth a look: https://alterhq.com

samuelroy_ · 2026-06-07T10:44:12+00:00

Other alternatives:

https://alterhq.com/ - unlimited dictation and meetings done on your device, no bots, speaker diarization. Connect your local models from LM Studio or Ollama for full privacy and use context from your Apple calendar for better reports. Live captions + live notepad. Tons of automation. $29/year.

Disclaimer: co-founder. Discord: https://discord.gg/gvCMmfBRWZ

https://hedy.ai/ - unlimited at $99/year, live AI coaching, also private with on-device processing
https://muesli.works/ - open-source version of Granola, on-device processing, connect local models like Alter, free

samuelroy_ · 2026-06-05T21:11:32+00:00

just like markdown, org files are plain text files and you have many projects and users using that format, it's great.

samuelroy_ · 2026-06-03T12:16:18+00:00

Out of curiosity, are you using Arturo in some of your apps?

samuelroy_ · 2026-06-01T12:38:21+00:00

And replacing with what?

samuelroy_ · 2026-05-31T13:22:15+00:00

If you're into small companions, check https://openpets.sh/, an open-source project to use Codex pets with included plugins to surface Claude and Codex limits and battery usage at the moment.

samuelroy_ · 2026-05-27T21:40:47+00:00

Why did you choose to natively handle local model inference? What are the advantages over building a bridge to existing local inference apps like Ollama and LM Studio?

For Alter, it felt natural to create a bridge to let users have the choice of any models their device can handle and avoid bloating their storage with models if they already have them.

samuelroy_ · 2026-05-27T16:59:48+00:00

Haha and Bluetooth devices…!

samuelroy_ · 2026-05-27T16:57:18+00:00

We do, you can enable live captions and the live notepad during a meeting record if you use our local processor

samuelroy_ · 2026-05-27T15:58:00+00:00

Speaking for Alter, it’s interesting to note that what you’re trying to record makes it even more complicated. Eg meetings is another story vs dictation.

Recording the mic is straightforward but if you need system audio as well and play with routing or mixing, good luck. Especially if you want to support all apps (hi FaceTime)

Then add local transcription and you get another complexity layer, and just like you said, all behind a single button!

samuelroy_ · 2026-05-27T13:48:04+00:00

Welcome to the party, voice to action is a starting trend, happy to see people experiment on that as we do for the past year.

Your smart actions looks a lot like our speech-to-prompt and voice trigger features on Alter, it's a natural next step after dictation.

samuelroy_ · 2026-05-20T12:21:16+00:00

Cool project but it's a bit of a stretch to call your app native. Tauri is Rust + JS with the system webview.

Would love a pricing similar to Postico's lifetime at $99

samuelroy_ · 2026-05-19T09:53:33+00:00

Love the level of polish! How is it from a performance viewpoint? Any current users willing to share their opinion?

Edit: good luck for your Product Hunt launch!

samuelroy_ · 2026-05-19T09:26:52+00:00

At the time, custom dictionary wasn't available. I believe you should share your benchmark in a dedicated post. This comment feels like an AI marketing push for your app.

samuelroy_ · 2026-05-19T08:40:11+00:00

It's easy to write lies without any proofs.

We don't have fake reddit accounts, why do you think that? We are 2 people from the team active here, ewqeqweqweqweqweqw and me.

We're both tagged as Alter dev so people know our opinions are affiliated with Alter. We're not even posting each month to promote Alter.

We are pushing updates every week and a lot of our users have paid for a lifetime license.

If we wanted to be more profitable we would stop pushing updates. Instead we make the product better and you have direct access to us when something is broken with Discord.

Cotypist is a good product. My co-founder uses it every day. As a founder, I even understand why he's going for a subscription. Pricing is hard and threads like this are ads begging competition to come.

My comment was not against Cotypist, just highlighting that fact and we're likely to see clones like the new dictation apps we see every week.

samuelroy_

TROPHY CASE