Talk.
It's typed.

Hold a key. Say what you mean. Let go. Whiskers types at your cursor in Slack, Cursor, Gmail, anywhere on your Mac. Fast, on-device, and private.

Download for Mac

macOS 15+ · Apple Silicon · 25 MB · Free

Slack · #standup

# standup
sam10:34 AM

morning — standup thread is open

alex10:35 AM

yesterday: wrapped the billing bug. today: invoice emails. no blockers

1
mira10:36 AM

still deep in the importer — retry logic lands today. could use eyes on it after standup

sam10:37 AM

on it. mine’s coming after this coffee ☕

mira10:38 AM

anyone else ready?

you10:39 AM

give me ten seconds — I’m dictating mine

alex10:39 AM

ten seconds?

sam10:40 AM

okay, clock’s running 👀

BIS

Message #standup

Fig. 1 — It purrs when it listens.
How it works

Hold. Say it. Let go.

One short loop, from your voice to the text field already in front of you.

  1. 01

    Hold your shortcut

    Press and hold fn, or choose any shortcut. A small HUD confirms Whiskers is listening.

  2. 02

    Say it

    Emails, prompts, notes, replies. No robot voice, no slowing down — Whiskers keeps up.

  3. 03

    Let go

    Your words appear at the cursor, already typed. No paste, no app switching.

Where it runs

Local by default. Connected when you choose.

Whiskers is complete either way. Core dictation stays on your Mac, while optional cloud features use your own accounts and keys.

On your Mac$0
  • Transcription runs on your Apple Silicon. Unlimited, offline, and nothing metered.
  • In local mode, audio never leaves your Mac.
  • Pick your model, from fast Parakeet to accurate Whisper Large, with 99+ languages.
  • No account, sign-up, or subscription to cancel.
Your keysPenniesper month
  • Two optional extras run in the cloud: faster transcription for long recordings, and AI polish for rough speech.
  • Bring your own account from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq, or Deepgram and pay them directly. Normal use runs pennies a month.
  • Groq's free tier covers most personal use.
  • Prefer your own setup? Use a self-hosted or company endpoint instead.
Beyond the transcript

You shouldn’t have to
clean it up afterward.

AI Enhancement shapes the first draft automatically with a built-in or custom prompt. Screen Awareness keeps the names on your screen spelled right. And if a part still needs work, fix it by voice without leaving the app you’re in.

01AI enhancement

Your first draft arrives already cleaned up.

Start with a built-in prompt, or make your own. Whiskers applies it automatically before the text reaches your cursor.

Clean Transcript fixes transcription mistakes and fillers while staying close to what you said.

Email Draft organizes your thoughts into a usable email body without inventing details you didn’t say.

De-Rambler finds the throughline in messy, stream-of-consciousness speech and turns it into a coherent draft.

Make your own Write the instructions once for a house style, a repeatable format, or any workflow you use often. Keep it alongside the built-ins and run it whenever you dictate.

There are more built-ins for rewrites, messages, summaries, and translation. Enhancement is always optional.

Notion · Launch update

Fig. 2 — Clean Transcript removes the rough edges before the words land.

Cursor · auth.ts

Fig. 3 — The code on screen, spelling the prompt.

02Screen awareness

It already knows the names on your screen.

An AI Enhancement feature: Whiskers reads the visible text in your frontmost window and uses it as context. Say “get user by ID” while auth.ts is open, and it arrives as getUserById — exact case, exact spelling.

It’s not just code. Colleague names in email, ticket numbers, product names — anything in front of you is fair game.

Optional and off by default. No screenshots — text only, read on your Mac with Apple Vision, never stored, and sent nowhere except alongside your transcript to your AI provider.

03Rewrite anywhere

Change the part that still isn’t right.

Highlight a sentence, hold your hotkey, and say the change: “make this more direct,” “more casual,” or “fix the typos.”

Whiskers replaces only the selection, right where you are. Nothing is sent until you decide it’s ready.

LinkedIn · Messaging

Fig. 4 — Highlight the words, then say what should change.

Dictation is just the headline.

Everything else Whiskers does, in one place.

  • 01

    Dictate in any app

    Hold your key, say it, let go, in Slack, Mail, Cursor, anywhere you can type. The words land at your cursor, no window to open.

    PRESS & HOLD · ANY TEXT FIELD

  • 02

    File transcription

    Drop in a recording and get clean text back, with subtitles and speaker names when you need them.

    AUDIO & VIDEO · TXT & SRT

  • 03

    Record any app's audio

    Meetings, lectures, podcasts: capture what's playing, plus your own voice. Audio only, never your screen.

    MEETINGS · LECTURES · PODCASTS

  • 04

    Polish it with AI

    Turn a rambling take into finished writing, clean it up, restyle it, or give it your own instructions.

    BUILT-IN & CUSTOM PROMPTS

  • 05

    Chat with your transcripts

    Ask what was said, pull out the action items, or have it summarize the parts that matter.

    ANSWERS · ACTION ITEMS

  • 06

    Custom vocabulary

    Teach it your names, jargon, and acronyms once; accuracy compounds from there.

    NAMES · JARGON · ACRONYMS

Why Whiskers

The same work, without the subscription.

The popular tools are genuinely good. This is what they cost.

Price and feature comparison between Whiskers, Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and macOS Dictation
WhiskersFreeWispr FlowSubscriptionSuperwhisperSub or lifetimemacOS DictationBuilt-in
PriceFree$12–15 / month$8.49 / mo · $249.99 lifetimeFree
Free versionEverything, unlimited2,000 words a weekSmall models onlyEverything it does
Where audio goesStays on your MacTheir cloudOn your MacMostly on-device
Works in every Mac appYesYesYesNoSupported apps only
File transcriptionYesAudio & video, SRT exportNoYesNo
AI cleanup & custom promptsYesBuilt-in & custom promptsBeta onlyYesNo

Swipe or use arrow keys to compare.

And unlike the cloud tools in this table, your audio never has to leave your Mac.

Pricing, free-tier limits, and feature availability as listed by each vendor, July 2026.

The catch

There isn’t one. Here’s why it’s free.

We talk to AI more than we talk to people now — and typing is the slowest way to do it. Ideas shouldn’t have to wait for your fingers, or be rehearsed before they’re allowed out. Just say them.

The economics changed, too. A Mac can run serious speech models on its own silicon, and the best cloud transcription costs pennies per hour through an API. A monthly subscription for something this essential stopped making sense.

So Whiskers is free. Dictation runs on the chip you already own — and when you want the cloud’s best, you pay the provider, not us. No ads, no account, nothing to cancel.

No ads · No account · Local by default

Apple M5 chipA dark silicon chip with a warm metallic edge and an Apple M5 mark.
Fig. 5 — M-series silicon. Already doing the work.

The questions we get most.

Something else? support@whiskers.sh. A human answers.

Not unless you say so. Everything runs on your Mac by default. The only network calls are extras you turn on yourself — cloud transcription or AI polish — using your own accounts. AI polish sends text, never audio.

Yes. The whole app includes dictation, file transcription, app-audio recording, AI cleanup, transcript chat, vocabulary, and history. No trial clock, no cap, no account, no paid tier. Local transcription costs us nothing to run, so we don't charge you for it. The copy on your Mac would keep working even if we disappeared tomorrow.

You pay the provider directly at their rates, with no markup or middleman. Typical use runs pennies a month, and Groq's free tier covers most personal use. Skip the cloud entirely and Whiskers still does everything on-device.

Yes. Drop in audio or video files, or record any app's sound live — a call, a lecture, or a podcast — along with your own mic. You get clean text, subtitles, speaker labels on supported models, and a transcript you can ask questions about.

As accurate as the paid tools — Whiskers runs the same models, and you pick which one. On-device: Parakeet V2 is the fast default, Parakeet V3 covers 25 languages, and Whisper Large v3 is the most accurate local option, with 99+ languages. In the cloud: Deepgram Nova-2, Groq's Whisper Large v3 Turbo, OpenAI, and Google models handle long recordings fastest. Custom vocabulary teaches it your names and jargon either way, and when a better model ships you just switch to it, with no upgrade fee.

Whiskers needs macOS 15 or later on Apple Silicon (any M-series chip). The download is about 25 MB, and it stays light in the background. Intel Macs aren't supported.

Stop typing what
you could just say.

Download Whiskers, hold a key, and talk. Your words land at the cursor, and your audio stays on your Mac.

Download for Mac

macOS 15+ · Apple Silicon · 25 MB · Free