Hey everyone, I've been searching for a good Wispr Flow alternative for months specifically one that lets me bring my own API keys, supports local models, and doesn't charge $12/month.

Some alternatives exist, but none of them feel native, and an Electron wrapper is a non-starter for me.

So I'm building it myself. The core idea is a lightweight CLI tool that does one thing well: convert speech to text, with AI post-processing and cleanup built in.

The CLI-first approach makes it easy to integrate with anything - shell scripts, other apps, whatever. From there, each platform gets a proper native frontend: Swift on macOS, GNOME on Linux, and a native app for Windows. Each one can also ship platform-specific features that make sense for that OS.

What I'd love your input on:

Before I dive too deep into implementation, I want to make sure I'm thinking about these two pieces correctly:

1. AI Cleanup - How should the model clean up raw transcription output? Things like fixing punctuation, removing filler words ("uh", "um"), correcting obvious mishears. Should this be a separate pass, or baked into the transcription prompt? Any preferences on how aggressive the cleanup should be by default?
2. Post-processing pipeline - Beyond cleanup, what should happen to the text before it reaches the user or another app? Formatting, context-awareness, custom instructions? How configurable should this be?

Any thoughts, prior art, or "please don't do X" warnings are very welcome.

Anyone know any actually good speech-to-text apps like Wispr Flow?

What I’m looking for specifically:

• Works like Wispr Flow with global push-to-talk dictation
• AI cleanup/rewrite of speech into polished text
• Bring your own API keys (OpenAI, Groq, Anthropic, Gemini, etc.)
• Preferably supports local/offline models too
• Free and preferably open-source

I don’t just want raw Whisper transcription. The important part is the “cleanup” layer that removes filler words, fixes grammar, restructures rambling speech, and makes it sound like natural writing, similar to Wispr Flow.

Would love to hear real experiences from people using these daily. Which one actually feels closest to Wispr Flow?

Hey guys I'm building a native macOS app and I was wondering which location users prefer:

• ~/Library/Application Support/<app-name>/
• ~/.config/<app-name>/

Hey guys, I'm trying to make a small Raycast alternative for myself, and I was wondering how I can go about making my NSPanel behave just like Raycast/Spotlight.

Right now, whenever I start the app, my focus is instantly stolen and when I get it back and do the global shortcut to show the panel, it shows without stealing the focus but when I toggle it again to hide, the focus is stolen again before it's hidden. By "focus is stolen again" here, I just mean that the window behind (the three dots) is greyed out.

CoolApp.swift is just the app entry point. It uses an AppDelegate, creates a FloatingPanelController, and calls start() when the app finishes launching. So the floating panel behavior is kicked off at launch from there, while the actual panel logic lives in FloatingPanelController.swift.

Here's my FloatingPanelController.swift:

import AppKit import KeyboardShortcuts import SwiftUI

extension KeyboardShortcuts.Name {
    static let toggleFloatingPanel = Self(
        "toggleFloatingPanel",
        default: .init(.space, modifiers: [.option, .command])
    )
}

final class FloatingPanel: NSPanel {
    override var canBecomeKey: Bool { true }
    override var canBecomeMain: Bool { false }
}

final class FloatingPanelController {
    private let panel: FloatingPanel

    init() {
        panel = FloatingPanel(
            contentRect: NSRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 600, height: 380),
            styleMask: [.nonactivatingPanel, .borderless],
            backing: .buffered,
            defer: false
        )
        panel.isOpaque = false
        panel.backgroundColor = .clear
        panel.hasShadow = true
        panel.isFloatingPanel = true
        panel.level = .popUpMenu
        panel.hidesOnDeactivate = false
        panel.collectionBehavior = [.canJoinAllSpaces, .fullScreenAuxiliary, .transient]
        panel.center()

        let hostingView = NSHostingView(rootView: ContentView())
        hostingView.autoresizingMask = [.width, .height]
        panel.contentView = hostingView
    }

    func start() {
        KeyboardShortcuts.onKeyUp(for: .toggleFloatingPanel) { [weak self] in
            self?.toggle()
        }
    }

    private func toggle() {
        panel.isVisible ? hidePanel() : showPanel()
    }

    private func showPanel() {
        panel.makeKeyAndOrderFront(nil)
    }

    private func hidePanel() {
        panel.orderOut(nil)
    }
}