Handy
by cjpais
Handy is a free desktop app that turns your speech into text on your own computer, without sending audio to the cloud. You press a shortcut, speak, and the words are pasted into whichever app you are using.
- Stars
- 37.2k
- Licence
- MIT
- Runs on
- Your computer
- Setup
- Easy
- Language
- Rust
- Age
- 628 days
What you can do with it
- Dictate emails, notes and messages into any text field using a keyboard shortcut
- Choose between Whisper and Parakeet speech models to balance speed and accuracy
- Control recording from the command line or Raycast, and rewrite text with a custom hook before it is pasted
Could replace
- Dragon NaturallySpeaking
- Wispr Flow
Our suggestion based on what it does, not a feature-by-feature comparison.
Make money with it
A freelancer could offer fast voice-to-text drafting of articles, reports or client documents, using Handy to cut the time spent typing.
An idea, not financial advice. Check the licence before charging for anything built on it.
Ways a business could use it
- Draft emails, proposals and client notes by voice instead of paying for a dictation subscription
- Keep confidential client conversations and dictation on your own machine rather than uploading audio to a cloud service
Can you use it commercially?
Free to use, change and sell, including in paid products. Keep the copyright notice.
Not legal advice. Read the project's licence file before building a product on it.
Getting it running
Download the installer from the releases page or website, or use Homebrew on macOS, winget on Windows or an APT-installed .deb on Debian/Ubuntu, then grant microphone and accessibility permissions.
Follow the official instructions in the project README.
Things to check
- Still under active development, with known issues listed (for example Bluetooth microphones and fn key shortcuts on macOS)
- Command-line flags are described as largely a beta feature
- Larger Whisper models run best with a GPU
Who's talking about it
Checked 03 Nov 2026. Summary drafted by AI from the project's README.
