Handy
Dictate instead of typing – press a key, speak, and the text lands in any app.
Handy is a small dictation app: hold down a keyboard shortcut, speak, let go – and the recognized text is inserted right where your cursor is, whether that's in your browser, in Word or in a chat. Speech recognition (Whisper or Parakeet) runs entirely offline on your computer. You set the keyboard shortcut in the settings on first launch. That's also where you download the recognition model (for German, e.g., Whisper Turbo or Parakeet V3).
How to try it
Commands from the official guides – just copy them.
Linux
# Ubuntu/Debian: install helper tools for inserting text (X11: xdotool, Wayland: wtype) and the latest version
sudo apt install -y libgtk-layer-shell0 xdotool wtype
wget -O handy.deb "$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/cjpais/Handy/releases/latest | grep -o 'https://[^"]*_amd64\.deb' | head -1)"
sudo apt install ./handy.deb
# Then launch "Handy" from the app menu. On Wayland, bind the keyboard shortcut in your system settings to
# the command "handy --toggle-transcription".macOS
brew install --cask handy
# or download the app from https://handy.computer; on first launch, allow microphone and accessibility accessWindows (PowerShell)
winget install cjpais.Handy
# Open Handy from the Start menu, download a model, set your keyboard shortcutAsk the AI assistant
Questions about Handy, installation or background? Our assistant knows this page and runs on our own machine, not in someone else's cloud.
The Assistant is an AI (Gemma 4) and can make mistakes – please check important details against the source. Questions are used only to generate an answer and are deleted after one hour. Please don't enter any personal data.
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