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Handy: Free, Open-Source Speech-to-Text
Speak into any text field without sending your voice to the cloud
This week I want to highlight a project that my friend CJ Pais built: Handy, a free, open-source speech-to-text application. It is essentially a free version of Wispr Flow that runs locally on your computer.
I am obviously biased, but I really love this tool! It has become part of the collection of developer tools I use every day. I am a slow typer, but a fast thinker. Being able to dictate my thoughts instead of typing every word makes my work much faster.
As a Mac user, I previously tried both the built-in dictation tool and Wispr Flow. I liked each of them, but I also found that they had distinct disadvantages. The built-in Mac dictation tool is amazing for certain things because it transcribes your speech one word at a time. However, I was never able to turn it into something I used every day because I frequently found that it would ignore my voice in certain types of text boxes. Handy does not seem to have that problem. Similarly, I loved using Wispr Flow, but I felt that it was too expensive.
Handy is an amazing alternative! To be transparent, it still has a few minor kinks to work out. For example, I occasionally get a bad transcription, and it has somehow put an insane number of icons in the top bar of my Mac. But given that Handy is completely free, I really do not mind.
I highly recommend checking out Handy. Beyond that, you should also check out CJ, who has built a number of other really cool projects!
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