Blog · field notes
Field notes on dictation, Whisper, and typing less
Guides and honest comparisons from the people building OpenVoiceFlow — a free, open-source, on-device dictation app for macOS. We compare our own product to its competitors here, so every comparison names its bias and hedges its claims. When in doubt, we understate.
The best dictation software for Mac in 2026, honestly compared
Apple Dictation, OpenVoiceFlow, Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, MacWhisper, VoiceInk — sorted by the three questions that actually decide it: where your audio goes, how you pay, and what happens after transcription.
The free Wispr Flow alternative that keeps your voice on your Mac
What you get by switching, what you honestly give up, and why "cancel whenever you're convinced" is the whole sales pitch. Includes the ten-minute migration.
How to dictate on a Mac — built-in dictation, and when you'll outgrow it
Two minutes to turn on the dictation your Mac already has, the punctuation commands worth memorizing, and a fair account of where the built-in feature runs out of road.
Which Whisper model is right for dictation?
tiny to large-v3-turbo: what actually changes as models grow, why turbo is the happy ending, and the accuracy problem no model size fixes — with a thirty-second test that beats any benchmark.
Offline dictation on a Mac: what actually works with the Wi-Fi off
The airplane test separates marketing from architecture. A fifteen-minute setup for a fully offline pipeline — local Whisper transcription plus local AI cleanup with Ollama.
Voice typing for developers: dictating prompts, PRs, and reviews
AI pair programming turned your main output into prose. Speak the English, keep the keyboard for the code — and teach the dictionary what "kubectl" is before judging accuracy.
Reading about dictation is slower than trying it.
Free, open source, on-device. The download is smaller than most of these articles' word counts deserve.