MacParakeet
Shares rank 23 of 26 dictation apps by recommenders
Free, open-source Mac app for transcription and dictation that people find accurate, fast and light on resources. No criticism recurs in the quotes.
Free, open-source Mac app for transcription and dictation that people find accurate, fast and light on resources. No criticism recurs in the quotes.
5 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Free and open source
“which I've been using is FOSS so no payment needed”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor” “which are free and work great for my uses”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Jexxa: High Speed on Device Dictation” Good transcription quality
“I’m not even using it for diarisation just transcription and it’s amazing”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor” “which are free and work great for my uses”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Jexxa: High Speed on Device Dictation”
Other dictation apps people recommend
The four most recommended other dictation apps, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Handy | 150 | 20 | 88% | 12 | 1 mo5 owners | Approved |
| Wispr Flow | 52 | 33 | 61% | 12 | — | — |
| MacWhisper | 31 | 9 | 78% | 12 | — | Approved |
| macOS Dictation | 26 | 44 | 37% | 10 | — | — |
| MacParakeetThis page | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
All 5 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“which are free and work great for my uses”
“you're better off using MacParakeet, OpenWhispr, etc.”
“I’m not even using it for diarisation just transcription and it’s amazing”
“which I've been using is FOSS so no payment needed”
“It's much faster and lower footprint”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.