Trace transcription app for Mac
Shares rank 18 of 26 dictation apps by recommenders
People recommend Trace for fast on-device meeting transcription that marks key moments and outputs clean markdown.
People recommend Trace for fast on-device meeting transcription that marks key moments and outputs clean markdown.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 89%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, 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
Clean markdown output
“yours appears to fit my "I just want markdown" case better and to generally be more polished”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 on Hacker News “Trace is built to do transcription and hand you clean markdown”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 on Hacker News
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 | — | — |
| Trace transcription app for MacThis page | 8 | 1 | 89% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 12 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the intent is mostly to save time, not necessarily tokens”
“after using Trace browser ide , other than engineering thinking mostly things are getting automated”
“Trace is built to do transcription and hand you clean markdown”
“yours appears to fit my "I just want markdown" case better and to generally be more polished”
“it took over my mic and people couldnt hear me on teams call”
“The fast one uses NVIDIA's Parakeet-TDT 0.6b v3 model run through FluidAudio, which surprised me with how fast it was.”
“I've been using it every day for months now and I'm super happy with how it's improved my workflow”
“What I quite like about it is that during the call you can mark key moments, which then get inserted into the transcript at the right time.”
“we're also fully open source”
“the AI will iterate until KiCad's circuit 'linting' checks pass”
“Everything is managed from the terminal”
“Music is tied to memory in a way nothing else is”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.