# Whistle speech-to-text

24 Hacker News commenters recommended Whistle speech-to-text and 16 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free, offline speech-to-text app that people find fast and accurate for its small size on local hardware. Common caveat: weaker outside English and with some accents.

## Why people recommend it

- Fast on modest hardware (4 comments): "the transcription literally takes seconds for a minute of audio so it's not holding up your device" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46347004)) "it can be fit into a l3 cache on a cpu and be essentially always on" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50009447)) "especially given the size and the fact that it runs on the CPU" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50010134))
- Free, offline, cross-platform (4 comments): "a free, completely offline transcription app that's available on all platforms with CUDA support" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46578668)) "If you're looking for free STT you can use Whistle across Windows/Mac/Linux and Android" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47044822)) "Open source, multi platform" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50015565))
- Accurate transcription for English (4 comments): "It transcribed multiple sentences I gave it with complex timing and words and in such a small footprint, I'm super impressed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50009247)) "incredibly accurate I tried to break it and it understood me perfectly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50008830)) "Seems to do roughly as well as parakeet (both speed and quality) so far." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50023631))
- Runs locally, keeping audio private (3 comments): "I'd much rather have something where I choose to record a meeting, process it locally" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48097500)) "fully working piece of local software that does exactly what he wants" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48488675)) "Thanks for putting in the work. Only a matter of time before all of this runs locally at very high accuracy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50014308))

## What people warn about

- Poor non-English and accent recognition (4 comments): "Spanish is not good (seems to write non existing words and/or with terrible typos...) but English seem to work good" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50008838)) "It does very poorly in detecting Dutch vs. German for this Flemish-accented speaker." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50024213)) "Mexican and venezuelan aren't detected correctly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50009324))
- High error rate overall (5 comments): "I find the quality of transcription quite poor with a high error rate." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50020397)) "the quality/accuracy is pretty "meh"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50012217)) "Error rate is crazy high." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50015389))
- Outputs filler or invented sentences (3 comments): "it seems to get stuck sometimes where it just outputs "Thank you." as a default" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50010298)) "trying to fit what it thinks it's heard into an actual sentence" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50019187)) "with that sample of one, it got it wrong" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50014107))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Handy](https://hackerapproved.com/p/handy.md): 150 recommend
- [Wispr Flow](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wispr-flow.md): 52 recommend
- [MacWhisper](https://hackerapproved.com/p/macwhisper.md): 31 recommend
- [macOS Dictation](https://hackerapproved.com/p/macos-built-in-dictation.md): 26 recommend
- [Hex voice-to-text app for macOS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/hex.md): 26 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Whistle speech-to-text", https://hackerapproved.com/p/whistle/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).