Launched this week
Hold a shortcut and dictate into any Mac app without sending audio to the cloud. Zen Whisper keeps core speech recognition on-device, with local models, searchable transcripts, voice memos, media transcription, and Pro tools for larger models and translation.
Zen Whisper
Zen Whisper is live on Product Hunt today. 🎉
We built it because Mac dictation still felt too limited, too cloud-first, or too awkward for real everyday work.
Zen Whisper is our take on a better workflow:
🎙️ hold a shortcut and dictate into the apps you already use
🔒 keep core speech recognition local on your Mac
🌍 work across 100+ languages, with especially strong multilingual workflows for India
🎧 transcribe files, media, and supported links
✍️ use snippets, transcript history, and writing tools in one place
It starts with a free trial, stays usable on the free tier after that, and scales up if you need more.
We’d love your feedback, especially on:
dictation quality
multilingual support
latency and responsiveness
anything that still feels clunky in the workflow
Happy to answer every question here today. 🙏
the local-first angle is what would actually get me to try this over Wispr Flow or Superwhisper. I dictate a lot of technical stuff - API names, package names, product names that don't exist in any dictionary - and that's usually where on-device models fall apart compared to cloud Whisper. does Zen Whisper let you teach it a custom vocabulary/glossary of recurring terms, or is accuracy on that kind of jargon just whatever the local model ships with out of the box?
Zen Whisper
@galdayan Great question, and honestly, we do not believe in hiding behind jargon. If a product cannot handle real usage, users find out immediately.
So no, it is not just “whatever the local model ships with out of the box.” Zen Whisper has both a dictionary and snippets built in, and they are meant exactly for recurring terms, product names, API names, package names, and other words that generic models usually miss.
We care a lot about that layer because for many people, the hard part is not everyday English, it is the repeated technical and domain-specific vocabulary. I’m also attaching a quick demo here that shows the dictionary/snippets flow in action: demo video
If helpful, I can also share more about how we think about technical dictation quality specifically.
And please be assured, I'm always here to help. I'm just an email (hello@zenproducts.ai) or a message away.
@zenproducts that answers it - dictionary + snippets covering API/package names is exactly the gap I was worried about. watched the demo, looks solid. going to try it on some real dictation sessions this week and see how it holds up on actual jargon vs the happy path.
Zen Whisper
@galdayan Absolutely! I am sure it should work but in any case happy to learn and improve :)
Love that the transcript search lives right inside the app instead of needing yet another tab, and the on-device approach means my random shower thoughts stay mine. Clean execution.
Zen Whisper
@oda_xing Really appreciate that, Avery. That exact “no extra tab, no unnecessary cloud hop” feeling is what we wanted Zen Whisper to have.
We wanted it to feel like one connected workflow: live dictation, transcript search, voice memos, long recordings, and media transcription all inside the app. So whether it’s a quick thought, a full meeting, or a YouTube/media upload, everything stays easy to find, cleanly formatted, and under your control. Thanks a lot for noticing the execution.
GrowMeOrganic
There are one or more voice dictation apps everyday on PH. What makes this different?
Zen Whisper
@iamanantgupta Thanks Anant. A few things make Zen Whisper genuinely different for us.
First, it’s local-first, so the core speech-to-text runs on your Mac instead of forcing a cloud workflow from day one. We’ve also worked hard to keep it light on system resources, because a lot of dictation apps feel surprisingly heavy while just sitting in the background.
Second, it’s not only for live dictation. You can record long voice memos or even full meetings, then get a clean full transcription inside the app. You can also upload audio or video, or paste supported media links like YouTube, and Zen Whisper will transcribe and format everything beautifully.
Third, we focused a lot on what happens after the words land. You can fix grammar locally, polish rough writing, or select text anywhere and ask Zen Whisper to rephrase, formalize, shorten, expand, or clean it up without breaking your flow.
And finally, a huge part of the product for us has been accuracy, formatting quality, and multilingual support, especially for Indian and regional language workflows. So we don’t think of it as just another voice dictation app, but as a lightweight private speech and writing workflow for Mac.
The on-device core recognition is the headline, but the rephrase/formalize/clean-up step sounds like it needs a real language model, not just speech-to-text. Does that part stay local too, or does selecting text and asking for a rewrite send it out somewhere? That's the boundary I'd actually want drawn clearly, since "local-first" usually means the easy part stays local and the interesting part quietly doesn't.
Any plans to launch the iOS version too?
Zen Whisper
@ankur_jeswani We did explore an iPhone version, but we ran into one privacy issue we were not happy with.
On iOS, once the keyboard gets mic access, the microphone can stay active longer than we would like, even after you are done dictating. That means users may keep seeing the orange mic indicator at the top, and we did not feel that was a clean or private experience.
We did not want to ship something where the mic could feel “still on” unless you went back and stopped it manually. So for now, we chose not to release an iOS version until that experience gets better. If Apple loosens that control in the future, we could move on an iOS launch very quickly.
Zen Whisper
Zen Whisper is live on Product Hunt today. 🎉
We built it because Mac dictation still felt too limited, too cloud-first, or too awkward for real everyday work.
Zen Whisper is our take on a better workflow:
🎙️ hold a shortcut and dictate into the apps you already use
🔒 keep core speech recognition local on your Mac
🌍 work across 100+ languages, with especially strong multilingual workflows for India
🎧 transcribe files, media, and supported links
✍️ use snippets, transcript history, and writing tools in one place
It starts with a free trial, stays usable on the free tier after that, and scales up if you need more.
We’d love your feedback, especially on:
dictation quality
multilingual support
latency and responsiveness
anything that still feels clunky in the workflow
Happy to answer every question here today. 🙏