TalkType is a free, open-source voice dictation tool designed for Windows users to convert speech into text quickly and accurately. With support for over 100 languages, including English and Hebrew, TalkType allows you to hold a hotkey, speak, and see polished text appear at your cursor in any application.
Key Features:
Works seamlessly across all apps: email, Slack, Discord, VS Code, browsers, terminals, and more.
Multi-language support with best-in-class engines: NVIDIA Parakeet TDT v3 for English and 24 European languages, ivrit.ai fine-tuned Whisper for Hebrew, and OpenAI Whisper for 99 other languages.
Automatic language detection and routing to the most suitable engine based on your input.
AI-powered cleanup that removes filler words and improves punctuation and capitalization offline by default.
Context-aware formatting: adjusts output style depending on where you're dictating (e.g., casual chat vs. formal email).
Searchable history of past dictations, stored locally in SQLite for privacy and convenience.
Target Audience and Benefits:
Ideal for professionals, writers, developers, and anyone needing fast, accurate text input across multiple apps. TalkType boosts productivity by enabling hands-free typing while ensuring privacy with fully local processing and no telemetry. Installation is straightforward via WinGet, making it easy to deploy on Windows 10/11 systems.
Whether you're drafting emails, coding in VS Code, or chatting in Slack, TalkType simplifies the process by transforming your speech into clean, polished text at your cursor. Install TalkType via WinGet and start dictating in seconds.
README
Free, open-source voice dictation for Windows. Hold a hotkey, speak, release — and clean, polished text appears at your cursor in any app.
Inspired by the best of OpenFlow and Wispr Flow but free forever, open source, and everything runs locally on your PC.
Features
Dictate anywhere — works in every app: email, Slack, Discord, VS Code, browsers, terminals
Hold or toggle — hold Ctrl+Win to talk (release to finish), or tap it to toggle; Esc cancels
Best-in-class engines, picked per language:
English (+ 24 European languages): NVIDIA Parakeet TDT v3 — faster and more accurate than Whisper large, at 1/5 the size
Hebrew (עברית): ivrit.ai fine-tuned Whisper — the best free Hebrew speech model, handles Hebrew-with-English naturally
99 other languages: OpenAI Whisper
Auto language detection — dictate Hebrew one moment, English the next; each dictation is routed to the best engine automatically
Quick language switch — press Ctrl+Alt+L (configurable) to cycle Auto → English → Hebrew → …; the choice flashes on screen, shows as a badge on the tray icon, and is also in the tray's right-click Language menu
AI cleanup (built-in, offline, on by default) — removes filler words ("um", "uh", "כאילו", "אה"), fixes punctuation and capitalization
Context-aware formatting — the same speech comes out right for where you're dictating: casual in chat apps (Slack, Discord, WhatsApp), full sentences in email, left verbatim in terminals (no capitalization "fixes" on your shell commands) and in AI assistants (Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini). Even browser tabs are detected: Gmail gets email style, WhatsApp Web gets chat style
AI rewrite (optional, opt-in) — full LLM-powered rewriting of messy speech:
Ollama — runs locally on your PC, nothing leaves your machine (requires Ollama)
OpenAI / Anthropic / Groq — bring your own API key. ⚠️ These send your dictated text (never audio) to the provider's servers; the settings screen warns you before you turn it on
Planned: Windows Phi Silica (the built-in on-device rewrite model on Copilot+ PCs) once Microsoft's GPU/CPU rollout stabilizes
Custom dictionary — teach it names and jargon ("pie side six" → "PySide6")
Voice snippets — say "my sign off" and your saved template is inserted; supports {rest}, {date}, {time}, {clipboard}
Searchable history — full-text search over past dictations, stored locally in SQLite
No account. No telemetry. No subscription.
Privacy
Your audio never leaves your machine. Models run locally and work fully offline after the one-time download. Cleanup is rule-based and offline by default. The only feature that can ever send anything to the internet is the optional AI rewrite when set to a cloud provider (off by default, uses your own API key, and the settings screen shows a clear warning) — choosing Ollama keeps even that fully local. Full policy: PRIVACY.md.
Install
Via winget (recommended — no SmartScreen warning):
winget install achigever26.talktype
(The full ID is needed because another product also happens to be named TalkType.)
Then the first-run wizard downloads the speech models for your languages (145 MB – 1.6 GB depending on choices). Hold Ctrl+Win and start talking.
> SmartScreen note: Windows may warn about an unknown publisher — TalkType is a new open-source project without a paid code-signing certificate. Click "More info" → "Run anyway", or build from source below. Every release is built publicly by GitHub Actions from this source, with SHA256 checksums attached.
A portable ZIP (no installer) is also available on the releases page.
Code signing
TalkType binaries are not yet code-signed — that's why direct downloads show the SmartScreen warning (installing via winget avoids it). We plan to sign releases through the SignPath Foundation's free open-source program once the project meets their visibility criteria. Every release is built publicly by GitHub Actions from this source with SHA256 checksums, so you can always verify what you're running.
Requirements
Windows 10/11, 64-bit
4 GB+ RAM (8 GB recommended for the Hebrew model)
No GPU needed — everything runs on CPU. (CUDA GPU is supported for extra speed: install CUDA 12 + cuDNN 9 and pick "cuda" in settings.)
Rule-based (offline) + optional LLM via your API key
Text insertion
Clipboard-paste that snapshots and restores your clipboard (all formats, incl. images), keeps its own writes out of Win+V clipboard history, RTL-safe. Alternative: per-character Unicode typing that never touches the clipboard
UI
PySide6 tray app
Known limitations
Text can't be injected into elevated (admin) windows — Windows blocks this by design. The text is copied to the clipboard instead.
Language auto-detection is per-dictation, not mid-sentence (mixed sentences like Hebrew-with-English-terms are handled fine by the models themselves).
The first dictation after startup takes a few extra seconds while the model loads.
License
MIT. PySide6 is used under LGPLv3 (dynamically linked). Speech models retain their upstream licenses: Parakeet (CC-BY-4.0), Whisper (MIT), ivrit.ai models (Apache-2.0 with attribution).
