Privacy-first voice dictation for Windows. Press a hotkey, speak, and Arc Flow types clean, punctuated text into whatever app you're using — your browser, editor, chat, email, or IDE. Everything can run 100% on-device: your voice and text never leave your machine unless you explicitly choose a cloud provider.
Arc Flow is free to use, and free forever. It is not open-source — see LICENSE — but there is no paywall, subscription, or account requirement for the app itself.
This repository is the public release and support hub for Arc Flow. It is used for downloads, documentation, bug reports, and feature requests.
This repository does not contain Arc Flow's source code. Arc Flow is proprietary software — free to use, but closed source. The application's implementation lives in a private repository and is not published here or anywhere else. See LICENSE for the full terms.
Vision: Speaking is a basic human right. No one should have to pay to turn their own voice into text.
Mission: Keep it that way. Arc Flow's core dictation — speech-to-text, anywhere, on any app — will never sit behind a paywall, a subscription, or an account. Free isn't an introductory offer here; it's the point of the project.
- Mission & Vision
- What it does
- Privacy model
- Using Arc Flow
- Features
- Support the project
- Download
- Reporting a bug
- Requesting a feature
- Including logs and screenshots safely
- Support
- Security
- Privacy policy
- Changelog
- License
Arc Flow is a desktop dictation tool built to be local-first. A global hotkey starts a dictation session; a small floating overlay shows that it's listening; your speech is transcribed by an on-device Whisper model, cleaned up and punctuated by a local LLM (or your chosen cloud model), and then typed into the focused text field of whatever application you're in.
It works system-wide — anywhere a keyboard can type — by detecting the focused window and inserting text via the Windows clipboard or simulated keystrokes.
The Local/Cloud choice you make during onboarding drives a runtime routing policy. The active mode is always visible (a badge on the overlay names the active provider whenever cloud processing is in use).
| Mode | Speech-to-text | Text cleanup / transforms | Data leaves device? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local (default) | On-device (Whisper / Parakeet) | On-device (bundled llama.cpp or Ollama) | Never |
| Cloud | Your chosen provider (Deepgram, ElevenLabs, Mistral, OpenAI, Groq, custom) | Your chosen provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Groq, DeepSeek, custom) | Only to your provider, using your API key |
Cloud API keys are stored locally (Windows Credential Manager) and are sent only to the provider you pick — never to any Arc Flow server. Local mode is fully functional offline after the one-time model download.
Arc Flow also talks to a small optional backend of ours for update checks, in-app notices, and (only if you choose to use them) feedback/bug-report forms and opt-in crash reporting — never for your dictation content. Full details: PRIVACY_POLICY.md.
A plain-English walkthrough for anyone who just downloaded the app — no code required.
Download the installer, run it, and open Arc Flow. The first time it opens, a short setup wizard walks you through 6 steps:
- Welcome
- Permissions — a quick check that Arc Flow can access your microphone
- Speech-to-text — pick On-Device (works offline, private) or a Cloud provider
- Text cleanup — pick On-Device, Ollama, or a Cloud provider for punctuation/grammar cleanup and Command Mode (you can skip this — your words still get typed, just without AI cleanup)
- Shortcut — confirm your dictation hotkey and pick a microphone if you have more than one
- Done
Right after setup finishes, a one-time guide appears explaining every hotkey and the app's main sections — it only shows once, but everything in it is repeated below.
| Hotkey | What happens |
|---|---|
Ctrl + Space (default, changeable) |
Press once to start dictating from anywhere. Press again to stop — your cleaned-up words are typed into whatever field is focused. |
Ctrl + D (default, changeable) |
Command Mode. Select some text first, then press this and speak an instruction ("make this more formal," "summarize this"). The selection is rewritten in place. |
Ctrl + Q (default, changeable) |
Notes Mode. Speak from anywhere with nothing selected — it's saved as a new note with an auto-generated title, no typing into another app. |
Ctrl + Win (fixed) |
Pause/resume all hotkeys. Press and hold both keys together for about a second to turn every hotkey above off or on — handy while gaming or in a full-screen app. A quick tap alone won't trigger it. |
All three configurable hotkeys can be changed any time in Settings → Hotkeys, including binding a mouse side-button instead of a keyboard combo.
| Section | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Home | Time-aware greetings, dictation history, streaks, and stats |
| Dictionary | Teach Arc Flow words/names it keeps mishearing |
| Snippets | Smart or Always voice shortcuts, with one switch to pause every snippet |
| Style | Tone presets (Formal/Casual/Very Casual) per context (personal, work, email), and how aggressively cleanup rewrites your words |
| Notes | Everything you've dictated with the Notes hotkey, plus a normal rich-text editor |
| Settings | Hotkeys, microphone, AI Mode, Speech-to-Text, Privacy, Appearance, Advanced |
| Help | This same walkthrough, plus Send Feedback / Report a Bug / Suggest a Feature |
Arc Flow checks for updates in the background. When one's available, a small download icon lights up next to the notification bell — click it to see what's new before installing. Occasionally a release is marked as required (a security or data-safety fix); those show a full-screen prompt instead of the small icon. Either way, your models, snippets, dictionary, history, and settings are always preserved across an update.
Help → Send Feedback / Report a Bug / Suggest a Feature send directly to us — nothing is sent unless you press Send. Crash reports are separate: off by default (Settings → Privacy), and even when on, a crash is only ever saved to a local file for you to review — sending one to us is a separate, explicit action. You're also welcome to use this repository's issue templates instead of, or in addition to, the in-app forms.
- Real-time dictation into any application via a configurable global
hotkey (default
Ctrl + Space;Ctrl + Winpauses/resumes all hotkeys). - Command Mode (
Ctrl + D) — select text in any app, speak an instruction ("make this more formal", "summarize this", "translate to Hindi"), and Arc Flow replaces the selection with the transformed result. - Notes Mode (
Ctrl + Q) — speak a note from anywhere; it's saved with an auto-generated title. - Automatic cleanup — filler-word removal ("um", "uh"), punctuation, capitalization, and spoken self-corrections ("no, make that five").
- Writing styles — per-context tone presets (formal / casual / very casual) for personal messages, work messages, email, etc.
- Personal dictionary — teach Arc Flow your names, jargon, and product terms.
- Context-aware snippets — choose Smart insertion when a trigger should expand only in the right sentence context, or Always for classic macro behavior. Pause all snippets at once without deleting them.
- Hinglish transcription — speak mixed Hindi and English and keep the result in familiar Roman script instead of translating it into English.
- Local notes — a built-in 2-pane notes editor.
- History & stats — a searchable log of past dictations with word/session counts.
- Cloud providers, your choice — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google (Gemini), Groq, DeepSeek, or any custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint for cleanup; Deepgram, ElevenLabs, Mistral, OpenAI, or Groq for cloud speech-to-text — all using your own API key.
- In-app notifications and release notes — see what's new without leaving the app.
- Self-updating — optional updates show a small icon with what's-new notes; required updates show a clear full-screen prompt. Your local data always survives an update.
- Feedback built in — Send Feedback, Report a Bug, and Suggest a Feature forms right in the Help page; opt-in local crash reports you can review before choosing to send.
- Hardware-aware — detects NVIDIA (CUDA), AMD/Intel (Vulkan), or CPU-only and recommends an appropriate model and backend.
- System tray — runs quietly in the background; the hotkey works even when the window is hidden.
Arc Flow's dictation will always be free — that's the mission, not a promotional phase. If it's useful to you and you'd like to help keep it that way, you can support development on Ko-fi:
This is entirely optional — nothing in the app is gated behind it, and it never will be.
The latest installer (MSI) and portable build (ZIP) are published on the Releases page of this repository, along with SHA256 checksums for every file. Always verify the checksum before running an installer you've downloaded, especially from a mirror.
Builds are also available from the Arc Flow website (linked in this repository's "About" section, top right of this page).
Found something broken? Please open a bug report. The form will ask for your app version, OS version, installation type, and steps to reproduce — that's the information that helps us fix it fastest.
If the app crashed outright, use the crash report template instead — it asks for a few crash-specific details (what you were doing, the error message, and the crash log) that a regular bug report doesn't.
Have an idea or a workflow Arc Flow doesn't support yet? Open a feature request. Tell us the problem you're trying to solve, not just the solution you have in mind — it helps us design something that fits well with the rest of the app.
Logs and screenshots are genuinely helpful, but please check them before attaching:
- Redact API keys or tokens if a log line ever shows one (Arc Flow's own logs shouldn't print keys, but double-check custom-endpoint configs).
- Don't paste dictated audio transcripts or note content if it's personal or sensitive — a description of what happened is usually enough.
- Crop screenshots to the relevant window/dialog rather than your full desktop, if your desktop has personal information visible.
- Arc Flow's log file can be found via Settings → Help → Open Log Folder in the app.
For general "how do I…" questions, see SUPPORT.md. For bugs and feature requests, use the issue templates above. For anything sensitive — security reports, account or licensing issues, accidental exposure of private data — do not open a public issue; see SECURITY.md instead.
Please report vulnerabilities and other sensitive issues privately rather than through a public GitHub issue. Full instructions are in SECURITY.md.
The complete, plain-language breakdown of what stays on your device, what only goes to a cloud provider you chose, and the short list of things our own backend ever sees, is in PRIVACY_POLICY.md.
Release-by-release history of what's shipped is in CHANGELOG.md, and every release on the Releases page includes its own detailed notes.
Arc Flow is free to use, but it is proprietary, closed-source software. This repository contains no application source code — only documentation, issue templates, and release artifacts. See LICENSE for the full terms governing your use of the compiled application.