AudioBud 0.1.0 (milestone A)

AudioBud's first working local prototype, forked from Handy 0.8.3. Press a hotkey, speak, and your words land in whatever text field has focus. Transcription runs on your own machine; no audio leaves it.

Install (Windows)

Download the .exe installer below and run it. The build is not code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen shows a warning on first launch: choose More info, then Run anyway. Code signing arrives in milestone B.

On first run, AudioBud opens onboarding, where you pick a model and download it. Grant microphone permission when prompted. The default hotkey is Ctrl+Alt+Space; the default engine on Windows is Parakeet V3.

Prefer to build it yourself? See build from source.

What's in it

• Local transcription with Silero VAD silence trimming. A choice of engines: Parakeet (ONNX/DirectML, the Windows default) and Whisper (whisper.cpp/Vulkan), plus Moonshine, SenseVoice, GigaAM, Canary, and Cohere, each downloadable from inside the app.
• Push-to-talk or toggle, a configurable global hotkey, and an optional auto-submit key.
• Optional LLM post-processing through a provider of your choice (off by default; your API key stays on your machine).
• Custom-words .txt import, transcription history with retention controls, a live input meter and output test, GPU/accelerator selection, and tray, autostart, and command-line flags.
• A frog and swamp visual identity, with a frog whose throat scales to your live microphone level.

Known limitations

• Only Windows (x64) is validated. The macOS and Linux code is inherited from Handy and has not been tested here.
• The installer is not code-signed yet (SmartScreen warning, above).
• Automatic update checks are disabled; they return once the updater is repointed to AudioBud's own signed feed in milestone B.

Full notes in the changelog.

AudioBud is a detached fork of Handy by CJ Pais, MIT licensed.