Whispur

Whispur is a macOS menu-bar dictation app that turns speech into polished text and drops it straight back into the app you are already using.

Hold a shortcut to talk, or use an optional toggle shortcut for hands-free capture. Whispur records, transcribes, optionally cleans up the transcript with an LLM, and pastes the result where your cursor is.

whispur.app · Download DMG · Changelog

Screenshots

Menu bar	Recording overlay

Setup checklist	Provider settings

Features

• Lives in the macOS menu bar instead of taking over your desktop
• Hold-to-talk or toggle-to-latch recording
• Multi-provider speech-to-text with local Apple dictation support
• Optional transcript cleanup with provider-selectable LLMs
• Paste-back into the active app with clipboard preservation
• Custom vocabulary and a single editable cleanup prompt for technical dictation
• Local-first default path when you stick with Apple on-device transcription
• Sparkle-based auto-updates for signed releases

Install

DMG download

Download the latest signed DMG from GitHub Releases.

Homebrew cask

Homebrew installation is planned but not published yet.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/sophiie-ai/whispur.git
cd whispur
brew install xcodegen create-dmg
make all
make run

Setup

1. Launch Whispur from Applications. It opens as a menu-bar app.
2. Open Settings from the menu bar.
3. Complete the setup checklist for microphone and Accessibility access.
4. Choose your speech provider.
5. Add API keys for any cloud providers you want to use.
6. Optionally add an LLM provider for transcript cleanup.
7. Review your hold and toggle shortcuts.
8. Dictate into any focused text field.

Usage

• Hold shortcut: Press and hold your configured shortcut to record, then release to transcribe and paste.
• Toggle shortcut: Press once to start recording, press again to stop and process.
• Activity log: Open Settings → Activity to inspect raw and cleaned transcripts.
• Prompt tuning: Open Settings → Prompts to override the cleanup prompt or add domain vocabulary.

Provider Matrix

Speech-to-text

Provider	Status	Notes
Apple Speech Recognition	Available	On-device and local
OpenAI Whisper	Available	Cloud STT via API key
Deepgram	Available	Cloud STT via API key
ElevenLabs Scribe	Available	Cloud STT via API key

Transcript cleanup

Provider	Status	Notes
Anthropic Claude	Available	High-quality cleanup
OpenAI	Available	Fast cleanup path
Groq	Available	OpenAI-compatible endpoint
AWS Bedrock	Available	Claude via Bedrock, authenticated with a Bedrock API key (AWS_BEARER_TOKEN_BEDROCK)

Privacy

Audio stays local by default when you use the built-in Apple speech provider. If you switch to a cloud STT or LLM provider, the audio or transcript needed for that provider is sent only to the services you configure.

Whispur stores API keys in the macOS Keychain.

Development

make generate
make all
make dmg

Key project areas:

• Sources/App: app lifecycle, menu-bar scenes, state
• Sources/Audio: recording and normalization
• Sources/Providers: STT and LLM integrations
• Sources/Pipeline: dictation orchestration
• Sources/Input: shortcuts and paste-back
• Sources/UI: menu bar, onboarding, settings, about window

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

Whispur is released under the MIT License.