Do you use Handy for hands-free dictation?

Typing is slow, hard on your wrists, and breaks your flow - especially when working with AI. A good prompt to ChatGPT, Claude, or Cursor is often a paragraph of detailed context, and typing that out is painful. Built-in OS dictation helps, but it's usually cloud-based, locked to one language, or only works inside specific apps.

Handy is a free, open-source dictation tool that solves all of this - press a shortcut, speak, and your words are pasted into whatever text field you're in.

Why Handy?

• ✅ Free and open source (MIT licensed) - see the code on GitHub
• ✅ Runs 100% locally - your voice never leaves your computer
• ✅ Cross-platform - works on macOS (Intel + Apple Silicon), Windows, and Linux
• ✅ Uses Whisper and Parakeet models - industry-leading accuracy with automatic language detection
• ✅ Works anywhere - any text field, any app (email, Slack, Teams, IDEs, browsers)
• ✅ Push-to-talk or toggle mode with a customizable keyboard shortcut

Perfect for AI prompts

Handy shines when working with AI tools. The quality of an answer from ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or Cursor is directly tied to the quality of your prompt - and good prompts are long. Typing out a paragraph of context every time you ask for help is tedious, so most people cut corners and get worse results.

Dictating is 3-5x faster than typing, which means:

• You give the AI much richer context in the same amount of time
• You're more likely to include the "why", constraints, and examples
• You stay in flow instead of switching between thinking and typing

Other great uses

• Drafting long emails or docs without RSI
• Dictating commit messages and PR descriptions
• Chat replies in Slack or Teams
• Accessibility - hands-free text input

See also: Do you use Dictate for emails? for the Microsoft 365 built-in equivalent.