Stop typing and just speak. Snaply brings instant AI dictation to every app and website on your Mac. Because it runs 100% locally on-device, your data remains completely private.๐ Best of all? Itโs entirely free for individuals.๐ฐ
Hey Product Hunt! ๐
Iโm Giacomo, the developer behind Snaply.
Iโm incredibly excited to share what Iโve been working on. To be honest, the story of Snaply starts with me being a user of other dictation apps. I really loved the concept of AI voice typing, but I hit two major roadblocks that I just couldn't get past:
The Cost: Existing tools were charging up to $12/month for individuals and $40/month for enterprise. That felt like a lot for a utility.
The Privacy: I wasn't comfortable with the idea that my voice recordings and private thoughts were being processed on someone else's servers and potentially used for data collection.
I wanted a tool that respected my privacy and my wallet. So, I built Snaply. ๐
What is Snaply?
Snaply is an ultra-fast AI dictation tool for macOS that runs 100% locally on your device. Because we don't need to pay for expensive cloud processing servers, I am making Snaply 100% Free for individuals. โจ
Why youโll love it:
๐ 100% Private & Offline: Your voice data never leaves your Mac. It runs on local Whisper models, so you can dictate sensitive emails or confidential code without worry.
โก Incredibly Fast: Since there is no latency sending data to the cloud and back, Snaply is blazing fast and responsive.
๐ธ Free Forever (Individuals): No monthly subscriptions for personal use. Just download and go.
๐ง Smart Grammar: It doesn't just transcribe; it polishes. It fixes grammar and punctuation on the fly so you don't have to edit.
How to use it (itโs super simple):
Download Snaply for Mac.
Press your shortcut key (like Function or Command).
Start speaking! Snaply types perfectly into Notion, Slack, VS Code, or wherever you are.
Iโd love for you to give it a spin and let me know what you think. Since this is the first release, your feedback means the world to me and will help shape the future of the app!
Thanks so much! ๐ Giacomo
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@venier Will check this out as Iโm still interested in a local approach.
Do you have the dictionary feature? So if I say what might get interpreted as โpsalmโ it would always be โSOMโ instead. It would be hard to leave WisprFlow without that.
Also customizing shortcut keys for quick and long mode.
Hi@kenyarmosh , we added support for custom dictionary in Beta.
Right now we run the transcription through a small LLM to polish the text and replace the custom dictionary keywords.
In the future, we will try to move toward actual biasing the transcription to use custom keywords.
Another possible future improvement is to fine tune the small LLM, as currently we are using an out of the box solution.
If you have any suggestion, we are all hears :)
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๐ก Bright idea
Congrats @venier! (the best name btw) ๐
I run a local server with an endpoint that exposes a few stt models.
Since I see youโre planning to let the user pick external models, will I be able to set up my local endpoints as well?
At the moment, we are planning to support external LLMs.
We have not yet considered external TTS models though. Which models are you hosting, and how does the API work?
Our goal is to keep the product very user friendly and oriented toward non technical users. That said, we could explore adding more advanced options that are somewhat hidden or optional for power users ๐
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@venier I expose my local models via an openAI compatible api so it should be easy for you. Basically I behaves exactly as if it were Whisper endpoint
@igeckyย Ok, perfect! Good to know. At the moment the app it's using an Nvidia model (Parakeet) running in Swift, but it shouldn't be hard to add support for Open AI compatible endpoints!
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@igeckyย @venierย Greatest inception moment...ever. Ben fatto, ragazzi.
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@venier yeah I thought you were using parakeet under the hood because of the speed but since I have it already on my server, I was wondering if I could avoid to have to download it again on the client. I like to use different models and hopping from parakeet to whisper, depending on the use case, so it would be great to be able to integrate my local endpoints ๏ฟผ
Unfortunately, building a Windows version is not currently on the roadmap.
The app is built using Electron app, which by default would be multi-platform, but we added a lot custom Swift code to make the app run smoothly on Mac.
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Hi congratulations on the launch. Do you think this will also get a windows version soon? I have been actually waiting for such a tool which is offline and does not put a hole in pocket.
Unfortunately, building a Windows version is not currently on the roadmap.
The app is built using Electron app, which by default would be multi-platform, but we added a lot custom Swift code to make the app run smoothly on Mac.
"Entirely free" is awesome for users but always makes me wonder about sustainability. If there's no cloud cost, I get it, but how do you plan to fund updates and bug fixes? Is this a lead magnet for a future "Teams" version, or will we see features gated later?
@tony_hsieh2ย Hey Tony, to be honest this is still an open question.
The idea is to build a business similar to https://opencode.ai/. They offer the tool completely free to devolepers, but found a way to charge enterprises. Start from a large adoption inside organizations and then upsell them.
+ currently people can upgrade to pro (it gives no extra feature, but if users find value in the product, they can subscribe anyways). With a large adoption base, voluntary subscription could be enough to ensure a prosperous future to the app.
Other options are: - Build a product so good and loved that gets to millions of users and eventually get acquired by some large organization that keeps it free, and maybe uses it for distribution or something. (see bun.com acquired by Anthropic). - Get large organization to pay since so many of their employees use the tool that they need special support, SSO, shared setting or just want to give back (see all the donations https://tailwindcss.com/ recently received) - Build and incredibly generous free tier like https://cal.com/, with some subset of team features behind paywall.
In short, I am not sure yet. Currently I still need to build a great product. Once that's solved, monetization will not be a hard problem to solve.
The goal is to keep it completely free for individual users (if sustainable).
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Wow, this is amazing! Local AI dictation is a game-changer for privacy. Im curious, does Snaply support multiple languages besides English out of the box?
AI dication by Snaply
AI dication by Snaply
@kenyarmoshย Hey Ken, Thanks for the interest!
We are currently adding the custom dictionary, it's going to be live by tomorrow.
I will share another comment here once it's live :)
@venierย Now that's how you win. ๐
AI dication by Snaply
Hi@kenyarmosh , we added support for custom dictionary in Beta.
Right now we run the transcription through a small LLM to polish the text and replace the custom dictionary keywords.
In the future, we will try to move toward actual biasing the transcription to use custom keywords.
Another possible future improvement is to fine tune the small LLM, as currently we are using an out of the box solution.
If you have any suggestion, we are all hears :)
AI dication by Snaply
@igecky Haha, great name!
At the moment, we are planning to support external LLMs.
We have not yet considered external TTS models though. Which models are you hosting, and how does the API work?
Our goal is to keep the product very user friendly and oriented toward non technical users. That said, we could explore adding more advanced options that are somewhat hidden or optional for power users ๐
AI dication by Snaply
@igeckyย Ok, perfect! Good to know.
At the moment the app it's using an Nvidia model (Parakeet) running in Swift, but it shouldn't be hard to add support for Open AI compatible endpoints!
@igeckyย @venierย Greatest inception moment...ever. Ben fatto, ragazzi.
AI dication by Snaply
Hey@riley_evan ! Thanks, I am glad you liked it.
Unfortunately, building a Windows version is not currently on the roadmap.
The app is built using Electron app, which by default would be multi-platform, but we added a lot custom Swift code to make the app run smoothly on Mac.
AI dication by Snaply
Hey @jagdish_vasania! Thanks, I am glad you liked it.
Unfortunately, building a Windows version is not currently on the roadmap.
The app is built using Electron app, which by default would be multi-platform, but we added a lot custom Swift code to make the app run smoothly on Mac.
X-Design
"Entirely free" is awesome for users but always makes me wonder about sustainability. If there's no cloud cost, I get it, but how do you plan to fund updates and bug fixes? Is this a lead magnet for a future "Teams" version, or will we see features gated later?
AI dication by Snaply
@tony_hsieh2ย Hey Tony, to be honest this is still an open question.
The idea is to build a business similar to https://opencode.ai/.
They offer the tool completely free to devolepers, but found a way to charge enterprises.
Start from a large adoption inside organizations and then upsell them.
+ currently people can upgrade to pro (it gives no extra feature, but if users find value in the product, they can subscribe anyways). With a large adoption base, voluntary subscription could be enough to ensure a prosperous future to the app.
Other options are:
- Build a product so good and loved that gets to millions of users and eventually get acquired by some large organization that keeps it free, and maybe uses it for distribution or something. (see bun.com acquired by Anthropic).
- Get large organization to pay since so many of their employees use the tool that they need special support, SSO, shared setting or just want to give back (see all the donations https://tailwindcss.com/ recently received)
- Build and incredibly generous free tier like https://cal.com/, with some subset of team features behind paywall.
In short, I am not sure yet. Currently I still need to build a great product. Once that's solved, monetization will not be a hard problem to solve.
The goal is to keep it completely free for individual users (if sustainable).
Wow, this is amazing! Local AI dictation is a game-changer for privacy. Im curious, does Snaply support multiple languages besides English out of the box?
AI dication by Snaply
@jaydev13ย Hi Jay, yes!
It supports the 25 main European languages.
Danish (da)Dutch (nl)English (en)Estonian (et)Finnish (fi)French (fr)German (de)Greek (el)Hungarian (hu)Italian (it)Latvian (lv)Lithuanian (lt)Maltese (mt)Polish (pl)Portuguese (pt)Romanian (ro)Slovak (sk)Slovenian (sl)Spanish (es)Swedish (sv)Russian (ru)Ukrainian (uk)