Speakhold
Speakhold vs Wispr Flow
Wispr Flow is the best-known voice keyboard for Mac. Speakhold does the hold-to-talk part natively, on your own hardware, for nothing.
Where they are the same
Hold a key, talk, release, and clean text appears where the cursor is. Both remove filler words and fix punctuation. Both learn names you add to a dictionary. Both run from the menu bar.
Where they differ
| Speakhold | Wispr Flow | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, MIT licence | US$12–15 a month, with a limited free tier |
| Where speech-to-text runs | Yes, on your Mac | Cloud |
| Works offline | Yes | No |
| Cleanup | Apple Intelligence on-device, or Claude with your key | Cloud |
| Hotkey | Any chord, left/right-specific, hold or toggle, hands-free lock | Configurable |
| Records calls and writes notes | Yes, both sides, no bot | No |
| Windows / iPhone | No, Mac only | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | No |
As of October 2026. Corrections welcome via pull request.
Why people switch
Wispr Flow is cloud-first: the audio goes up, the text comes down. That is fine for many people and a problem for anyone dictating client material, medical notes or anything under an NDA. Speakhold keeps the audio on the Mac; the only thing that can leave is the transcript text, and only if you turn on the Claude engine. The other reason is the bill. A subscription for dictation adds up when the Neural Engine in the Mac is sitting idle.
Why you might stay with Wispr Flow
If you dictate on Windows or an iPhone as well, Wispr Flow covers all three and Speakhold is Mac only. Wispr's cloud cleanup is strong on long, rambling dictations. If you want a company behind the product with support, that is Wispr.
Does Speakhold show the words as I speak like Wispr?
Not any more. Early versions streamed the words into the bar; it made the bar run across the screen, so now the bar is a short glowing waveform while you talk and the text lands when you release.
What does it need?
macOS 14 or newer on Apple Silicon, microphone and accessibility permission, and a one-time 630 MB model download.
Can it do what Wispr does with my style?
Settings → Cleanup has a free-text style box ("British spelling, no exclamation marks") and a dictionary. On macOS 26 the cleanup runs on-device.
Try it
Free · MIT · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon · brew install --cask sturzael/tap/speakhold
Compared with Willow Voice · Wispr Flow · Superwhisper · MacWhisper · Fireflies · Otter · How to record a call without a bot