Sotto is an open source alternative to Superwhisper, Wispr Flow, and MacWhisper. Local-first macOS voice dictation menu bar app running WhisperKit, Parakeet, and MLX ASR models on Apple Silicon. MIT licensed, 27 GitHub stars, no terminal required to start, and last released 2026-10-17.
Local-first macOS voice dictation menu bar app running WhisperKit, Parakeet, and MLX ASR models on Apple Silicon.
Should you switch?
Built by Evert Junior (founder of Maestri), Sotto is best for Apple Silicon Mac users and developers orchestrating coding agents who want a lightweight push-to-talk menu bar app that transcribes voice locally via WhisperKit, Parakeet, or Qwen3 ASR and types directly into any agent terminal or cursor with zero cloud accounts or subscriptions.
You use Windows, Linux, or an Intel Mac, run an older macOS version (README requires macOS 26+ on Apple Silicon), or need dual-stream system audio capture to record other participants on Zoom, Meet, or Teams calls (capture is currently microphone-only plus imported audio files).
Do not confuse this free MIT project (github.com/evertjr/Sotto) with the unrelated paid commercial app at sotto.to ($49). Also note that Sotto runs unsandboxed because macOS global hotkeys and accessibility text insertion cannot operate inside the App Sandbox, and models (39 MB to 1.6 GB) download on first use.
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Community proof
Some quotes here endorse the approach rather than report first-hand use, or report a problem. We label those.
"Hi! Thanks for Sotto, it's great for dictation. I'd like to use it to transcribe calls (Meet/Zoom/Teams), which needs the *other side's* audio too. Right now capture is mic-only (`AVAudioEngine.inputNode`)."
"Every new user-visible string is translated for `de`, `es`, `fr`, `ja`, `pt-BR`, `zh-Hans` in `Localizable.xcstrings`. Audio playback uses `AVAudioPlayer` and is stopped on view disappear / row deletion / Clear All to avoid lingering playback."
Maintenance health
Can you do it today?
No public launch path found.
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