OpenLess

Open-source hold-to-talk voice input that streams AI-polished text to your cursor in any app.

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OpenLess is an open-source, local-first voice input app for macOS, Windows, Linux and Android. Hold a hotkey, speak, and it transcribes with a cloud ASR provider of your choice or a bundled local model, polishes the text in a selectable style and inserts it at the cursor. Users bring their own API keys; there is no subscription.

Pros

  • Free and open source; bring your own ASR and LLM credentials, no vendor lock-in
  • Local ASR option (Qwen3-ASR on macOS, Foundry Local Whisper on Windows) and on-device history
  • Style packs, learning dictionary, translation hotkey and streaming insertion

Cons

  • Requires configuring API keys for cloud providers before use
  • macOS build is ad-hoc signed and needs a Terminal command to bypass Gatekeeper
  • No published recognition-language count; coverage depends on the chosen provider
Platforms
  • macOS
  • Windows
  • Linux
  • Android
Speech processing
Hybrid
Works offline
Yes
Languages
—

Pricing

Pricing model
Open source
Free tier
Yes

Features

  • Yes Works in any app
  • No Real-time transcription
  • Yes Auto punctuation
  • Yes AI cleanup
  • Yes Custom vocabulary
  • No Voice commands
  • Yes Push to talk
  • No Auto language detection
  • Yes Translation
  • No File transcription
  • No Meeting notes
  • Yes Multilingual interface
  • Yes History

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Last verified 2026-09-19