Eqho — free, offline voice-to-text dictation

Speak anywhere Windows lets you type. Press a hotkey, talk, and your words appear in whatever app is focused — Word, your browser, Slack, code editors, anything. Powered by OpenAI's Whisper (via faster-whisper), running 100% on your machine.

• 🔒 Private by design — no cloud, no account, no API key. Your voice never leaves your computer.
• ⚡ Fast — GPU-accelerated (NVIDIA CUDA) with automatic CPU fallback; real-time preview as you speak.
• 🆓 Free and open source — no subscription, no word limits, ever.
• 🌍 13 languages — English-optimized by default, multilingual models one click away.

Install

Windows (recommended): grab Eqho-Setup-<version>.exe from Releases → double-click → done. Prefer no installer? Use the portable .zip.

Linux / macOS: download the .tar.gz / .dmg from Releases (core dictation supported since v0.6.0 — see platform notes).

From source:

git clone https://github.com/DanielMevit/Eqho.git
cd Eqho
python -m venv venv && venv\Scripts\activate   # Windows
pip install -r requirements.txt
python run.py

First run downloads the default speech model (distil-large-v3, ~1.5 GB) — after that, everything is offline.

How it works

1. Click into any app where you want text.
2. Press Alt+Q — a floating bar shows "Listening…".
3. Speak naturally. Watch the live transcription preview.
4. Press Alt+Q again — your words are typed into the app.

Toggle or hold-to-talk, your choice. The hotkey is customizable.

Features

• Dictation into any application via clipboard paste or simulated typing
• Live transcription overlay with adjustable position and opacity
• Settings dashboard — dark, light, and system themes
• Transcript history — searchable, exportable, stored locally, one-click clear
• Custom vocabulary — teach it your names and jargon
• Voice commands — "new line", "period", "delete that" (opt-in)
• Text replacements — auto-correct words the model keeps missing
• Volume ducking — quiets your speakers while you dictate
• Hallucination filtering — silence won't be transcribed as "Thank you." (a known Whisper quirk)
• Model picker — from tiny (150 MB, fastest) to large-v3 (3.1 GB, most accurate); distil-large-v3 default hits the sweet spot for English

Languages

English · Spanish · Mandarin · Japanese · Korean · Vietnamese · Arabic · Ukrainian · French · German · Portuguese · Russian · Italian

Distil models are English-optimized; for other languages pick large-v3-turbo or medium in the Models tab.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11 (primary), Linux X11, or macOS
• Python 3.10+ (only when running from source)
• Optional: NVIDIA GPU + CUDA Toolkit 12.x for ~5× faster transcription (winget install Nvidia.CUDA)

Platform notes

• Linux: needs libportaudio2, xclip, and an AppIndicator library for the tray; global hotkeys and text injection target X11 (Wayland is on the roadmap).
• macOS: grant Eqho Accessibility and Input Monitoring in System Settings → Privacy & Security; first launch of the unsigned app is right-click → Open.
• Unsigned Windows binaries show a SmartScreen prompt on first run — "More info" → "Run anyway". Code signing is planned.

FAQ

Is my audio uploaded anywhere? No. Transcription runs locally via CTranslate2. The only network access is the one-time model download.

Does it cost anything? No. Free, open source, no premium tier.

How accurate is it? Whisper-class accuracy — state of the art for open speech recognition. Pick a bigger model for tougher audio.

Where are my settings and history? In your user config folder (%APPDATA%\Eqho on Windows) — never in the cloud.

Configuration & docs

Settings persist to settings.json in your config folder — everything is also adjustable from the tray menu and dashboard. For development docs, see AGENTS.md, docs/ai/, ROADMAP.md, and CHANGELOG.md. The repo is CodeGraph-indexed (codegraph init after cloning).

License

Eqho is licensed under the GNU AGPL-3.0: free to use, study, and modify — if you redistribute it or a derivative (including as a network service), you must keep the copyright and attribution notices and release your version under the same license. © Daniel Mevit.

Provided "as is", without warranty of any kind.

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