OpenSuperWhisper

July 5, 2026 · View on GitHub

OpenSuperWhisper is a macOS application that provides real-time audio transcription using the Whisper model. It offers a seamless way to record and transcribe audio with customizable settings and keyboard shortcuts.

Features

  • 🎙️ Real-time audio recording and transcription
  • 🧠 Two transcription engines: Whisper and Parakeet — download models directly from the app
  • ⌨️ Global keyboard shortcuts — key combination or single modifier key (e.g. Left ⌘, Right ⌥, Fn)
  • 🖱️ Mouse button trigger — bind the middle or an extra (thumb) mouse button to start/stop recording
  • ✊ Hold-to-record mode — hold the shortcut, modifier key or mouse button to record, release to stop
  • 📁 Drag & drop audio files for transcription with queue processing
  • 🎤 Microphone selection — switch between built-in, external, Bluetooth and iPhone (Apple Continuity) mics from the menu bar
  • 🌍 Support for multiple languages with auto-detection
  • 🇯🇵🇨🇳🇰🇷 Asian language autocorrect (autocorrect)

Installation

brew update # Optional
brew install opensuperwhisper

Or from GitHub releases page.

Requirements

  • macOS (Apple Silicon/ARM64)

Support

If you encounter any issues or have questions, please:

  1. Check the existing issues in the repository
  2. Create a new issue with detailed information about your problem
  3. Include system information and logs when reporting bugs

Building locally

To build locally, you'll need:

git clone git@github.com:Starmel/OpenSuperWhisper.git
cd OpenSuperWhisper
git submodule update --init --recursive
brew install cmake libomp rust ruby
gem install xcpretty
./run.sh build

In case of problems, consult .github/workflows/build.yml which is our CI workflow where the app gets built automatically on GitHub's CI.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit pull requests or create issues for bugs and feature requests.

Contribution TODO list

  • Streaming transcription
  • Custom dictionary / keyword boosting (#19)
  • Intel macOS compatibility (#15)
  • Agent mode (#14)
  • Background app (#8)
  • Support long-press single key audio recording (#18)

License

OpenSuperWhisper is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

Whisper Models

You can download Whisper model files (.bin) from the Whisper.cpp Hugging Face repository. Place the downloaded .bin files in the app's models directory. On first launch, the app will attempt to copy a default model automatically, but you can add more models manually.

Hebrew (ivrit.ai)

For Hebrew transcription, download the "Turbo V3 Hebrew" model from Settings → Model. It is ivrit.ai's Hebrew fine-tune of whisper-large-v3-turbo (whisper-large-v3-turbo-ggml) — the same base model as the other "Turbo V3" entries, but tuned for Hebrew. Selecting it automatically sets the input language to Hebrew, which these models require to be set explicitly.