Voice to text for people who need it

RSI, carpal tunnel, tendonitis, arthritis. These conditions make typing painful or impossible, and they are more common than people expect. Anyone who spends hours at a keyboard can end up there. The developer who built the open-source tool Handy started it after breaking a finger and losing the ability to code.

Motor impairments, limited hand mobility, and conditions that affect fine motor control land in the same place. So do temporary situations like a broken wrist or a surgery recovery. The computer expects you to type and you can't, or you can but it costs you.

Superwhisper gives you a different way in. You talk and the text shows up wherever your cursor is. No per-app setup, no voice commands to memorize. Speak normally and it handles punctuation and formatting for you. You can try the same idea above without installing anything, or open the browser talk to text tool.

Superwhisper types wherever your cursor sits. Email, Slack, your IDE, a browser field. It runs at the system level, so there is nothing to install per app and nothing to reconfigure when you switch windows.

You control how it starts. Hold a shortcut to record, or press once to begin and once to stop. Pick the key yourself, and pick one that is easy for you to reach. Some people map it to an accessibility switch or a foot pedal that triggers the same shortcut.

The free tier includes core voice-to-text and doesn't expire. Cost shouldn't be the thing standing between someone and a tool they rely on.

Say you have carpal tunnel and you're trying to get through a workday. You open email, press your shortcut, and start talking. "Hey Sarah, the deploy went out last night and everything looks stable. Let me know if you see anything off." Release the shortcut and that text lands in the compose window, punctuated and capitalized.

Switch to Slack and do the same. Switch to your editor and talk to an AI coding assistant. Switch to a Google Doc for something longer. It behaves the same everywhere because it isn't tied to any single app.

Offline mode matters when you depend on voice input. It can't quit on you because the wifi dropped. On-device models keep working regardless of your connection, and your audio never leaves your computer, which some people need for medical or personal reasons. The same on-device approach is what makes Superwhisper usable under SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA requirements.

Superwhisper pastes text at the cursor, so it sits next to screen readers like VoiceOver and NVDA instead of fighting them. It acts as a separate input method, which means it doesn't replace or interfere with the rest of your accessibility setup.

For longer recordings or files, the desktop app handles 100+ languages with automatic detection and can transcribe audio and video. If you want to check your microphone before you start, the mic test takes a few seconds.