I find the existence of WisprFlow fascinating. This application does two things: transcribe audio, then clean up the filler words and apply proper punctuation. It’s sleek, works well, and is marketed heavily.
It also costs $15 a month.
To be fair, twenty years ago this application would have been a miracle, and it’s still pretty impressive in 2026. There’s something compelling about rambling into a microphone and getting semi-coherent writing back.
Even so, WisprFlow is made up of two relatively basic AI features—dictation followed by simple text editing. These are the exact things that local AI handles well, even without an internet connection. Basically there is no reason for this to be a subscription service, which is why I wrote about free alternatives to WisprFlow for WIRED a couple weeks ago. I figured there must be multiple free alternatives out there, and it turns out there are.
But the real fun happened in the comments. Someone with the handle Mysterious_Doctor mentioned building a similar application using Claude Code. “It uses Whisper locally then passes the text through Claude Sonnet for a polishing step,” they wrote. “Guess I should sell it like these guys are doing, but the barrier to entry to this sort of thing is basically zero.”
Mystery, MD has a point: there is no barrier to entry. Right below that comment was another person who built a totally free and open source alternative I somehow missed during my research. WisprFlow alternatives are popping up everywhere right now, and with good reason: they’re easy to build. But how easy?
But how easy? I wanted a challenge, so I decided to see if I could make something in five minutes without using a chatbots. And it turns out I could.
I used Apple Shortcuts, starting with a “Dictate text” step. Next, I used an Apple Intelligence step to proofread the text. Finally, I set the text to be copied to the clipboard, ready for me to paste wherever. Then all I had to do was assign a keyboard shortcut for the Shortcut and I had a fully offline replacement for WisprFlow.
I call it WisprFree—you can download it here if you have a Mac, iPhone, or iPad that supports Apple Intelligence. It’s not perfect—it stops transcribing too quickly, and copies text to the clipboard instead of just pasting it. It’s not bad for five minutes work, though, and you can tweak it easily enough.
Do I think you should use this tool? No. Am I amused that I could make it so quickly? Absolutely. Please feel free to give me $15 a month.
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