TongueType – Local Whisper Dictation

A privacy-focused dictation app for macOS that runs OpenAI's Whisper locally on Apple Silicon without cloud uploads or subscriptions. Targets users who need secure voice-to-text for sensitive content without monthly fees.

Apple Silicon's Neural Engine made running Whisper locally fast enough to be genuinely useful only in the last two years, so the timing aligns with hardware adoption hitting mainstream. Superwhisper is the clearest incumbent and has already validated that Mac users will pay a one-time or subscription fee for local dictation, which is both encouraging and a real problem — it's a known, polished competitor with a head start. A one-time purchase model at $20–40 fits the "no subscription" pitch and can reach $1k–5k/mo with a few hundred sales, though sustaining that requires either a steady top-of-funnel or an upsell path that doesn't exist yet. The biggest risk is that Superwhisper and the free whisper-based open-source tools (whisper-dictation, etc.) already cover most of the market, leaving very little differentiated ground to occupy.