The MacWhisper alternative for Windows
MacWhisper does not run on Windows, and you already know that, because you searched for it. Here is the good news: the thing you liked about it, speech recognition on your own machine with no audio going anywhere, is exactly how Deixis works on Windows. It runs on your Mac and your phone too, so switching means one tool everywhere rather than a substitute for one machine. And Deixis was built for the part MacWhisper treats as one feature among many: dictating, straight into whatever you are working in.
Hold a key, say the sentence, let go. The text is typed where your cursor was, in your editor, your terminal, a ticket, a chat window, with the clipboard put back the way you left it. No app to switch to, no transcript window to copy from, no sign-in, no subscription for any of that. Free, and staying free.
MacWhisper is a transcription app first: you give it a recording and it gives you text. It is very good at that, and if that is your job, this page will tell you so plainly further down. But if what you actually want is to stop typing, Deixis is the better tool, and this page shows why.
Why switch
What you gain, and what you give up
Why Deixis
- One tool, on every device you own. Windows, Mac and Android, and an iPhone keyboard in beta, with the same on-device speech recognition on each; your dictation audio never leaves any of them. On Windows it is one small installer for a Windows 10 or 11 PC with an Intel or AMD processor with AVX2, from 2013 on, nothing else to install, and the speech model downloads once on first run.
- Dictation is the whole point, not a side feature. Hold
Ctrl+Win, speak, release, and clean, punctuated text is typed exactly where you were working, with no window to switch to and no paste step. Double-tap the key instead and it keeps listening for the paragraph you have not finished thinking yet. MacWhisper's own docs say dictation into any text field is only in the copy sold on its website: the App Store edition, Whisper Transcription, leaves it out because of Apple's rules. - It knows what you are typing into, automatically. A commit message, a chat reply and a ticket read differently, and Deixis punctuates them differently because it knows which app and which field the text is going into. MacWhisper can do something similar only if you write a prompt per app yourself.
- Talk and point at the same time. Free mode lets you narrate for as long as you like while grabbing a screen region, picking a button on screen, or taking the text you have selected. What you said and what you pointed at come out as one note, ready to paste into a bug report or a handover.
- Screenshots, annotation and screen recording, in the same key. Freeze the screen, drag a region, add arrows, boxes, numbered steps or a pixelated patch over a secret, and save. Or record the screen with your voice over it. MacWhisper does none of this.
- Nothing to sign in to, ever. Deixis never asks for an account to dictate, record a meeting, or grab a screen. MacWhisper's own privacy policy says the app sends the vendor anonymous licensing analytics; Deixis sends nothing about you at all.
- AI cleanup with no provider needed. Deixis tidies your dictation on your PC with no account and no key. Want more? Point it at Deixis's cloud, at a model running on your own machine, or at your own key. MacWhisper's AI features need a Pro licence and a provider you connect yourself: your own key for a cloud one, or a model you run through Ollama or LM Studio.
- Everything is a file you own. Notes, transcripts, screenshots and settings sit in one folder as ordinary files. Back it up, search it, uninstall Deixis tomorrow and it is all still there.
Where MacWhisper still wins
- Transcribing recordings is its home turf. Drop in an audio or video file and get a transcript with subtitles, in any of a hundred languages, on the free tier. Deixis transcribes what it records, live dictation, meetings and screen recordings, in English, and does not take a file you made elsewhere.
- Files that transcribe themselves, and transcripts that go where you want. Watched folders transcribe whatever lands in them, finished transcripts can upload on their own to Notion, Zapier, Obsidian, n8n, Make.com or a webhook of yours, and a command-line tool lets your scripts and agents drive it. Deixis posts its own notes, grabs and translations to a URL you own, but nothing in it watches a folder.
- Pay once. A single lifetime purchase, with a free tier underneath. Deixis is free for everything that runs on your own device, and charges only for the optional cloud extras, by subscription.
- A long menu of AI providers. Your own keys for OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenRouter and four more, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or local models through Ollama and LM Studio. If you like choosing, MacWhisper is the hub for that. Deixis keeps it to one clear choice.
- Meetings start recording on their own. MacWhisper spots a Zoom or Teams call and offers to record it. Deixis records a meeting when you press the key, and tells the voices apart from there; it does not watch for the call to begin.
What you get
More than dictation. One key, and everything behind it.
Hold the key and press a letter: free mode, a grab, a meeting, a recording, a translation, your own buttons. All of it on your own device, all of it free, none of it behind an account.
Dictation, where your cursor is
Hold a key, speak, release. Clean, punctuated text lands in whatever has focus, on your PC, your Mac and your phone, with your clipboard handed back.
Free mode: talk and point
Narrate for as long as you like while you grab a region, pick a button on screen or take a selection. One note, what you said interleaved with what you pointed at, pasted where you finish and saved as Markdown.
Screen grabs, annotated
Freeze every screen at the keypress, drag a region, add arrows, boxes, text and numbered steps, and pixelate what is private. Saved as a PNG that stays editable.
Screen recording, shared as a link
Record the screen with your narration. The recording writes itself up with a title, chapters and a summary, and from your Deixis account it shares as a link anyone can open without one. The Loom you can stop paying for.
Meetings, no bot, names included
Your microphone and the other side, transcribed on your machine while the call runs. Deixis tells the voices apart and remembers the ones you name, and never uploads a voice.
Your own buttons and workflows
Add a button to the palette: it gets the note on stdin and types back whatever it prints. Send finished notes to any URL you own. Chain steps: read the text off a screenshot, translate it, summarise it, post it.
Side by side
MacWhisper and Deixis, side by side
| Row | Deixis | MacWhisper |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit, on an Intel or AMD processor with AVX2: 2013 and later; no build for Windows on ARM), Mac (Apple Silicon) and Android (a dictation bubble in any app, plus meetings), with an iPhone keyboard in beta on TestFlight and not yet in the App Store. Meetings run on Windows and Android. One engine on all of them, and dictation audio never leaves the device. | macOS, iPhone and iPad, as a separate App Store edition |
| Speech recognition happens | On your own device, inside the app, on every platform. Dictation audio never leaves it; a meeting's, only if you turn on cloud processing on Android. | On your device or in the cloud, your choice |
| AI cleanup happens | On your device, with no provider at all. Or, if you want more, Deixis's cloud, your own Ollama, or your own key. Your choice, in one setting. | On your device or in the cloud, your choice |
| Leaves your machine | Text, and only once you switch a cloud feature on, plus, on Windows, one key you press to check your own Claude plan, and, on Android, a meeting's audio if you turn on cloud processing for meetings. Never a dictation's audio, never screenshots, never window titles. | Nothing |
| Account needed | None, ever, for anything that runs on your device. The cloud extras have a seven-day trial you start with an email code. No card. | not documented |
| Price | Free forever for everything local, meetings included. Pro is $49 a year for the cloud extras with nothing to set up. | Free tier: free forever, with file transcription in 100 languages, subtitles and system-wide dictation; cleanup, grammar improvement, AI prompts, speaker recognition and meeting recording are Pro; €64 one-time |
| Your transcripts live | In plain files, in one folder you own and can back up. Uninstall Deixis and every note is still readable. | On your device |
| Make it yours | Add your own buttons that run a script, send finished notes to any URL you own, and switch on vocabulary packs for your field. | On Pro, your own API keys for OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, xAI, Azure, DeepSeek, Google, OpenRouter or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or local models through Ollama and LM Studio, with prompts per app; watched folders, transcripts sent on to Notion, Zapier, Obsidian, n8n, Make.com or a webhook, and a command-line tool |
MacWhisper facts from macwhisper.com, its privacy policy, its docs, its dictation docs, its App Store version docs and its licensing docs, read on 27 September 2026. “Not documented” means those pages did not say.
MacWhisper transcribes on the Mac with local Whisper models by default; connect a cloud provider under your own key and the audio or text goes to the provider you chose. It is sold from its own site and, as Whisper Transcription, on the Mac App Store, where dictation into any text field is missing because of App Store rules. AI features in dictation need Pro and your own key.
What leaves your machine, and what leaves theirs
Deixis publishes every byte it sends, as a table, because there is so little of it. Here is that table beside what MacWhisper's own pages say.
| What | Deixis | MacWhisper |
|---|---|---|
| Audio | A dictation's, never: recognition happens inside the app on your device, and the recording, the model and the transcript stay there. A meeting's, only if you turn on Deixis cloud processing for meetings on Android: its audio, in pieces, each its own request, and Deixis stores and logs none of itapi.deixis-voice.com, then Whisper on Cloudflare Workers AI · only on Android, after a meeting ends, with cloud processing switched on in Settings › Meetings — on Wi-Fi, or on mobile data only if you choose | Nothing, by default: the privacy policy says no data, audio, text or other, leaves your device. Audio goes to a cloud transcription provider only if you connect one under your own key.a provider you choose, if any · only when you connect one |
| The dictated text | The sentence you just dictated, your vocabulary, and your previous sentence in that fieldthe endpoint you chose · only with a cloud endpoint set, and by default only when the local rules are not enough | Nothing, by default. With a language-model provider connected under your own key, the transcript goes to it for the AI features.a provider you choose, if any · only when you use an AI feature with a cloud provider |
| Context around the text | The names of the app and the field the text is going into. Never the window title, never a screenshot.the same endpoint · with that request | not documented |
| Telemetry and analytics | None. No account, no telemetry, no analytics, no crash reports. | Anonymous licensing-related analytics, to verify a valid licencethe vendor · not stated |
| Update check | Nothing but the request; the version check happens on your PCapi.deixis-voice.com · every launch, and when you ask in Settings | not documented |
| Model download | Nothing but the requesthuggingface.co · once, when you press Download on first run | not documented |
| Account and sign-in | An email address, only if you choose to start the trial, plus the partner tag from a partner download link and the first partner website that connected to Deixis on this computer, if there are anythe Deixis endpoint · when you start the trial | not documented |
| Integrations | The finished note, and for a screenshot its file name, never the imagea URL you added yourself · on finish, only for destinations you added | Your transcripts, if you set up an automatic upload to Notion, Zapier, Obsidian, n8n, Make.com or a webhook of your ownthe destination you set up · automatically, only once you set one up |
Before you switch
Before you switch
Who should not switch
If your work is turning other people's recordings into text, interviews, lectures, podcasts, keep a transcription app for that, because Deixis will not take a file you hand it. Deixis dictates in English: its speech models are English models, so if you dictate in another language, this is not your tool yet. There is no Linux build. And if your PC is older than 2013, its processor lacks the AVX2 instructions Deixis's speech engine is built on, and the app will stop rather than run slowly; there is no build for Windows on ARM either.
Making the switch
Five minutes from installed to dictating. Here is what maps to what.
Dictation
MacWhisper's system-wide dictation becomes the one gesture Deixis is built around: hold
Ctrl+Win, speak, release. You can change the key in Settings if another one suits your hands
better. Double-tap it for hands-free mode, which keeps listening until you double-tap again.
The speech model
First launch shows one Download button. Press it, wait for a file about the size of a short video, and you are dictating. Settings offers a second, larger model that is more accurate and a little slower, and swaps in without a restart.
Your words
Where MacWhisper has a global find-and-replace for words it gets wrong, Deixis has a dictionary
that also steers the recognition itself, and you can add to it without leaving what you are doing:
select a word anywhere, press Ctrl+Win+D, done. Five vocabulary packs ship
in the box, for software, finance, business, medicine and law, and switching one on takes a click.
Names it keeps mishearing can be corrected once and fixed forever.
AI cleanup
MacWhisper's AI features and Deixis's cleanup are the same idea with less friction on the Deixis side. Out of the box, Deixis tidies your dictation on your PC with no provider and no key. If you want a language model to polish every sentence, Settings → Cleanup is one choice: let Deixis run it in the cloud, run it on your own machine, or use your own key. Whichever you pick, the byte table linked at the bottom of this page says in plain words what each choice sends.
Meetings, screenshots, recordings
Ctrl+Win+M records a meeting, both your voice and theirs, and transcribes it on your PC. Deixis
tells the remote voices apart, and once you have named a voice it recognises that person in later
meetings; the voiceprint is a mathematical fingerprint that stays on your machine, is never
uploaded, and can be deleted per person. S grabs and annotates a screenshot. V records the
screen with your narration. All of it lands in one folder as files you can open with anything.
Before you ask
Questions people search for
Is there a MacWhisper for Windows?
No. MacWhisper is sold for the Mac, with an edition for the iPhone and iPad on the App Store, and there is no Windows build. Deixis is built on the same principle, speech recognition on your own device with nothing uploaded by default, and it runs on Windows, and on the Mac and the phone as well, so switching means one tool everywhere. It goes further: it is made for dictating into whatever you are working in, it needs no account, and everything local is free.
Does Deixis transcribe audio files the way MacWhisper does?
No. Deixis transcribes what it records: your dictation, meetings, and screen recordings. It will not take a recording you made elsewhere. If that is your main job, MacWhisper on a Mac is the right tool; if your main job is getting words out of your head and onto the screen, Deixis is.
Does Deixis work offline?
Completely. Dictation, hands-free mode, screenshots, meeting recording and transcription all run with no network at all. A fresh install makes two calls on its own — an update check, and a check for an announcement from us when you open the Settings window — and neither sends anything but the request.
Can I use my own provider key with Deixis?
Yes, and it costs nothing extra. Every cloud feature runs against your own key if you set one, an OpenRouter key being the one the documentation walks through, and Deixis never stores it. Or run a model on your own machine and keep everything local. MacWhisper needs one of those for its AI features; Deixis works without either.
How does the price compare?
MacWhisper Pro was a one-time €64 when we checked, with a free tier underneath. Deixis is free forever for everything on your own device, with no account, meetings and both speech models included. Pro, at $49 a year, adds the managed cloud extras with nothing to set up.
Does Deixis upload my audio?
Not the audio of a dictation, under any setting. Speech recognition happens inside the app on your device, on Windows, Mac and Android alike, and in the iPhone keyboard now in beta. A meeting's audio stays on the device too, unless you turn on Deixis cloud processing for meetings on Android, which sends a finished meeting's audio to be transcribed in the cloud, and Deixis keeps none of it. The voiceprints meeting mode keeps to tell speakers apart stay on the machine too, and can be deleted per person. What can leave is text, once you switch a cloud feature on, and a file you choose to share as a link: a grab, a note or a screen recording, with whatever you narrated into it, because being uploaded is what a link is. One key press carries no content at all: Claude usage reads the sign-in Claude Code has already stored on your machine and asks Anthropic what is left of that plan. The full list, every byte, is one page long and linked at the bottom of this one.
Keep reading
Related pages
Best dictation software for Windows
Fifteen Windows dictation tools compared, every fact dated from the maker's own pages — including what our own tool cannot do. Read the disclosure.
Offline dictation on Windows
Dictation that works with no internet: speech recognition on your own device, free, no account. Which Windows speech-to-text tools genuinely run offline.
The VoiceInk alternative for Windows
VoiceInk needs an Apple Silicon Mac. Deixis keeps the same promise on Windows, Mac and phone: speech recognition on your own device, no key, no account.
The Superwhisper alternative for Windows
Superwhisper on Windows still trails its Mac version. Deixis ships whole on Windows, and runs on Mac and phone: recognition on your device, no account.
The Willow Voice alternative for Windows that keeps dictation on your PC
Willow Voice dictates through the cloud and needs an account. Deixis does it on your Windows PC, sends no audio anywhere, and is free with no sign-in.
The Aqua Voice alternative for Windows where nothing leaves your PC
Aqua Voice sends your audio to the cloud and starts you on 1,000 free words. Deixis runs on your Windows PC, uploads nothing, and is free with no account.
Hold a key. Speak. Keep working.
Deixis is free, needs no account, and runs on your own device. Everything on this page is in the current release.
v1.3.2 · 64‑bit Windows 10/11 on Intel or AMD · macOS 13 on Apple silicon · 51 MB · nothing else to install · also for Windows · Android on Google Play
Facts about MacWhisper checked on against macwhisper.com. Deixis facts are from its documentation for the current release. Something out of date? Tell us.