Introducing OpenTypeless: Voice Input That Actually Works

Voice input has been around for years, but it never quite worked the way I wanted. Built-in dictation is limited to one provider, third-party tools require subscriptions, and the output always needs heavy editing. I wanted something fundamentally better — a tool that gives you full control over every part of the voice-to-text pipeline.

The Problem with Voice Input

As a developer, I spend most of my day typing. Voice input could save hours of repetitive work, but existing solutions fell short in critical ways. They were locked to a single speech-to-text engine with no way to switch. They couldn't polish the output — you'd get raw transcription full of filler words and missing punctuation. And they didn't work well with technical vocabulary, turning 'PostgreSQL' into 'post gress sequel' every single time.

I tried every voice input tool I could find. macOS Dictation was decent for casual text but terrible for code discussions. Windows Speech Recognition felt like a relic from 2005. Third-party apps like Otter.ai and Whisper-based tools were better, but they all had the same fundamental problem: you couldn't customize the pipeline. You were stuck with whatever STT engine they chose, whatever post-processing they implemented, and whatever limitations they imposed.

• No choice of STT provider — locked to one engine
• No AI polishing — raw transcription with filler words and grammar issues
• Poor technical vocabulary — 'React' becomes 'react', 'PostgreSQL' becomes gibberish
• No custom dictionary — can't teach it your project-specific terms
• Subscription pricing — paying monthly for something that should be a utility

Why I Built OpenTypeless

I needed a tool that let me choose my own providers, automatically cleaned up my speech, and worked in any application on my desktop. Not a web app, not a browser extension — a proper native desktop application that could capture audio globally and paste polished text anywhere. The key insight was that voice input is really a pipeline problem: microphone capture, speech-to-text conversion, AI text polishing, and clipboard output. Each stage should be independently configurable.

Architecture Deep Dive

OpenTypeless is built on a modern desktop stack designed for performance and extensibility. The architecture separates concerns cleanly: the native shell handles system integration, the UI layer handles user interaction, and the provider system handles all external API communication.

Tauri Desktop Shell

Tauri provides the native desktop shell — Rust for the backend means excellent performance, tiny binary size (under 10MB), and robust security. Unlike Electron, Tauri uses the system's native webview instead of bundling Chromium, resulting in dramatically lower memory usage. The Rust backend handles audio capture, global hotkey registration, clipboard management, and system tray integration. These are all operations that need native OS access and benefit from Rust's performance characteristics.

React + TypeScript Frontend

The UI is built with React and TypeScript, providing a familiar development experience with full type safety. The frontend handles the recording controls, settings panel, text preview, and provider configuration. State management is straightforward — React's built-in hooks handle local state, and Tauri's IPC bridge communicates with the Rust backend for system operations.

The Provider System

The provider system is OpenTypeless's most important architectural decision. Instead of hardcoding a single STT engine or LLM, OpenTypeless defines a clean interface that any provider can implement. Adding a new provider means implementing a simple adapter — the rest of the pipeline doesn't change.

Currently, OpenTypeless supports 6 STT providers (Deepgram Nova-3, OpenAI Whisper, Groq Whisper, GLM-ASR, AssemblyAI, and SiliconFlow) and 11 LLM providers for text polishing. Each provider has different strengths — Deepgram excels at English accuracy, Groq delivers the lowest latency, GLM-ASR is optimized for Chinese, and Ollama runs entirely offline on your machine.

AI Text Polishing

Raw speech-to-text output is messy by nature. People say 'um', 'like', 'you know' — and that's fine in conversation, but terrible in written text. OpenTypeless's AI polishing step sends the raw transcription to your chosen LLM with a carefully crafted prompt that fixes grammar, adds punctuation, removes filler words, and formats the text naturally. The custom dictionary feature ensures technical terms are preserved exactly as you define them.

Privacy by Design

Privacy isn't an afterthought in OpenTypeless — it's a core design principle. Your API keys are stored locally on your machine, never on our servers. Audio is sent directly from your computer to your chosen STT provider — there's no OpenTypeless server in the middle. We don't collect telemetry, we don't track usage, and we don't have access to your transcriptions. The code is fully open source, so you can verify every claim.

Open Source Philosophy

OpenTypeless is MIT licensed and free forever. I believe great tools should be accessible to everyone. The open-source model means the community can contribute providers, fix bugs, and extend functionality. It also means you're never locked in — if OpenTypeless disappears tomorrow, you still have the code. Several contributors have already added provider adapters and UI improvements, and the project welcomes pull requests from anyone.

If you're tired of voice input that doesn't quite work, give OpenTypeless a try. Download it from our website, bring your own API keys, and start typing with your voice — anywhere. Check out our guide on choosing the right STT provider to get the best results for your language and use case.