# Hex

Open-source, fully native macOS voice-to-text app using local Parakeet TDT v3 models with zero network calls. Press-and-hold a hotkey to record, release to paste the transcript anywhere.

**Type:** tool
**Added:** 2026-05-02
**Author:** [Kit Langton](https://github.com/kitlangton)
**Link:** https://hex.kitlangton.com/
**Topics:** AI, Open Source
**Tags:** speech-to-text

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Personal hot take: paying a monthly subscription for cloud voice-to-text (Whisperflow et al.) feels like madness when [Whisper v3 Turbo on Groq](/directory/groq) processes audio for fractions of a cent. [Sotto](https://sotto.to/) is one example app that lets you bring your own Groq API key — one-time $50 (it was cheaper when I bought it), then ~1–2¢ per month of usage. Same idea, dramatically cheaper than a subscription long-run.

Hex goes one step further: fully open-source, fully native Swift, and uses local [Parakeet TDT v3](https://github.com/FluidInference/FluidAudio) (default) or WhisperKit — no network requests at all. Transcription quality is a hair below Whisper v3 Turbo on Groq, but it's good enough that I use it daily, and it's free.

The hot-mic feature is the small detail that sells it: instead of warming up the microphone every time you trigger the hotkey, the system keeps the mic hot, so the latency from press → recording is shaved down to milliseconds. Worth it when you're dictating a lot.

Tempted to open a PR adding Groq Whisper as an optional backend, but I need to look at the project's positioning first — it might be against the spirit of the app, which seems to lean hard into local-only.

[Source on GitHub](https://github.com/kitlangton/Hex).

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## Links

- Directory entry: https://andrey-markin.com/directory/hex
- All directory entries: https://andrey-markin.com/directory
- Contact: https://andrey-markin.com/#contact