Ghost Pepper 🌶️

Ghost Pepper is a macOS app for voice dictation and meeting transcription that runs entirely on your machine. Hold the Control key to speak, release to transcribe and paste the text directly into any app. For meetings, it records audio, generates a transcript, and produces AI-powered summaries — all saved as local markdown files. No data ever leaves your Mac.

The app uses Whisper models (from tiny to multi-language) for speech recognition, and a local Qwen LLM to clean up the text by removing filler words and fixing self-corrections. You can choose between English-only or multilingual models, and the cleanup speed varies by model size. Ghost Pepper is free, open source (MIT license), and requires no account. The developers have published a privacy audit verifying that no telemetry, analytics, or cloud sync exists.

This tool is ideal for privacy-conscious users who don't want their voice data sent to a server. Journalists, writers, and remote workers can use it for quick dictation or meeting notes. Students and researchers can transcribe lectures. The setup is simple: download, grant permissions, and start speaking. It's a straightforward, no-fuss solution for on-device voice transcription.