When should I choose Glimpse over Handy?

Choose Glimpse if: You want to record meetings and calls, with speakers labeled on your computer. You transcribe audio and video files, and want to export them to text, Markdown, SRT or VTT. You want a different tone per app, text replacements, and a dictionary that fills itself in. You want a local OpenAI-compatible API, a CLI and an official Raycast extension. You're on Apple Silicon and want Neural Engine versions of Whisper, Parakeet and Qwen3-ASR.

When should I choose Handy over Glimpse?

Choose Handy if: You're on Linux. Glimpse is Mac and Windows only today. You want everything free, including LLM post-processing with your own key or Apple Intelligence. You prefer the MIT license, or a small app built to do one thing. You want to try more model families: Whisper, Parakeet, Moonshine, SenseVoice, GigaAM, Canary and more.

Glimpse vs Handy

Handy is a free, MIT-licensed dictation app that does one job well, on Mac, Windows and Linux. Glimpse is open source too, with free, unlimited dictation, and adds meetings, speaker labels, file transcription and per-app styles. They even share a speech engine.

Last updated October 5, 2026

The short answer

Pick Handy if

You're on Linux. Glimpse is Mac and Windows only today.
You want everything free, including LLM post-processing with your own key or Apple Intelligence.
You prefer the MIT license, or a small app built to do one thing.
You want to try more model families: Whisper, Parakeet, Moonshine, SenseVoice, GigaAM, Canary and more.

Pick Glimpse if

You want to record meetings and calls, with speakers labeled on your computer.
You transcribe audio and video files, and want to export them to text, Markdown, SRT or VTT.
You want a different tone per app, text replacements, and a dictionary that fills itself in.
You want a local OpenAI-compatible API, a CLI and an official Raycast extension.
You're on Apple Silicon and want Neural Engine versions of Whisper, Parakeet and Qwen3-ASR.

Side by side

Feature	Glimpse	Handy
Price	Free dictationFrom $25 one-time	Free
Open source	Yes, AGPL-3.0audit it on GitHub	Yes, MITname and logo excluded
macOS	Yes	Yes
Windows	Yes	Yes
Linux	No	Yes
Local transcription	Yes, by defaultWhisper, Parakeet, Qwen3-ASR, Nemotron, more	YesWhisper, Parakeet, Moonshine, more
Cloud transcription	Optionalyour own provider key	Nolocal only by design
AI cleanup	Yes, your own LLMlocal or cloud, with a license	Yes, freepost-processing with your key or Apple Intelligence
Custom dictionary	Yesplus Auto Dictionary	Yescustom words
Text replacements	Yes	Nonot documented
Per-app styles	YesPersonalization, with a license	Nonot documented
History	Yes	Yes
Meeting recording	Recording Modeon-device speaker labels, with a license	Nonot documented
Audio / video file transcription	Yes, Librarywith a license	Nonot documented
CLI	Yesplus a local API, with a license	Yesflags to control the running app, beta
Raycast	Yesofficial, with a license	Yescommunity extension

In detail

Shared roots

Glimpse owes Handy a thank-you. Its local models run through transcribe.cpp, the open-source speech engine from the handy-computer organization behind Handy, and many of the Whisper, Parakeet, Nemotron and Qwen3-ASR files Glimpse downloads are handy-computer's conversions. If you like how one transcribes, there's a good chance you'll like the other.

One job, or a few

Handy's README puts it simply: one tool, one job. It does dictation well, with hold, toggle and push-to-talk modes, silence filtering, history, custom words, filler removal and optional LLM post-processing. Glimpse is a dictation app first too, but it also records meetings with no bot in the call, labels up to 8 speakers with NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Diarization, and transcribes audio and video files in the Library.

Pricing

Handy is free, all of it, including post-processing. Glimpse dictation is free with no word limit on every model, along with the dictionary, Auto Dictionary, replacements, history and imports. A one-time license ($25 for 1 device, $39 for up to 3) adds Recording Mode, the Library, AI Cleanup, Edit Mode, Personalization, the CLI and the local API. It comes with a 14-day trial, and it's how Glimpse's development is paid for.

Platforms and models

Handy runs on Linux as well as Mac and Windows, and offers more model families, from Moonshine to SenseVoice and GigaAM. Glimpse runs on macOS 14 or later and Windows 10 or later, also on the Microsoft Store. It has Neural Engine builds of Whisper, Parakeet and Qwen3-ASR on Apple Silicon, Nemotron streaming models, and optional cloud speech providers with your own key.

Trying Glimpse from Handy

Glimpse can spot Handy during onboarding and bring over your custom words, shortcut, language, model choice and past transcripts, so trying it takes a few minutes. Plenty of people will be happy with Handy as it is. If you want meetings, files and per-app styles in the same app, Glimpse is the one to try.

Sources checked

Comparison copy was checked against these public sources on October 5, 2026.