[HN Gopher] Show HN: Aqua Voice 2 - Fast Voice Input for Mac and...
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Show HN: Aqua Voice 2 - Fast Voice Input for Mac and Windows
Hey HN - It's Finn and Jack from Aqua Voice (https://withaqua.com).
Aqua is fast AI dictation for your desktop and our attempt to make
voice a first-class input method. Video:
https://withaqua.com/watch Try it here:
https://withaqua.com/sandbox Finn is uber dyslexic and has been
using dictation software since sixth grade. For over a decade, he's
been chasing a dream that never quite worked -- using your voice
instead of a keyboard. Our last post
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39828686) about this seemed
to resonate with the community - though it turned out that version
of Aqua was a better demo than product. But it gave us (and others)
a lot of good ideas about what should come next. Since then, we've
remade Aqua from scratch for speed and usability. It now lives on
your desktop, and it lets you talk into any text field -- Cursor,
Gmail, Slack, even your terminal. It starts up in under 50ms,
inserts text in about a second (sometimes as fast as 450ms), and
has state-of-the-art accuracy. It does a lot more, but that's the
core. We'd love your feedback -- and if you've got ideas for what
voice should do next, let's hear them!
Author : the_king
Score : 135 points
Date : 2025-04-09 16:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (withaqua.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (withaqua.com)
| oulipo wrote:
| Interesting!
|
| A nice open-source alternative is VoiceInk, check it out:
| https://github.com/Beingpax/VoiceInk
|
| do you also plan to open-source part of your platform?
| pablopeniche wrote:
| Just tried it and it crashed
| fintechie wrote:
| I've been using this one with Cursor the past few months...
|
| https://github.com/foges/whisper-dictation
| razemio wrote:
| I just tried it on a M4 Max MacBook Pro. When you have such a
| processor, it seems to be even faster than Aqua Voice 2, does
| more, optional supports open router AND is open source? Thank
| you so much for the recommendation!
| oulipo wrote:
| And it processes stuff locally on your device!
| bklyn11201 wrote:
| Music playing on Youtube in Chrome, Airpods in, the desktop and
| the sandbox/demo just don't work.
| the_king wrote:
| Shoot, might be due to AirPods mic init latency. AirPods work
| well on Desktop (though their mic quality isn't the best).
| rkagerer wrote:
| You mentioned it "lives on your desktop". How does licensing
| work, and can you install and use it on a machine without
| internet access?
| gnfedhjmm2 wrote:
| Broken on mobile
| pablopeniche wrote:
| fixing. ty
| niel wrote:
| Real-time text output a la Apple Dictation with the accuracy of
| Whisper is something I've been looking for recently - I'll
| definitely give Aqua a spin.
|
| MacWhisper [0] (the app I settled on) is conspicuously missing
| from your benchmarks [1]. How does it compare?
|
| [0]: https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper
|
| [1]: https://withaqua.com/blog/benchmark-nov-2024
| the_king wrote:
| We're more accurate and much faster than Mac Whisper, even
| their strongest model (Whisper Cpp Large V3).
|
| For that benchmarking table, you can use Whisper Large V3 as a
| stand-in for Mac Whisper and Super Whisper accuracy.
| pbowyer wrote:
| I've been using Superwhisperapp for over a year and I get
| nothing like the error level your comparison table suggests.
| Which model were you using with it?
|
| Aqua looks good and I will be testing it, but I do like that
| with superwhisper nothing leaves my computer unless I add AI
| integrations.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| This looks like it'll slurp up all your data and upload it into a
| cloud. Thanks, no. I want privacy, offline mode and source code
| for something as crucial to system security as an input method.
|
| "we also collect and process your voice inputs [..] We leverage
| this data for improvements and development [..] Sharing of your
| information [..] service providers [..] OpenAI"
| https://withaqua.com/privacy
| FloatArtifact wrote:
| Local inference only is an absolute requirement. It's not even
| really all that accessible if it's online only. I can say this
| as someone that's used over 20000 hours worth of voice
| dictation and computer control.
| pokstad wrote:
| This should be on the FAQ. I was trying to find out if it was
| 100% processed locally.
| jackthetab wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| This is where I bounce (out of this discussion).
| thmsmlr wrote:
| I totally agree, I created BetterDictation (.com) exactly
| because of that. Offline was a super important requirement for
| me.
| canada_dry wrote:
| First thing I looked for and read: the FAQ.
|
| No mention of privacy (or on prem) - so assumed it's 100%
| cloud.
|
| Non-starter for me. Accuracy is important, but privacy is more
| so.
|
| Hopefully a service with these capabilities will be available
| where the first step has the user complete a brief training
| session, sends that to the cloud to tailor the recognition
| parameters for their voice and mannerisms... then loads that
| locally.
| toddmorey wrote:
| And man it's another monthly subscription. I'm not mad at them
| for finding a gap in the market and putting a business around
| it. I'm mad at Apple for leaving that gap... hopefully built in
| voice dictation improves quickly.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Is there a gap in the market? It's being rapidly filled with
| the likes of MacWhisper, etc., which offer local-only, one-
| off pricing.
| jmcintire1 wrote:
| fair point. offline+local would be ideal, but as it stands we
| can't run asr and an llm locally at the speed that is required
| to provide the level of service we want to.
|
| given that we need the cloud, we offer zero data retention --
| you can see this in the app. your concern is as much about ux
| and communications as it is privacy
| mrtesthah wrote:
| MacWhisper does realtime system-wide dictation on your local
| machine (among other things). Just a one-time fee for an app
| you download -- the way shareware is supposed to be. Of
| course it doesn't use MoE transcription with 6 models like
| Aqua Voice, but if you guys expect to be acquired by Apple
| (that is your exit strategy, right?), you're going to need
| better guarantees of privacy than "we don't log".
| shinycode wrote:
| I downloaded the turbo whisper model optimized for Mac,
| created a python script that get the mic input and paste
| the result. The python script is LLM generated and it works
| with pushing a key. For 80% of the functionality for free
| and done locally.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| The problem if you actually need the cloud is that it kind of
| completely destroys your business model. OpenAI is bleeding
| money every month because they massively subsidize the
| hosting cost of their models. But eventually they will have
| to post a profit. And then if they know that your product is
| completely dependent on their API, they can milk you until
| there's no profits left for you.
|
| And self-hosting real-time streaming LLMs will probably also
| come out at 50 cents per hour. Arguing a $120/month price for
| power users is probably going to be very difficult.
| Especially so if there is free open-source alternatives.
| hu3 wrote:
| How does it compare to https://wisprflow.ai ?
|
| btw, grats!
| the_king wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| We're faster, more accurate, and have a streaming option. Aqua
| can go from key-up to paste in as little as 450ms. Flow was
| closer to 1000 in our tests.
|
| Overall, you'll notice we make a few more tweaks to the output
| than Wisprflow.
|
| For example, Aqua + Cursor is very powerful - we syntax
| highlight your transcript. The easiest way to see this is to
| use streaming mode (double press Fn) + deep context + cursor
| and try asking it to change something.
|
| This also works in other "context rich" environments.
| hu3 wrote:
| Thanks! I'm tempted to try Speech to Text + Cursor/Copilot
| for development. It's probably the future since most people
| can speak faster than they can type.
| jmcintire1 wrote:
| This use case is great, even for people who haven't been
| interested in dictation before
| redcanvas wrote:
| Hey, love the what you are building in this category. I've
| been using a competing product which you know very well
| about. They advertised about how you can improve your work
| per minute by dictation, which was the main draw for me
| because I do a founder. There's a lot of managerial work that
| I'm doing.
|
| It has been a godsend in terms of increasing my productivity
| because I no longer have to type. I think your product's
| accuracy and latency shortening just make this even better. I
| often use it and then find out, "Hey, I need to make some
| changes," and I need to re-edit some of the stuff, which
| reduces the WPM productivity amount. So I think accuracy is
| definitely key here. Key metric to differentiate a product.
|
| I am pushing this to other colleagues to get them to adopt.
| One challenge people are saying is that. One is that some
| people may not be as organized (you know, they might be a lot
| more organizationally structured in their mind). So for them,
| they're having trouble - they'd like to write things out, and
| by the time if things go out of their mouth, you know it's
| already formulated logical thought. Whereas you know people
| like me are a lot more verbal vomit type of person. For me
| it's huge because I say a lot of um like in all the other
| things I just dump stuff out and then organize it later.
|
| Whereas other people organize stuff in their brain and then
| dump the information out. So people who do a lot of
| coordination and just you know so I feel like this could be
| two different segments to take into account.
|
| Another one that's been fantastic is that we have
| multilingual colleagues who are speaking in Mandarin or
| something else and then they speak it and then ask Flow to be
| sent to translate it to a different language. That part I
| think has been fantastic.
|
| I think the ability to edit what you wrote with AI is going
| to be the next key feature. Providing the context in the
| window is all wiithin the conversation right? For example,
| you just ask after because what you write out is not the
| final and you need to do a lot of editing and formatting.
| Sometimes when you say too much stuff, it's just like a huge
| jumble paragraph with a lot of fluff words. Make it clear,
| concise, trim non-effective words. I think those are a key
| feature because it's not about your productivity, it's about
| other people being able to ingest your information
| efficiently. At least that's what I look at from a managerial
| perspective.
|
| To give you an example, everything I laid out above came from
| dictation. You can see how this is inefficient. There's a lot
| of inefficiencies here.
| redcanvas wrote:
| A feature that would be great is similar to how you can
| write snippets in all the other tools where you can say
| "calendar" or "cal" and then it gives you the link. If this
| is something possible, I think that would make this
| fantastic.
|
| Another feature that would be great is actually being able
| to have a conversation with an AI model first and then
| refine the output iteratively until you're ready and then
| pipe all that over. The ability to have a chat is very good
| or do this all through voice.
| SCdF wrote:
| I currently use Talon, which I note is not in your benchmarks.
|
| I can't find any documentation on how Aqua works, or how it
| compares, so I'm not sure it's meant to be a replacement /
| competitor to Talon? What are you configuring? How are you
| telling it that you like "genz" style in Slack? Can I create
| custom configurations / macros?
|
| One thing I like about Talon is it's not magic. Which maybe is
| not what you're going for. But I am giving it explicit commands
| that I know it will understand (if it understands my accent
| obvs), as opposed to guessing and constructing a human language
| vague sentence and hope that an llm will work it out. Which means
| it feels like something I can actually become fast with, and
| build up muscle memory of.
|
| Also that it's completely offline, so I can actually run it on a
| work computer without my security folks freaking out.
| willwade wrote:
| Aqua voice is nothing like talon. I wouldn't bother trying to
| compare. It's a dictation tool. Just entry. Not commands. But
| it's bloody impressive. You don't need to learn anything - you
| just talk like you would talk to someone across the way from
| you
| SCdF wrote:
| Oh, from the video I got the impression it was more than
| that, based on it recognising app contexts and the like. I
| guess that's mostly just icing on the cake for the core
| dictation part.
| pablopeniche wrote:
| >recognizing app contexts
|
| Users have different preferences on the text format they
| input into different apps. Aqua is able to pick up on these
| explicit and implicit preferences across apps - but no
| "open XYZ app" commands, yea
| the_king wrote:
| We're building something different, but there is some overlap.
| Aqua is built for max speed, while keeping accuracy high. To
| achieve that, inference runs in a datacenter (for now).
|
| You can customize Aqua using custom instructions, similar to
| ChatGPT custom instructions, and get some Talon functionality
| from it:
|
| In my own, I have:
|
| 1. Breaking the paragraphs with three or four sentences.
|
| 2. Don't start a sentence with "and".
|
| 3. Use lowercase in Slack and iMessage.
|
| 4. Here are some common terminal commands...
| tomblomfield wrote:
| I recently started using Aqua and it's great. The team really
| improved the latency in the last few weeks.
| willwade wrote:
| You're real market you need to go hard on is the assistive tech
| market. You know the biggest companies in this space are those
| solving problems for dyslexia where govt grants in eg UK fund
| pretty much all their work? I had an access to work assessment
| and they recommend like sweets stuff from texthelp. It's then
| paid for by the government following these assessments. But it's
| crap. It literally is a crap tool for adhd or dyslexia because
| these users literally CANT remember or deal with barriers like
| learning how to dictate correctly. Aqua voice solves this. I'm
| your biggest fan. I recommend it in my AT assessments all the
| time :)
| waveringana wrote:
| yes I really hope a lot of these ML startups check out the
| history of ML tech a bit more because so many accessibility
| tools are built via ML but theyve been abandoned
| idk1 wrote:
| I've been using this for some time and I have to say it is
| fantastic. I'm intentionally not writing this with Aqua but by
| hand and it is taking so much longer. This to me feels like what
| Apple Intelligence could be, it is so much better than stuff all
| of the big tech is doing. For example, if you tell Siri voice
| dictation to go back and delete something what Siri will do is
| just write out "go back and delete something" also if you tell
| Siri to go back and spell a name differently all Siri will do is
| write out the letters that you said to go back and type out.
| Honestly, for voice dictation software it feels like travelling
| to another planet in terms of improvement.
| aminsadeghi wrote:
| Is there going to be Linux support at some point?
| the_king wrote:
| We can do that, with some help from the community.
| inciampati wrote:
| What support do you need?
| emacsen wrote:
| I'm a paying customer and I signed onto Aqua Voice shortly
| after your demo on HN.
|
| My experience with it has been overall positive but mixed. I
| enjoy using it for dictation, but I found that issuing
| editing commands and having them recognized/executed often
| took a lot longer than making an edit myself (which I can't
| do while in dictation mode).
|
| But as a paying customer, seeing you go in this direction is
| somewhat sad/frustrating. You're abandoning the product I
| use, and you're saying that if I want to see my platform
| supported, I or someone from the community has to provide it-
| for a fully proprietary paid application.
|
| I understand that I'm a minority user, but it's a bit
| disappointing to read this.
| TylerE wrote:
| I will have to look into this. I am currently in the process of
| going on disability as I cannot work due to (amongst other
| things) carpal and cubical tunnel in both arms.
| aylmao wrote:
| This is super impressive, great job!
|
| Side-comment of something this made me think of (again): tech
| builds too much for tech. I've lived in the Bay before, so I know
| why this happens. When you're there, everyone around you is in
| tech, your girlfriend is in tech, you go to parties and everyone
| invariably ends up talking about work, which is tech. Your
| frustrations are with tech tools and so are your peers', so
| you're constantly thinking about tech solutions applicable to
| tech's problems.
|
| This seems very much marketed to SF people doing SF things
| ("Cursor, Gmail, Slack, even your terminal"). I wonder how much
| effort has gone into making this work with code editors or the
| terminal, even though I doubt this would a big use-case for this
| software if it ever became generally popular. I'd imagine the
| market here is much larger in education, journalism, film,
| accessibility, even government. Those are much more exciting
| demos.
| the_king wrote:
| thanks!
|
| I share the same sentiment. I remember thinking in college how
| annoying it was that I was reading low-resolution, marked-up,
| skewed, b&w scans of a book using Adobe Acrobat while CS
| concentrators were doing everything in VS Code (then brand
| new).
|
| but we do think voice is actually great with Cursor. It's also
| really useful in the terminal for certain things. Checking out
| or creating branches, for example.
| qntmfred wrote:
| I use the built-in voice typing in Windows and am pretty happy
| with it. How would you say this compares (presuming most of your
| comparisons are mac-centric)
| the_king wrote:
| Aqua is in another league when it comes to accuracy. I just ran
| them side by side on a simple q to ChatGPT and here were the
| results...
|
| Aqua Voice What is the first recorded eclipse
| in human history? I'm not asking when the first one occurred,
| but the first written record we have of an eclipse.
|
| Windows Voice Typing (v11 24H2, Dell XPS 13 9340)
| What is the first recorded eclipse in human history i'm not
| asking 1 like the first occurred but the first ridden record we
| have of an eclipse
|
| Windows mistakes were:
|
| -"1" should be "when"
|
| -"ridden" should be "written"
|
| -No punctuation
| alxlu wrote:
| I've been using this for a while now and I really enjoy it. I ran
| into a semi-obscure bug and emailed them and they basically fixed
| it the same day.
|
| I do wish there was a mobile app though (or maybe an iOS
| keyboard). It would also be nice to be able to have a separate
| hotkey you can set up to send the output to a specific app
| (instead of just the active one).
| the_king wrote:
| thanks! We're working on iOS, but it's tough to get the ergos
| right given all of Apple's restrictions and neglected APIs.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Android app please!
| adamesque wrote:
| I was very delighted by Aqua v1, which felt like magic at first.
|
| But I've noticed/learned that I can't dictate written content. My
| brain just does not work that way at all -- as I write I am
| constantly pausing to think, to revise, etc and it feels like a
| completely different part of my brain is engaged. Everything I
| dictated with Aqua I had to throw away and rewrite.
|
| Has anyone had similar problems, and if so, had any success
| retraining themselves toward dictation? There are fleeting
| moments where it truly feels like it would be much faster.
| the_king wrote:
| I think Aqua v1 had two problems:
|
| 1. The models weren't ready.
|
| 2. The interactions were often strained. Not every edit/change
| is easy to articulate with your voice.
|
| If 1 had been our only problem, we might have had a hit. In
| reality, I think optimizing model errors allowed us to ignore
| some fundamental awkwardness in the experience. We've tried to
| rectify this with v2 by putting less emphasis on streaming for
| every interaction and less emphasis on commands, replacing it
| with context.
|
| Hopefully it can become a tool in the toolbox.
| adamesque wrote:
| Looking forward to giving it another try!
| jmcintire1 wrote:
| Imo it is a question of right tool for the right job, adjusted
| for differences between people. For me, the use case that made
| our product click was prompting Cursor while coding. Then I
| wanted to use it whenever I talked to chatgpt -- it's much
| faster to talk and then read, and repeat.
|
| Voice is great for whenever the limiting factor to thought is
| speed of typing.
| noahjk wrote:
| Same here. My two biggest hurdles are:
|
| 1. like you mentioned, the second I start talking about
| something, I totally forget where I'm going, have to pause,
| it's like my thoughts aren't coming to me. Probably some sort
| of mental feedback loop plus, like you mentioned, different
| method of thinking.
|
| 2. in the back of my mind, I'm always self-conscious that
| someone is listening, so it's a privacy / being judged / being
| overheard feeling which adds a layer of mental feedback.
|
| There's also not great audio clues for handling on-the-fly
| editing. I've tried to say "parentheses word parentheses" and
| it just gets written out. I've tried to say "strike that" and
| it gets written out. These interfaces are very 'happy path' and
| don't do a lot of processing (on iOS, I can say "period" and
| get a '.' (or ?,!) but that's about the extent).
|
| I have had some success with long-form recording sessions which
| are transcribed afterwards. After getting over the short
| initial hump, I can brain-dump to the recording, and then trust
| an app like Voice Notes or Superwhisper to transcribe, and then
| clean up after.
|
| The main issue I run into there, though, is that I either
| forget to record something (ex. a conversation that I want to
| review later) or there is too much friction / I don't record
| often enough to launch it quickly or even remember to use that
| workflow.
|
| I get the same feeling with smart home stuff - it was awesome
| for a while to turn lights on and off with voice, but lately
| there's the added overhead of "did it hear me? do I need to
| repeat myself? What's the least amount of words I can say? Why
| can't I just think something into existence instead? Or have a
| perfect contextual interface on a physical device?"
| SCdF wrote:
| I use my (work) computer entirely with my voice, and it takes a
| lot of effort to work out what to actually write and to not
| ramble. Like you I've found that it's better to throw out words
| in sort of half sentence chunks, to give your brain time to
| work out what the next chunk is.
|
| It's very hard, and I wouldn't do it if I didn't have to.
|
| (which is why I'm always perplexed by these apps which allow
| voice dictation or voice control, but not as a complete
| accessibility package. I wouldn't be using my voice if my hands
| worked!)
|
| It's also critically important (and after 3-4 years of this I
| still regularly fail at this) to actually read what you've
| written, and edit it before send, because those chunks don't
| always line up into something that I'd consider acceptably
| coherent. Even for a one sentence slack message.
|
| (also, I have a kiwi accent, and the dictation software I use
| is not always perfect at getting what I wanted to say on the
| page)
| e12e wrote:
| Curious about your current setup, and if maybe adding a
| macro/functionality to clean up input via an LLM would help?
|
| In my experience LLM can be quite forgiving when given some
| unfinished input and asked to expand/clean up?
| cloogshicer wrote:
| I'm exactly the same. Aqua is so incredible and I really tried
| to like it, but I just can't get my brain to think of what I
| want to say first, I have to pause to think constantly.
| vladstudio wrote:
| For the sake of alternatives, I've had good experience with
| https://tryvoiceink.com/
| bemmu wrote:
| I would like to try this, but I use Synergy to use two computers
| with the same keyboard. I have Aqua Voice now on the server
| computer, would be great if I could input text to the client
| computer using it as well.
| replete wrote:
| Product/UI looks good. Nice job. I would pay for a completely
| offline version of this, cloud voice data is non-starter for me
| though unfortunately
| voltaireodactyl wrote:
| Check out MacWhisper which is one time payment and does this
| among many other things.
| jrvarela56 wrote:
| Feedback: I use MacWhisper and Tiny wisperkit model (english
| only) is way faster than any cloud service on my M1 macbook pro.
|
| I'd say local is necessary for delightful product experience and
| the added bonus is that it ticks the privacy box
| brianjking wrote:
| How much ram is in your m1?
| jrvarela56 wrote:
| 16gb
| marcogarces wrote:
| Pesant! (just joking); Mine is 96GB!
| hasperdi wrote:
| Anyone can recommend a good dictation app on Linux?
| rickydroll wrote:
| I've been using Aqua since it was announced on HNN. I've survived
| the teething pains by using a mixture of Aqua and Dragon,
| depending on what I was doing. With this new Windows app, I've
| given up using Dragon for anything.
|
| Things I've learned are:
|
| 1. It works better if you're connected by Ethernet than by Wi-Fi.
|
| 2. It needs to have a longer recognition history because
| sometimes you hit the wrong key to end a recognition session, and
| it loses everything.
|
| 3. Besides the longer history, a debugging mode that records all
| the characters sent to the dictation box would be useful.
| Sometimes, I see one set of words, blink, and then it's replaced
| with a new recognition result. Capturing would be useful in
| describing what went wrong.
|
| 4. There should be a way to tell us when a new version is
| running. Occasionally, I've run into problems where I'm getting
| errors, and I can't tell if it's my speaking, my audio chain, my
| computer, the network, or the app.
|
| 5. Grammarly is a great add-on because it helps me correct mis-
| speakings and odd little errors, like too many spaces caused by
| starting and stopping recognition.
|
| When Dragon Systems went through bankruptcy court, a public
| benefits corporation bid for the core technology because it
| recognized that Dragon was a critical tool for people with
| disabilities to function in a digital world.
|
| In my opinion, Aqua has reached a similar status as an essential
| tool. Well, it doesn't fully replace Dragon for those who need
| command and control (yet). The recognition accuracy and
| smoothness are so amazing that I can't envision returning to
| Dragon Systems without much pain. The only thing worse would be
| going back to a keyboard.
|
| Aqua Guys, don't fuck it up.
| roland_kovacs wrote:
| Hey guys, great idea! Most of the apps already have voice
| recognition. Do you think about serving a niche where this
| feature is not existing? Also, the data protection part is
| unclear to me, I don't want everything uploaded to a cloud where
| I don't know what is happening with it.
| waveringana wrote:
| will we ever see local, open source models? they are very
| important for accessibility reasons which this product can fit
| into, but wont because of it being cloud based (and proprietary).
| somberi wrote:
| I use MacWhisper and it works well enough for me to stop looking
| for options.(MBA M2 24GB Ram - Large V3 English)
|
| I wouldn't feel comfortable if someone were looking over my
| shoulder while I'm typing at a coffee shop.
|
| I am not your customer.
| iAMkenough wrote:
| Tried viewing the Pricing link in the footer, but it requires a
| Google account to view.
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