SuperWhisper pioneered local Whisper on macOS with a beautiful menu-bar UI. Neuron Flame takes the same on-device approach, makes it free under GPL-3, adds NVIDIA Parakeet V2 for fastest English transcription, and ships a Liquid-Glass Dynamic-Island recorder that hugs the physical notch.
Free · Open source · GPL-3.0 · 100% on-device by default
| Neuron Flame | Alternative | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, forever | Paid (one-time + paid pro tier) |
| On-device transcription | Yes (Whisper + Parakeet V2) | Yes (Whisper variants) |
| Open source | Yes — GPL-3 on GitHub | No |
| Parakeet V2 support | Yes (Apple Neural Engine) | No |
| AI enhancement | Gemini, GPT, Claude, Ollama, local CLI | Limited / paid feature |
| Per-app behaviour | Power Mode profiles | Per-app modes |
| Recorder UI | Notch / Dynamic Island top-of-screen | Menu bar dropdown |
| Liquid Glass (macOS 26) | Yes | No |
| Custom dictionary | Yes | Yes |
SuperWhisper was one of the first apps to make running Whisper locally on macOS genuinely pleasant. Their menu-bar UI is unobtrusive, their Whisper integration is solid, and their model picker covers the full Whisper family. If you bought SuperWhisper, you got a good app and a developer who's actively shipping.
Open source under GPL-3. The code is on GitHub. You can read what's happening, fork it, build your own version, or audit the privacy claims directly rather than taking our word for them.
Parakeet V2 baked in. NVIDIA's English-only Parakeet V2 runs on the Apple Neural Engine via FluidAudio. It's noticeably faster than Whisper on the same Mac, and accuracy is competitive with Whisper Medium. SuperWhisper sticks to Whisper variants.
Dynamic Island recorder. The recorder pill drapes over the physical notch on Apple Silicon laptops with a brand-tinted breathing halo while recording. SuperWhisper uses a more traditional menu-bar dropdown.
BYO LLM for AI enhancement. Plug in your existing OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or Ollama setup. SuperWhisper has its own enhancement options but is less open-ended.
Free, no account, no paywall. If you don't like it, drag it to the Bin — no hard feelings.
Download Neuron FlameIf you already have Whisper .bin files (from whisper.cpp or similar), Neuron Flame can use them — it shares the whisper.cpp ecosystem. Drop them into ~/Library/Application Support/com.neuronflame.app/Models/ or download fresh from the AI Models tab.
Yes — there's a menu-bar icon for quick toggles. The full recorder UI sits at the top of the screen as a Dynamic-Island-style pill, and you can switch between that and a bottom-of-screen 'mini' recorder in Settings → Recorder Style.
Not automatically — the formats differ — but copy/pasting the prompt body into Neuron Flame's Enhancement tab takes a minute. We support the same kind of templating (system message + user message + transcript variable).
They have different strengths. Whisper is multilingual and extremely accurate on hard audio. Parakeet V2 is English-only and uses the Apple Neural Engine — much faster on Apple Silicon with comparable English accuracy. Default is Parakeet; switch any time.