AI tool
Openbroca
Openbroca is a lightweight Mac dictation tool that transcribes speech to text and removes filler words while keeping your natural phrasing. It is for people who want a small, always-available voice input utility without a complex interface.
About Openbroca
Openbroca is a native Swift dictation application for macOS with a download size of approximately 6.5 MB. It captures speech via a keyboard shortcut, processes it to remove fillers and false starts while preserving the speaker's intended meaning and tone, and inserts the cleaned text at the cursor. The tool also includes a personal dictionary that learns from corrections, a Typeless dictionary import function, and translation into 28 languages.
Review
Openbroca positions itself as a lightweight alternative to more interface-heavy dictation tools, operating from the menu bar without a Dock icon. The app's core loop is straightforward: press ⌥ Space, speak, and receive cleaned text. It uses a primary AI model for processing, with Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite as an automatic fallback when the primary model encounters timeouts, rate limits, or errors.
Key Features
- Voice dictation triggered by a configurable shortcut, with filler word and repetition removal that retains qualifiers like "probably" and "I think."
- A personal dictionary that adapts to user corrections over time, plus the ability to import an existing dictionary from Typeless.
- Multilingual speech recognition and text translation into 28 output languages.
- Menu bar-only operation with no Dock presence and a binary size around 6.5 MB.
- Automatic fallback to Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite when the primary processing model is unavailable.
Pricing and Value
Every feature is accessible in the free tier, which includes 3,000 text units per week without requiring a credit card. A paid plan exists, and a launch discount was offered to the Product Hunt community, but the regular pricing structure beyond the weekly free allowance is not yet defined in the available reference material.
Pros
- Small footprint: at roughly 6.5 MB, the app consumes minimal disk space and runs without a Dock icon.
- Dictionary features allow the tool to learn user-specific vocabulary from corrections or via direct import.
- Translation into 28 languages is built directly into the dictation workflow.
- Fallback processing to Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite means dictation and translation requests still complete even when the primary model is down.
- No credit card is required to start using the free tier.
Cons
- The free tier's 3,000 weekly text units may be insufficient for users who rely on dictation for hours of daily writing.
- The tool is not well suited for those who prefer a full graphical interface with editing history, analytics dashboards, or multi-window workflows.
- Regular paid pricing beyond the free tier is not publicly specified, making long-term cost difficult to assess.
Openbroca fits users who want a menu bar utility that handles dictation cleanup without manual prompt adjustment, especially those who previously used Typeless and want to carry over their custom dictionaries. The free tier lets you test whether the cleanup style matches your speech patterns before committing to a paid plan, once that pricing becomes clearer.
