Free · open source · local or cloud

Speak.
Vito types it — cleanly.

Press a hotkey, talk, and polished text is pasted into whatever app you're in. Use private, zero-cost local speech-to-text or your preferred cloud provider, then choose exactly how AI cleans it up.

WindowsmacOSLinux

The Vito desktop app on its Status screen: counters for 5,555 words dictated, 401 sentences cleaned and 1 h 38 m of typing saved, a words-per-day chart, a €0.35 monthly cost breakdown, and a live transcript turning a raw sentence into clean text

Three steps. Any app.

Vito sits in your tray and works wherever your cursor is — email, docs, chat, code.

Press your hotkey

One shortcut, anywhere on your system. Vito starts listening instantly.

Just talk

Speak naturally, in any of 60 languages. Hesitations and detours are fine.

Clean text is pasted

Pick one of five cleanup styles — including Business, Verbatim and Notes — or write your own prompt. Vito pastes the result where you were typing.

Vito Assist

Or just ask. Vito can act, not only type.

Begin a dictation with "Vito, …" and the rest becomes a command for your AI — no mode to switch into, no button to press. Say it and it happens, right where you are working. Translate, answer a question, do the sum, find the word — or anything else you would ask an AI; the examples are just examples.

"Vito, translate to German"

then just speak — it comes back in German

"Vito, translate the clipboard to Spanish"

your copied text, translated in place

"Vito, what's the capital of France?"

answers, facts and quick calculations

"Vito, a synonym for 'important'"

synonyms, meanings and definitions

Nothing extra to learn, nothing to click

It runs on the AI you already set up for cleanup — or give Assist its own, more powerful model for sharper answers. It works in text: you get written answers and rewritten text back, not images or files. There is no assistant to summon and no mode to switch: if you can dictate, you can ask.

Pricing

Pay pennies — or nothing.

Vito is free and has no subscription. Run speech-to-text locally with Parakeet and use a local OpenAI-compatible model for cleanup with zero usage fees. Prefer less system load or more languages? Choose BYOK; typical cloud providers cost about €0.15 per hour.

Local, cloud or a mix — see your options →

What would it cost you?

Drag to your monthly dictation time.

10 hours of speech / month

≈ €1.50

That's less than a single coffee. A €15/month subscription costs the same as ~100 hours of nonstop talking.

Side by side

Subscription apps

Wispr Flow & friends

€12–15/mo

Vito

local or your own provider

€0/mo local

Local transcription and cleanup have no usage fees. With typical cloud providers, you would have to speak for ~100 hours in one month to spend €15.

Your AI, your choice

Local, remote or both.

No API key is required. Vito can install and manage Parakeet for private, zero-cost speech-to-text on your own computer. Or bring your own key and connect directly to a cloud provider. OpenAI-compatible endpoints give you the same freedom for both transcription and cleanup — including local Whisper, Parakeet and LLM servers.

  1. Choose local processing, a provider, or a mix
  2. Let Vito install Parakeet or enter your endpoint and optional key
  3. Speak — locally for free, or pay your provider at cost

Parakeet, managed by Vito

Zero usage cost Local

Private on-device speech-to-text · 25 languages · higher system load

Transcription

Any OpenAI-compatible STT

Local or remote

Use any compatible endpoint — including your own Whisper or Parakeet server

Transcription

Soniox

Recommended

Speech-to-text · 60 languages

Set up a key
Transcription

AssemblyAI

Free starter credit

Speech-to-text · alternative engine

Set up a key
Transcription

Groq

Recommended Free tier

Fast open models · cleans up your text

Set up a key
AI cleanup

Anthropic

Top-tier

Claude · cleans up and structures your text

Set up a key
AI cleanup

Any OpenAI-compatible provider

Local option

Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint · even a local LLM on your own machine, fully offline

AI cleanup

Run Parakeet locally and connect a local OpenAI-compatible model for cleanup: private dictation with no API key, subscription or usage fee.

BYOK is optional. If you do choose remote providers, their prices are their own — Vito adds nothing on top.

Private by design.
Open by default.

Keep the whole pipeline on your computer, or decide exactly which providers receive what.

No tracking

No analytics, no telemetry, no account. Vito doesn't phone home — there is no home to phone. We never see your data, so we couldn't sell it even if we wanted to.

Your voice, your route

With local Parakeet, audio never leaves your computer. If you choose a remote endpoint, it goes only there. History and settings always stay local.

Open source

Every line of code is public on GitHub. Don't take our word for it — read it, build it, improve it.

60 languages,
inside and out.

Dictate in any of them — and use Vito's interface in all 60 too. Every language with more than 50 million speakers is covered.

~80% of the world covered as a native language

90%+ including second languages like English, Spanish or Arabic

Western Europe

11 languages
  • English
  • Nederlands
  • Deutsch
  • Français
  • Español
  • Português
  • Italiano
  • Català
  • Galego
  • Euskara
  • Cymraeg

Northern Europe & Baltics

7 languages
  • Dansk
  • Svenska
  • Norsk
  • Suomi
  • Eesti
  • Latviešu
  • Lietuvių

Slavic

12 languages
  • Русский
  • Українська
  • Беларуская
  • Polski
  • Čeština
  • Slovenčina
  • Slovenščina
  • Hrvatski
  • Српски
  • Bosanski
  • Български
  • Македонски

Southeastern Europe & Central Asia

7 languages
  • Ελληνικά
  • Română
  • Magyar
  • Shqip
  • Türkçe
  • Azərbaycanca
  • Қазақша

Middle East

4 languages
  • العربية
  • עברית
  • فارسی
  • اردو

South Asia

9 languages
  • हिन्दी
  • বাংলা
  • ਪੰਜਾਬੀ
  • मराठी
  • ગુજરાતી
  • தமிழ்
  • తెలుగు
  • ಕನ್ನಡ
  • മലയാളം

East & Southeast Asia

8 languages
  • 中文
  • 日本語
  • 한국어
  • Tiếng Việt
  • ไทย
  • Bahasa Indonesia
  • Bahasa Melayu
  • Tagalog

Africa

2 languages
  • Kiswahili
  • Afrikaans

Simple to use. Deep when you need it.

Everything below is built in — no add-ons, no paid tiers. Lean back, talk with your hands if you like, and let Vito do the typing.

Hands-free Everything included
A man leaning back at his desk, gesturing while dictating to his laptop with Vito instead of typing

Searchable history

Every dictation is saved locally and full-text searchable. Listen back to recordings, save them, or re-copy old results — nothing you say gets lost.

Vito's History screen showing a search for "note" with 47 matching dictations grouped by day, each with its cleaned-up text and the raw transcript underneath

Personal dictionary

Teach Vito your names, jargon and frequent fixes once — applied automatically from then on.

cuber netties Kubernetes
post gres PostgreSQL
there roadmap their roadmap

Mini overlay

A tiny always-on-top window you can park anywhere — control dictation without switching apps.

Stats & achievements

Words per day, typing time saved, spoken time — with 50+ achievements to unlock along the way.

5,555words dictated 1h 38mtyping saved 18/44achievements
👋 Hello, Vito 🏆 Sir Speak-a-Lot ❓ Secret achievement
Starts with your computerLaunch on boot so the hotkey always works.
Light & dark modeFollows your OS preference automatically.
UI in 60 languagesThe whole interface, not just dictation.
Rolling backupsAutomatic backups with one-click restore.
Built-in updaterChecks for and installs updates itself.
Media controlDuck or pause your music while you dictate.
Replay & save recordingsListen back to any dictation and export it.
Transcribe audio filesUpload a recording, get clean text back.
Demo modeExplore Vito with sample content, no key needed.
Linux setup helperDetects missing libraries and explains hotkey setup per desktop environment.
Spoken emoji & line breaksSay "new line" or "thumbs up" — Vito gets it.
Open sourceAuditable, forkable, yours.
Managed local ParakeetVito installs and manages private STT in 25 languages.
Your cleanup styleFive presets or a completely custom AI prompt.

See it in action

Light and dark, just like this site — Vito follows your OS preference automatically. So when you're dictating late at night or in a dim room, the interface stays calm and easy on the eyes.

Free forever, built in the open.

Vito is open source — inspect it, fork it, contribute. If it saves you time, a coffee keeps development going.

Get Vito

Free download. No account or subscription. No API key needed for local use.

Release notes

The first time you open Vito

Windows and macOS will most likely stop you once, before Vito ever runs. Neither is telling you something is wrong with it — they are telling you they don't recognise it yet. Here is what you'll see, and how to get past it.

On macOS

Vito isn't signed with an Apple Developer certificate — that is a paid yearly membership, and Vito is free — so macOS blocks it the first time and doesn't offer an obvious way through. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the bottom, and click Open Anyway next to the note about Vito. Once is enough: after that it opens like any other app.

On Windows

You may get a blue “Windows protected your PC” screen. That is SmartScreen, and it shows up because not enough people have downloaded this installer yet for it to have built a reputation — not because anything was found in it. Click More info, then Run anyway. A virus scanner may warn for the same reason.

Both warnings fade as more people download Vito. Until then you don't have to take our word for it: every build is published with a .sha256 checksum beside it, and the whole source is on GitHub to read, or to build yourself.

Vito is young — expect the occasional bug. Found one? Report it on GitHub and help make Vito better.

What's new

Vito 2026.8.1 2026-08-15

⏰ Groq retires Vito's default model on 16 August 2026

If you use Groq for cleanup, update before that date. Groq decommissions llama-3.3-70b-versatile — the model Vito has shipped as its default — and llama-3.1-8b-instant alongside it. Left alone, your next dictation fails with a provider error.

The new default is openai/gpt-oss-120b, Groq's own mapping for the model being removed, so cleanup quality stays where it was. Existing configs migrate themselves on start: only those two exact model ids, and only against a groq.com endpoint — the same names on a local Ollama are still valid and are left alone.

The suggestion list is now the two models Groq designates production, plus two it flags preview. The preview ones carry a badge in the dropdown, because a model that can be withdrawn at short notice is exactly how this broke in the first place.

🐧 Linux: hotkeys and typing through XDG portals, and a Flatpak

Vito speaks the RemoteDesktop and GlobalShortcuts portals over D-Bus. On a Wayland desktop that means no ydotoold, no /dev/uinput udev rule and no root — you grant remote control once and it is remembered. A third backend, wtype, is preferred where it is available: it needs no daemon at all. ydotool remains the fallback for X11 and compositors without the portals, and an explicitly configured backend is always honoured.

Vito is now on Flathub-style hosting of its own: install from vinceecniv.github.io/Vito, signed with the repository key.

Which Linux download to pick:

| | Typing into other apps | Setup | |---|---|---| | AppImage | always works | ydotool needed on some desktops | | Flatpak | only where the RemoteDesktop portal exists | nothing to install |

Inside the sandbox a first dictation used to fail with ydotool not found in PATH — advice nobody could act on, since the sandbox has neither /dev/uinput nor a daemon, and the text then quietly went to the clipboard on every later attempt. Routes the sandbox cannot have are no longer offered, tried or named, and delivery falls back to the clipboard instead. A Flatpak on a desktop that cannot type now says so and points at the AppImage.

💸 OpenAI: current models, and a cost card that was wrong

The suggestions move to the GPT-5.6 family — luna for cleanup, terra for Assist, sol at the frontier. gpt-4o-mini stays in the list; it still works and is cheaper than luna.

The real fix is underneath: the cost card only ever knew gpt-4o-mini's price and showed it for every OpenAI model — off by 25× for anyone who picked the frontier model. Rates now follow the selected model.

🌍 Translations

The Linux and Flatpak strings, and the injection-backend labels that never reached the translator at all, are now in all 60 languages.

---

Install
  • WindowsVito-Setup-2026.8.1.exe (per-user, no admin).
  • macOSVito-2026.8.1.dmg — drag Vito to Applications. First launch needs right-click → Open, then two permissions (Microphone, Accessibility).
  • LinuxVito-2026.8.1-x86_64.AppImagechmod +x and run — or the Flatpak from vinceecniv.github.io/Vito.
Checksums (SHA-256)

1ac39c70b25aa96b8f34c49ba4504df8f5398af89c6589063667b2f325fb2834 Vito-Setup-2026.8.1.exe 739dbfb58f3aa702f2077693e3aeab529b9f78a6c7d623409828c6f691cbed34 Vito-2026.8.1.dmg b9669fb5394442a72e558101ef6f0459df4c30b6cda507ac17b8ccc87bebba1c Vito-2026.8.1-x86_64.AppImage

Free, open-source, bring-your-own-key — no subscription. Setup guides at vito.talk.

Questions, answered.

Is Vito really free?

Yes. The app costs nothing and is open source. Run Parakeet locally for transcription and a local OpenAI-compatible model for cleanup and there are no usage fees at all. If you prefer cloud processing, you pay your chosen providers directly — typically about €0.15 per hour of speech.

Do I need an API key?

No. Vito can install and manage local Parakeet speech-to-text for you. Keys are optional if you prefer Soniox, AssemblyAI or another remote provider. You can also enter an OpenAI-compatible endpoint for local or remote transcription and cleanup.

What happens to my voice recordings?

With local Parakeet, your audio stays on your computer. If you configure a remote speech-to-text endpoint, audio goes only there. Cleanup can also stay local or use the provider you choose. Vito contains no tracking or analytics, and your history stays on your machine.

Should I use local or cloud speech-to-text (STT)?

Choose local Parakeet for stronger privacy and zero usage fees in 25 languages. Vito handles installation and management, but local processing puts more load on your computer and may use more battery. Choose cloud STT for lower system load and up to 60 languages, usually at a small usage cost. Or point Vito at any OpenAI-compatible local or remote STT endpoint, including Whisper and Parakeet servers.

Which platforms does Vito run on?

Windows, macOS and Linux. On Linux, Vito even detects missing utilities and shows per-desktop-environment instructions for setting up your hotkey.

Why is it called Vito?

Voice In, Text Out. That's the whole app in four words.

Can I transcribe existing audio files?

Yes — upload a recording and Vito converts it to clean text, the same way it handles live dictation.

Built entirely with Claude Code

Vito is written 100% with Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding agent — and we're glad to say so. With a clear vision, and used the right way, AI coding makes apps like this one possible that otherwise simply would not exist.

The same goes for this website — every page, and the build system behind it, is Claude Code's work too. Doing it this way is what makes the scope possible:

  • Built and shipped in weeks, not months.
  • Cross-platform — Windows, macOS and Linux.
  • A powerful voice assistant, Vito Assist, for spoken commands and answers.
  • AI cleanup with five built-in styles and completely custom prompts.
  • Local Parakeet STT and OpenAI-compatible transcription endpoints.
  • An achievement system, with dozens to unlock.
  • Detailed statistics and a searchable history.
  • An interface in 60 languages, translated automatically.
  • The whole website in seven languages, from a single source.

"Vibe coding" has picked up a bad name, but on its own it says little about quality. Not everyone with a driving licence drives well — and, in the same way, not every programmer automatically writes better code than an AI. What decides the result is the direction you steer it in.