BB Recorder: A 100% local, no-bot meeting recorder for Mac and iOS that records, transcribes, and summarizes entirely on-device, built by the BuildBetter team. Handy: Handy is a free, open-source, cross-platform push-to-talk app that transcribes your speech to text completely offline and pastes it into any text field. The right pick comes down to team size, budget, and the workflows you want to automate.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist BB Recorder when regulated or privacy-sensitive teams that cannot send audio to the cloud matters most, and Handy when privacy-sensitive voice-to-text where audio must stay on-device matters most. Run both through a week of actual calls to see which suits your workflow.
A 100% local, no-bot meeting recorder for Mac and iOS that records, transcribes, and summarizes entirely on-device, built by the BuildBetter team.
Handy is a free, open-source, cross-platform push-to-talk app that transcribes your speech to text completely offline and pastes it into any text field.
BB Recorder is a local-first meeting recorder built by the team behind BuildBetter, designed for people who want meeting capture without any data leaving their device. Rather than dropping a bot into a video call, BB Recorder captures the computer's system audio directly, links to the user's calendar, and turns rough conversation audio into clean transcripts and summaries. Its defining characteristic is that recording, transcription, summarization, and even live AI chat about the meeting can all run locally using on-device models, so there is no server holding the audio or transcripts. The company frames this as making a data breach architecturally impossible because there is no cloud store to compromise, and it points to SOC 2 and HIPAA considerations along with an AI transparency policy. BB Recorder is positioned as a genuinely free, unlimited option for Mac, with no trial tiers or required registration when using local models, and a companion iOS app extends capture to the iPhone. It is aimed at privacy-sensitive professionals, regulated teams, and anyone who wants automatic meeting notes without a visible bot or a cloud transcription pipeline. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Handy is a free, open-source desktop application that turns your voice into text completely offline, with no audio ever leaving your computer. You press a configurable keyboard shortcut, speak, and release (push-to-talk), or use a toggle mode to start and stop; Handy transcribes what you said and automatically pastes the result into whatever text field is active. Because it runs entirely on-device, it is built for privacy-conscious users who want dictation without cloud uploads or subscriptions. Under the hood it is built with Tauri (a Rust backend with a React/TypeScript frontend) and supports multiple local speech-recognition models, including OpenAI's Whisper variants with GPU acceleration and the CPU-friendly Parakeet V3 model with automatic language detection. Silero Voice Activity Detection filters out silence so only speech is processed. Handy runs on macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon), Windows, and Linux, and is released under the MIT license. It positions itself as an accessible, extensible alternative to paid dictation tools, and is best suited for hands-free typing rather than recording multi-party meetings.
Best suited for
BB Recorder is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Handy is open source (open source). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | BB Recorder | Handy |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | No-bot capture of system audio directly on the device | Push-to-talk and toggle dictation modes with a configurable global keyboard shortcut |
| Standout feature | Fully on-device recording, transcription, and summarization | Fully offline, on-device transcription with no cloud uploads |
| Team usage | Local AI chat to ask questions about a captured meeting | Multiple local speech models including Whisper (GPU-accelerated) and Parakeet V3 (CPU, auto language detection) |
| Integrations | Calendar linking to associate recordings with scheduled meetings | Silero Voice Activity Detection to filter silence and process only speech |
| Languages & capture | Available for macOS and iOS | Automatically pastes transcribed text into any active application text field |
| Best-fit workflow | Built by the BuildBetter team with an AI transparency policy | Cross-platform desktop app (macOS, Windows, Linux) built with Tauri |
BB Recorder
Choose BB Recorder if you need regulated or privacy-sensitive teams that cannot send audio to the cloud — strengths include local-only processing keeps meeting audio and transcripts off external servers.
Handy
Choose Handy if you need hands-free dictation into emails, documents, chat apps, and code editors — strengths include completely free, open-source (mit) with no subscription or paywall.
BB Recorder
Handy
It depends on your workflow. BB Recorder is strong for regulated or privacy-sensitive teams that cannot send audio to the cloud, while Handy is strong for hands-free dictation into emails, documents, chat apps, and code editors. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
BB Recorder is a free tier with paid upgrades and Handy is open source. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
Sure. Running both makes sense when their strengths don't overlap and the budget allows.
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