Dicte: Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop. 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 Dicte when executives capturing and summarizing in-person and virtual meetings 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.
Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop.
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.
Dicte is an AI meeting assistant developed by Livdeo SAS, a France-based company, designed to capture and process both in-person and virtual meetings as well as personal voice notes. Users start a recording with one tap, and Dicte applies speech recognition with speaker identification to produce a transcript, then generates summaries, action items, and structured documents such as meeting minutes from the spoken content. It offers customizable AI processing tools (referred to as SKILLs) for outputs like two-page or detailed minutes, SWOT analysis, and project-oriented reports, and supports multiple languages. A defining characteristic of Dicte is its emphasis on data protection: audio is recorded locally on the device and only temporarily transferred to Dicte-operated servers in Paris for transcription before being deleted, with transcript pseudonymization applied before AI processing and an on-premises Edge AI option (DicteBOX) for enterprise use. Dicte is aimed at business executives, meeting leaders, and organizations with strict privacy or compliance requirements, and is available across iOS, Android, web, and desktop builds for Windows and macOS. 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
Dicte 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 | Dicte | Handy |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | One-tap recording for in-person and virtual meetings | Push-to-talk and toggle dictation modes with a configurable global keyboard shortcut |
| Standout feature | Speech recognition with speaker identification | Fully offline, on-device transcription with no cloud uploads |
| Team usage | AI-generated summaries, action items, and meeting minutes | Multiple local speech models including Whisper (GPU-accelerated) and Parakeet V3 (CPU, auto language detection) |
| Integrations | Customizable AI processing tools (SKILLs) such as SWOT and project reports | Silero Voice Activity Detection to filter silence and process only speech |
| Languages & capture | Multilingual transcription support | Automatically pastes transcribed text into any active application text field |
| Best-fit workflow | Privacy-focused processing with local audio storage and post-processing deletion | Cross-platform desktop app (macOS, Windows, Linux) built with Tauri |
Dicte
Choose Dicte if you need executives capturing and summarizing in-person and virtual meetings — strengths include strong privacy and data-protection design with eu-based processing.
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.
Dicte
Handy
It depends on your workflow. Dicte is strong for executives capturing and summarizing in-person and virtual meetings, while Handy is strong for hands-free dictation into emails, documents, chat apps, and code editors. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Dicte 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.
More head-to-head comparisons involving Dicte and Handy.
Dicte: Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop. Dovetail: Customer insights platform that centralizes interviews and feedback, with AI transcription, analysis, search, and a research repository. Which one wins depends on your platform mix, budget, and how hands-off you want notes to be.
Dicte: Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop. Dscout: Experience research platform for moderated interviews, diary studies, and usability testing with AI transcription, themes, and analysis. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.
Dicte: Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop. Echometer: Psychology-based platform for agile retrospectives, recurring team health checks, and structured 1:1 meetings with AI-assisted suggestions. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.
Dicte: Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop. Edisyn: Real-time AI meeting assistant from a Turkish-founded team that listens to calls and provides live notes, summaries, and suggested questions and answers. Which one wins depends on your platform mix, budget, and how hands-off you want notes to be.
Dicte: Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop. Efficlose: An AI meeting platform offering a bot-free Chrome extension plus desktop and web apps that transcribe, summarize, and extract action items from calls. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.
Dicte: Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop. Equal Time: Meeting notes with speaking-time and inclusion analytics The right pick comes down to team size, budget, and the workflows you want to automate.
Dicte: Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop. EventCAT: AI platform that delivers real-time subtitles and voice interpretation in 50+ languages for conferences, webinars, and online meetings. The right pick comes down to team size, budget, and the workflows you want to automate.
Dicte: Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop. Evernote AI Meeting Notes: Evernote's built-in feature that records meeting audio, transcribes it with speaker recognition, and summarizes it inside your notes. Here's where each one pulls ahead on pricing, features, and the meetings it suits best.
Dicte: Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop. Exec: Voice-based AI roleplay platform that lets sales reps practice high-stakes conversations against realistic AI buyers and get instant coaching. This comparison weighs them on pricing, features, and everyday workflow fit.
Dicte: Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop. Exemplary AI: AI transcription and content-repurposing tool that turns podcasts, webinars, interviews, and videos into transcripts, subtitles, clips, and written summaries. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.
Dicte: Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop. Fast Rekap: iOS meeting recorder that transcribes conversations and turns them into structured summaries, presentation slides, and mind maps with chat-with-transcript Q&A. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.
Dicte: Privacy-focused AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings and voice notes on mobile and desktop. Feishu Minutes: ByteDance's Feishu/Lark feature that transcribes audio and video into searchable minutes with AI summaries and to-dos. Below, they line up on price, capture method, and how each fits a real meeting stack.