FluidVoice Opens Waitlist for Windows and iOS — The Best Free Dictation App Is Expanding Beyond Mac

TL;DR: FluidVoice, the free, open-source, on-device dictation app that has already been downloaded 50,000+ times on Mac, has opened its waitlist for Windows and iOS. It uses local AI models for real-time speech-to-text in 40+ languages, works entirely offline, and costs nothing — no tiers, no subscriptions, ever.

If you've been watching the dictation space, you've probably noticed a pattern. The best apps — Wispr Flow, MacWhisper, Otter.ai — all charge monthly fees. The free ones either send your voice to the cloud or produce transcription quality that's unusable for real work.

FluidVoice by ALTIC broke that tradeoff when it launched on macOS. It's free. It's open-source (GPLv3). It runs entirely on-device. And it ships its own local AI model — Fluid-1 — that polishes dictation with formatting, capitalization, tone adaptation, and structured output.

Now, the team has opened the waitlist for Windows and iOS. If you're on a PC or an iPhone, this is the moment to get in line.

What FluidVoice Actually Does

FluidVoice is a system-wide dictation app. You press a hotkey (the Option key by default), speak, and the text lands in whatever app you have focused — Slack, VS Code, Chrome, Notion, Discord, Xcode, Mail, terminal, you name it.

But unlike basic speech-to-text, FluidVoice has two layers:

Layer 1: FluidVoice (the app) — The open-source macOS app handles the hotkey, the overlay, local speech model inference, and typing into any text field. It supports multiple speech models including Nemotron Speech 3.5, Whisper (Tiny through Large), Parakeet Flash, Cohere Transcribe, and Apple Speech. You can switch between them depending on whether you need raw speed or maximum accuracy.

Layer 2: Fluid-1 (the AI model) — This is the secret sauce. Fluid-1 is a local AI model that post-processes your raw dictation. It fixes capitalization, adds punctuation, formats dates and numbers, and — most impressively — adapts the tone of your output based on which app you're typing into. Casual for Slack, formal for email, structured for GitHub issues. It detects the focused app automatically and applies the right tone profile.

The entire pipeline runs on-device. Zero data leaves your Mac.

The Waitlist: What's Coming to Windows and iOS

The macOS version has been available for a while (install via brew install --cask fluidvoice or download from altic.dev/fluid). But Windows and iOS users have been locked out.

That's changing. The waitlist is now open at altic.dev/fluid/waitlist.

Here's what's known so far about the upcoming releases:

The Windows version will bring FluidVoice's full local dictation pipeline to PC users — something that's been conspicuously missing from the Windows ecosystem, where most free dictation tools rely on cloud APIs. The iOS version will extend the same privacy-first, on-device approach to iPhones, making it a genuine alternative to Apple's built-in dictation (which lacks Fluid-1's post-processing intelligence).

How It Compares to Paid Alternatives

The dictation market is dominated by subscription tools. Here's how FluidVoice stacks up:

The key differentiator is Fluid-1. Wispr Flow and MacWhisper transcribe well, but they output raw text — you still need to manually add punctuation, fix capitalization, and adjust tone. Fluid-1 does that automatically, and it adapts the output to the context of the app you're using.

The Open-Source Advantage

FluidVoice is licensed under GPLv3, which means the code is publicly visible, auditable, and forkable. For a dictation app that processes everything on-device, this matters: you can verify that no data is being sent anywhere.

The community has already contributed translations, model integrations, and feature requests across 40+ languages. The GitHub discussion board shows active engagement from developers using FluidVoice with Claude Code, Cursor, and terminal workflows — a use case that paid dictation tools rarely optimize for.

Who Should Join the Waitlist?

Windows users: If you've been relying on Windows Speech Recognition or paying for Dragon NaturallySpeaking, FluidVoice will give you modern, AI-powered dictation with local processing — for free. The waitlist is your chance to get notified the moment the Windows build drops.

iOS users: iPhone dictation is functional but basic. FluidVoice's Fluid-1 post-processing — with tone adaptation, smart formatting, and structured output — would bring a level of polish that Apple's built-in dictation doesn't offer. If you dictate emails, notes, or messages on your phone, this is worth watching.

Mac users (who haven't tried it yet): You don't need to wait. Install it today with brew install --cask fluidvoice or download from altic.dev/fluid. It's free, it's fast, and it works with any app that accepts text input.

The Bottom Line

FluidVoice is already the best free dictation app on macOS — and with the Windows and iOS waitlist now open, it's about to become the best free dictation app on every major platform. The combination of on-device processing, the Fluid-1 polishing model, adaptive tone per app, and a GPLv3 open-source license makes it a genuinely unique offering in a market dominated by subscriptions and cloud-dependent tools.

If you've been waiting for a free, private, capable dictation app that doesn't send your voice to a server, the wait is almost over.

Join the waitlist: altic.dev/fluid/waitlist Download for Mac: altic.dev/fluid Source code: github.com/altic-dev/FluidVoice

Looking for other free voice tools? Check out our coverage of DramaBox TTS Pinokio for expressive voice cloning and Voicebox for local AI voiceovers.