Type at the speed of speech.

FastPen is fast, private dictation for Windows. Press a hotkey, speak, and your words appear in any app — email, Word, browser, chat.

Download for Windows — free
v0.1.0 · Windows 10/11 (64-bit) · 9 MB · all releases
FastPen — dictating
Meeting notes: the deadline moves to Friday, and the demo goes to the client first.

Why FastPen?

🔒100% on-device

Speech recognition runs on your computer. No cloud, no account, no subscription — your voice never leaves your machine.

🌍25 languages

Powered by NVIDIA's Parakeet v3 model: English, German, French, Spanish, Hungarian and 20 more — with automatic language detection and punctuation.

Near real-time

Text appears the moment you pause. Six seconds of speech is transcribed in about 0.2 seconds on a modern CPU.

⌨️Works everywhere

FastPen types straight into whatever app has focus, like a very fast invisible keyboard.

No limits

It's your CPU — dictate as much as you want. No word counts, no monthly quotas, no premium tier.

📦Tiny download

The app is a 9 MB download. The speech model (~465 MB) is fetched automatically on first run.

How it works

1

Press Ctrl+Alt+Space

2

Speak naturally — pause whenever you like

3

Your words are typed into the active window

Private by design

FastPen contains no analytics, no telemetry and makes no network requests other than downloading the speech model from GitHub on first start. What you say is processed in memory, typed into your app, and forgotten.

Download

FastPen-win64.zip — v0.1.0
Unzip anywhere and run FastPen.exe. Needs Windows 10 (1803+) or 11, 64-bit, and a microphone.
If you get a “VCRUNTIME140.dll missing” error, install the Microsoft VC++ redistributable.

Support the project

FastPen is free and built by one developer. If it saves you time, you can support development here soon — donation options are on the way. 💛

FAQ

Is it really free?

Yes. FastPen is free to download and use, with no feature gates. If it becomes popular, a paid version with extra features may follow — dictation will stay free.

Does my voice get uploaded anywhere?

No. Recognition runs entirely on your CPU using the open Parakeet v3 model. FastPen works offline once the model is downloaded.

Which languages are supported?

25 European languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Romanian and Ukrainian. The language is detected automatically. Whisper models are also supported for even more languages.

What are the system requirements?

Windows 10 (version 1803 or newer) or Windows 11, 64-bit. Any reasonably modern CPU works — no GPU needed. About 700 MB of disk space after the model download.

Is FastPen open source?

Not currently — but you don't have to take our privacy claims on faith. FastPen makes no network requests except downloading the model on first run, and that's verifiable: watch it with a firewall, or simply block it from the internet entirely. It keeps working offline.

Why does Windows warn me when I run it?

FastPen is a new app from a small developer and isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen may show a warning. Click “More info” → “Run anyway”. Code signing is planned.