by the_king on 4/9/25, 4:31 PM with 83 comments
Video: https://withaqua.com/watch
Try it here: https://withaqua.com/sandbox
Finn is uber dyslexic and has been using dictation software since sixth grade. For over a decade, he’s been chasing a dream that never quite worked — using your voice instead of a keyboard.
Our last post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39828686) about this seemed to resonate with the community - though it turned out that version of Aqua was a better demo than product. But it gave us (and others) a lot of good ideas about what should come next.
Since then, we’ve remade Aqua from scratch for speed and usability. It now lives on your desktop, and it lets you talk into any text field -- Cursor, Gmail, Slack, even your terminal.
It starts up in under 50ms, inserts text in about a second (sometimes as fast as 450ms), and has state-of-the-art accuracy. It does a lot more, but that’s the core. We’d love your feedback — and if you’ve got ideas for what voice should do next, let’s hear them!
by idk1 on 4/9/25, 9:43 PM
by niel on 4/9/25, 8:35 PM
MacWhisper [0] (the app I settled on) is conspicuously missing from your benchmarks [1]. How does it compare?
by aylmao on 4/9/25, 11:53 PM
Side-comment of something this made me think of (again): tech builds too much for tech. I've lived in the Bay before, so I know why this happens. When you're there, everyone around you is in tech, your girlfriend is in tech, you go to parties and everyone invariably ends up talking about work, which is tech. Your frustrations are with tech tools and so are your peers', so you're constantly thinking about tech solutions applicable to tech's problems.
This seems very much marketed to SF people doing SF things ("Cursor, Gmail, Slack, even your terminal"). I wonder how much effort has gone into making this work with code editors or the terminal, even though I doubt this would a big use-case for this software if it ever became generally popular. I'd imagine the market here is much larger in education, journalism, film, accessibility, even government. Those are much more exciting demos.
by fxtentacle on 4/9/25, 8:40 PM
"we also collect and process your voice inputs [..] We leverage this data for improvements and development [..] Sharing of your information [..] service providers [..] OpenAI" https://withaqua.com/privacy
by jrvarela56 on 4/10/25, 11:53 AM
I’d say local is necessary for delightful product experience and the added bonus is that it ticks the privacy box
by alxlu on 4/10/25, 1:54 AM
I do wish there was a mobile app though (or maybe an iOS keyboard). It would also be nice to be able to have a separate hotkey you can set up to send the output to a specific app (instead of just the active one).
by rkagerer on 4/9/25, 8:14 PM
by rickydroll on 4/10/25, 1:40 PM
Things I've learned are:
1. It works better if you're connected by Ethernet than by Wi-Fi.
2. It needs to have a longer recognition history because sometimes you hit the wrong key to end a recognition session, and it loses everything.
3. Besides the longer history, a debugging mode that records all the characters sent to the dictation box would be useful. Sometimes, I see one set of words, blink, and then it's replaced with a new recognition result. Capturing would be useful in describing what went wrong.
4. There should be a way to tell us when a new version is running. Occasionally, I've run into problems where I'm getting errors, and I can't tell if it's my speaking, my audio chain, my computer, the network, or the app.
5. Grammarly is a great add-on because it helps me correct mis-speakings and odd little errors, like too many spaces caused by starting and stopping recognition.
When Dragon Systems went through bankruptcy court, a public benefits corporation bid for the core technology because it recognized that Dragon was a critical tool for people with disabilities to function in a digital world.
In my opinion, Aqua has reached a similar status as an essential tool. Well, it doesn't fully replace Dragon for those who need command and control (yet). The recognition accuracy and smoothness are so amazing that I can't envision returning to Dragon Systems without much pain. The only thing worse would be going back to a keyboard.
Aqua Guys, don't fuck it up.
by replete on 4/10/25, 11:45 AM
by willwade on 4/9/25, 9:33 PM
by adamesque on 4/10/25, 4:09 AM
But I’ve noticed/learned that I can’t dictate written content. My brain just does not work that way at all — as I write I am constantly pausing to think, to revise, etc and it feels like a completely different part of my brain is engaged. Everything I dictated with Aqua I had to throw away and rewrite.
Has anyone had similar problems, and if so, had any success retraining themselves toward dictation? There are fleeting moments where it truly feels like it would be much faster.
by SCdF on 4/9/25, 9:03 PM
I can't find any documentation on how Aqua works, or how it compares, so I'm not sure it's meant to be a replacement / competitor to Talon? What are you configuring? How are you telling it that you like "genz" style in Slack? Can I create custom configurations / macros?
One thing I like about Talon is it's not magic. Which maybe is not what you're going for. But I am giving it explicit commands that I know it will understand (if it understands my accent obvs), as opposed to guessing and constructing a human language vague sentence and hope that an llm will work it out. Which means it feels like something I can actually become fast with, and build up muscle memory of.
Also that it's completely offline, so I can actually run it on a work computer without my security folks freaking out.
by TylerE on 4/9/25, 10:31 PM
by oulipo on 4/9/25, 7:57 PM
A nice open-source alternative is VoiceInk, check it out: https://github.com/Beingpax/VoiceInk
do you also plan to open-source part of your platform?
by roland_kovacs on 4/10/25, 2:49 PM
by somberi on 4/10/25, 3:20 PM
I wouldn't feel comfortable if someone were looking over my shoulder while I'm typing at a coffee shop.
I am not your customer.
by bemmu on 4/10/25, 9:18 AM
by vladstudio on 4/10/25, 5:53 AM
by qntmfred on 4/9/25, 11:54 PM
by aminsadeghi on 4/9/25, 9:43 PM
by tomblomfield on 4/9/25, 9:30 PM
by hu3 on 4/9/25, 8:41 PM
btw, grats!
by bklyn11201 on 4/9/25, 7:57 PM
by iAMkenough on 4/10/25, 9:39 PM
by waveringana on 4/10/25, 3:14 PM
by hasperdi on 4/10/25, 12:42 PM
by gnfedhjmm2 on 4/9/25, 8:24 PM