Get Swar.
Free, forever.
Install it, hold a key, and talk — or start a recording and let it take the whole call. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to pay, and nothing about what you say ever leaves the machine you said it on.
Windows 11 · x64
Deploying to a fleet? Take the .msi for msiexec, Group Policy or Intune. Older builds and release notes are on the releases page.
Windows 11
availablex64 · WebView2 ships with the OS
macOS
next milestonethe Rust core carries across
Three steps.
Run the installer
It lands in your user profile and asks for no admin rights. Nothing to configure, no account to create, and no card at any point.
Let it fetch the speech model
One 453 MiB download on first launch, checked against a pinned SHA-256 and installed fail-closed. This is the only time Swar touches the network.
Hold Right Ctrl and talk
Swar starts in the system tray. The push-to-talk key is yours to change, and text lands in whatever had focus — your editor, a Slack box, an address bar. The meeting recorder is in the same window, for when you want the whole call rather than a sentence.
first runThe one time it touches the network.
The speech model is a 453 MiB download, pinned to a SHA-256 and installed fail-closed. It is not in the installer, which is why the installer is 10 MiB rather than 460. After that the app is offline — copy the model directory across from another machine and it never reaches out at all.
Builds are unsigned today, so Windows SmartScreen warns on first launch, and there is no auto-updater. Both are on the next milestone.
on diskWhat a recorded meeting costs you.
Audio runs about 115 MB an hour for each of the two channels. The screen, if you switch it on for that meeting, adds roughly 1.1 GB an hour. Recordings expire on a schedule you set, a week by default, and you can delete any meeting outright.
Screen recording is off unless you ask for it, every time. Swar does not remember it between meetings. If your graphics hardware cannot encode video, Swar records the audio only and says so, rather than falling back to something slower that would cost you the call.