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Juno
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Dictation apps

Juno vs Willow

Willow says you should not have to choose between private and fast. We say you should not have to choose between saying it and doing it.

Willow's pitch is sharp and it is aimed squarely at the two apps either side of it. Faster than Superwhisper, more private than the usual cloud service, and simpler to set up than both. It is a well made product and the latency is real.

Juno starts somewhere else. Dictation is local, so there is no round trip to be fast about, and it is free because there is no server to pay for.

Then it keeps going. Willow's job ends when the text is on screen. Juno's can end when the task is finished.

Side by side

  • Voice to text at your cursor

    Juno
    Yes

    Willow
    Yes

  • Where your audio is processed

    Juno
    On your Mac, with Whisper

    Willow
    On Willow's servers

  • Works with no internet

    Juno
    Yes, for dictation

    Willow
    No

  • Can carry out what you said

    Juno
    Yes, drives any app on screen

    Willow
    No, it types the words

  • Wake word

    Juno
    Yes, and you choose it

    Willow
    No

  • Audio retention

    Juno
    Nothing leaves the device

    Willow
    Stated as zero retention, SOC 2 Type II

  • Price

    Juno
    Free

    Willow
    Around $12 a month

  • Source code

    Juno
    Public, FSL-1.1-MIT

    Willow
    Closed

  • Platforms

    Juno
    macOS 14+

    Willow
    macOS and Windows

Where Willow is the better pick

  • Speed. Cloud models built for latency are hard to beat, and Willow has built its whole product around that number.
  • SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA handling, which matters if your compliance team needs a piece of paper rather than an architecture.
  • Setup is about as easy as it gets. Install, pick a key, talk.
  • It is a dictation app and nothing else, which is exactly what some people want.

Where Juno pulls ahead

  • Zero retention is a promise. On device is a fact, and it holds when the network is gone.
  • Free, with the source public, so the privacy claim is checkable rather than stated.
  • The same trigger can act instead of type.
  • It reads the screen, so it can work on what is in front of you.
  • No per seat cost when your team grows.

Two different bets

Willow is betting that dictation gets won on milliseconds. That is a reasonable bet and they are executing it well. Juno is betting that the interesting problem is not how fast your words appear, it is that half of them describe work you then have to do by hand. If you only ever dictate prose, the milliseconds may well decide it. If you dictate instructions, they do not.

Questions people ask

Is Juno faster than Willow?
Probably not on raw transcription latency today. Willow's whole product is tuned for that number and cloud models are quick. Juno removes the network hop but runs a local model, and the result depends on your Mac and the model size you choose. Faster local models are in progress. Both are free to try.
Willow says it keeps no audio. Is local really different?
Yes, in what it asks of you. A retention policy is a promise about what a company does with data it received. Local transcription means the audio was never sent, so there is no policy to trust and nothing to breach.
Can Juno just do dictation?
Yes. Set a push to talk trigger targeting dictation and skip the accessibility permission entirely.

Free, and the source is public. macOS 14+.

Download Juno