Does SuperWhisper use the Parakeet model?
Short answer: yes, it can. SuperWhisper added NVIDIA’s Parakeet model during 2025 as one option in its model picker, next to its local Whisper variants and its cloud model options. Select Parakeet and that model handles the transcription on your Mac. The longer answer is worth having, because “uses Parakeet” and “runs only Parakeet, on-device, with nothing else in the path” are two different claims, and the gap between them is where the on-device speech-to-text question actually lives.
What “using Parakeet” means inside SuperWhisper
SuperWhisper is a multi-engine app by design. Its model picker has grown to include local Whisper variants, cloud-hosted options on a bring-your-own-key basis, and, since 2025, NVIDIA’s Parakeet. When you choose Parakeet from that menu, the app loads the Parakeet weights and runs transcription against them locally. So “does SuperWhisper use Parakeet” is really “can you configure SuperWhisper to use Parakeet”, and the answer is yes.
That is worth stating plainly because the two big Whisper-based Mac apps, SuperWhisper and MacWhisper, both added Parakeet during 2025. The lines between what each app runs have blurred: the same model families now show up across several apps, and the differentiator is no longer “which model” but “how much of the app sits around it”.
Which Parakeet, exactly
“Parakeet” is a family, not a single file. The current release is Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3, which tops the Hugging Face Open ASR Leaderboard with a 6.32% word error rate against Whisper Large V3’s 7.44%. The earlier v2 was English-only; v3 added 25 European languages with automatic detection. An app can integrate whichever build it chose, so if the exact version matters to you, read SuperWhisper’s model list rather than assuming. The background on the model itself is in the primer on running NVIDIA Parakeet on a Mac, and the head-to-head with the OpenAI model is in Parakeet vs Whisper.
What picking Parakeet does not change
Selecting Parakeet changes the speech model. It does not change the rest of the app. SuperWhisper’s AI cleanup features, the prompts that rewrite a raw transcript into an email, a summary or a structured note, call out to cloud LLM providers regardless of which speech model produced the transcript. So with Parakeet selected the audio leg stays on the Mac, but the transcript leg can still leave it the moment AI cleanup is on.
For most dictation that is a non-issue. For Protected Health Information, privileged matter or anything NDA-bound, it is the whole issue: “on-device” has to mean both the audio and the transcript stay put. The configuration-specific version of this is worked through in whether SuperWhisper is on-device, and the compliance framing is in architectural vs contractual privacy.
Running Parakeet as the only engine
The reason I built Parakeety around one model rather than a picker is exactly this gap. Parakeety runs Parakeet TDT v3 on the Apple Neural Engine as its only engine. There is no other model to select, no cloud option to fall back to, and no AI cleanup feature to send the transcript anywhere. The audio leg and the transcript leg both stay on the Mac every time, because the app contains no other data path.
The trade is the honest one: fewer features in exchange for simpler reasoning about what the app does. If you want to switch between Whisper and Parakeet inside one app, or you want AI rewriting baked in, SuperWhisper is the better fit, and the full product comparison is Parakeety vs SuperWhisper. If you want the Parakeet model with no configuration standing between you and an on-device guarantee, that is the bet Parakeety makes.
FAQ
- Does SuperWhisper use the Parakeet model?
- Yes. SuperWhisper added NVIDIA’s Parakeet model during 2025 as one option in its model picker, alongside local Whisper variants and cloud model options. When you select Parakeet, that model runs the transcription on the Mac. It is one engine among several, not the only one the app can use.
- Which Parakeet model does SuperWhisper run?
- The current NVIDIA release is Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3, which tops the Hugging Face Open ASR Leaderboard. Each app exposes whichever Parakeet build it has integrated, so check SuperWhisper’s model list for the exact version. It matters, because v2 and v3 differ on language coverage and accuracy.
- Is SuperWhisper fully on-device when I pick Parakeet?
- The transcription is, but the AI cleanup features send transcript text to cloud LLM providers regardless of which speech model you chose. Picking Parakeet keeps the audio leg on the Mac; switching off AI cleanup is what keeps the transcript leg on the Mac too. On-device with Parakeet selected is a configuration, not a guarantee.
- What is the difference between SuperWhisper with Parakeet and Parakeety?
- SuperWhisper offers Parakeet as one choice inside a multi-engine app with a model picker, cloud options and AI post-processing. Parakeety runs Parakeet TDT v3 as its only engine, fully on-device, with no picker and no cloud path. Same model family, different amount of surface area to reason about.
Try it
Parakeety runs the Parakeet TDT v3 model on the Apple Neural Engine, and only that. Hold the section key, talk, release; your words paste at the cursor in whichever app you were typing into. Audio never leaves the machine, and there is no model picker to get wrong. It needs Apple Silicon and macOS 14 or later. There is a free 7-day trial with no card required. After that it is $30 once.