● Free for Windows · Made in Kenya 🇰🇪
Usiandike.
Bonga.
Speak yourWhatsApp messages
Bonga ni kuongea.Hold one key, say what you're thinking, and BONGA types it for you in any app on your laptop. Clean, punctuated, hakuna filler words. No account, no subscription, no internet needed after setup.
~70 MB zip · Windows 10/11 · your voice never leaves your laptop
WhatsApp Web · message to Brian
It cleans up your rambling.
You speak the way people actually speak, with the "umm" and the repeats and the missing commas. BONGA's cleanup pass removes the stumbles, fixes punctuation, and keeps exactly what you meant.
What you said
"What BONGA types
"Tell the team that the invoice is ready and they can pick the cheque Thursday."Faster than your thumbs. Sio siri.
People speak at about 150 words a minute and type at about 40. Watch the race:
2.5 s
A ten-second voice note becomes text in about 2.5 seconds, on an ordinary laptop.
100+
Languages, including Kiswahili. Auto-detect or pin yours in Settings.
KSh 0
What it costs you. Free while it's young; early birds keep it.
Ongea, inaandika.
There's no new app to type inside. BONGA sits quietly in your system tray and works in whatever you already have open.
1
Shika
Click into any text box, then hold Right Ctrl. A small bar with a moving waveform appears at the bottom of your screen.
2
Bonga
Say it like you'd say it to a friend. Don't mind the "aaah" and "umm", don't announce commas. Just talk.
3
Achilia
Let go of the key. In a second or two your words land in the text box, cleaned and punctuated. Press Enter, send.
Bonus moves: quick-tap Right Ctrl for hands-free mode (talk as long as you want, tap again to finish), and Esc cancels a dictation you regret.
Zero bundles. Zero cloud. Zero stress.
Other dictation tools upload your voice to servers abroad and charge monthly for the privilege. BONGA runs the speech recognition on your own laptop using an open-source AI model. Your voice never leaves the machine. It works in a mat on Thika Road with zero bars, it works when the WiFi imekufa, it works in shags. Download once, bonga forever.
Easiest proof: put your laptop in airplane mode and try it. Everything still works.
Teach it your people and places.
Generic dictation apps butcher Kenyan names. BONGA has a personal dictionary: add Wanjiku, Kipchoge, Githurai, M-Pesa once, and it spells them right instead of guessing.
Snippets go further: say a trigger phrase like "insert my email" and a whole block of text you saved drops in. Signatures, payment details, directions to your shop.
Your words, your receipts.
BONGA keeps a private on-device history of everything you've dictated, with one-click copy. The Home screen counts your words and shows the hours your mouth saved your hands.
Bonga in your language.
English · Kiswahili · Français · العربية · हिन्दी · 中文 + 90 more
Auto-detect, or pin your language in Settings for best results. Pure English and pure Kiswahili work best; heavy Sheng mid-sentence is hit and miss for now, tuko njiani.
What exactly is this thing?
Fair question. BONGA is a small Windows program, not a website and not a plugin. Here's the honest breakdown:
01The brain
Speech recognition runs on Whisper, an open-source AI model, executing entirely on your CPU. BONGA ships ready to go and lets you swap models in Settings:
- Fast (default) · quick answers on modest laptops
- High quality · more accurate, a bit slower
- All of them work fully offline
02The cleanup
Raw speech is messy. After transcribing, BONGA:
- Removes fillers: um, uh, mhh
- Collapses stutters ("the the" → "the")
- Capitalizes and punctuates sentences
- Applies your dictionary corrections
- Obeys voice commands: "new line", "new paragraph"
03The requirements
- Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
- About 4 GB RAM and 350 MB disk
- Any microphone, built-in is fine
- No graphics card, no admin rights
- Internet only for the first download
Full source code is public on GitHub. Check it, fork it, audit it.
Maswali.
Right now, yes. Fully. No trial, no locked features, no card. BONGA is young and I want real people using it and telling me what's broken. A paid version may come later; whoever downloads now gets it free.
Niambie. Seriously.
This is v1 from a one-man studio in Nairobi. Your feedback decides what gets built next. What it misheard, what confused you, what you wish it did. Sitaki flattery, nataka ukweli.
Messages land straight in my inbox at ken@kendesigners.com.
Acha kuandika.
Anza ku-bonga.
Windows 10/11 · 64-bit · free while it's young