Alter vs NovaVoice
Jude Mercer, SEO and Content, Memoe — 15 October 2026
Memoe is an agent you talk to, and it talks back. It lives in your Mac's notch instead of in a chat window, so you can talk to it from whatever app you're in. It runs on the AI you already pay for — your Claude subscription through Claude Code, or your ChatGPT plan — so there's no new model to buy. Underneath, it runs Hermes Agent, the open-source agent harness from Nous Research, and it keeps a memory of you in plain files on your Mac that you can read, edit and delete.
Both of these are voice-triggered Mac tools that go beyond plain dictation into taking actions, so the overlap is real, not just a shared category page lumping them together. The difference is shape: Alter lives in the Mac notch and reads what's on your screen before it acts, built Mac-first; NovaVoice is a cross-platform "voice OS" for Mac, Windows and Linux, organised into named modes — dictation, formatting, agent — rather than a single notch widget. The table below is each one's own description of itself. What Memoe does is set out after the table.
What each one's own source says
Everything below about Alter comes from alterhq.com and alterhq.com/pricing, read 15 October 2026. Everything about NovaVoice comes from novavoice.app and novavoice.app/downloads, read the same day.
| Alter | NovaVoice | |
|---|---|---|
| Core job | "Think It. Say It. Done." — "Combine screen context with voice command to trigger complex actions in seconds" (alterhq.com, read 15 October 2026). | "Your Voice OS for Desktop" — "Speech-to-text. Speech-to-answer. Speech-to-action," organised into separate dictation, formatting and agent modes (novavoice.app, read 15 October 2026). |
| Screen and app context | "Understands your Mac (screen + app context)" and offers "Native macOS actions (auto-insert, control apps)" (alterhq.com, read 15 October 2026). | Not described as reading the screen. Its agent mode instead names cross-app voice commands, for example opening WhatsApp and drafting a message to a named contact by voice (novavoice.app, read 15 October 2026). |
| Dictation | "Voice-first workflows & dictation (speech→action)," with no words- per-minute figure published on the page read today (alterhq.com, read 15 October 2026). | "Dictating with Nova" claims "200+ WPM · 4× faster" against a stated "45 WPM" typing baseline (novavoice.app, read 15 October 2026 — the company's own claim about its own product, not something this page has tested). |
| Taking action on your behalf | "Universal App Integration" and "AI that Chooses Models For You," plus a separate meeting feature: "Record anywhere, get instant smart summaries and chat with it to unlock insights" (alterhq.com, read 15 October 2026). | An "Agent" mode for "Real Actions" across apps, with a stated limit on its own reach: "Action Approval — We never execute actions without your permission" (novavoice.app, read 15 October 2026). |
| Choice of AI model | Free tier lets you "connect your own AI providers (like OpenAI, Anthropic) or run local models freely." Paid Pro adds "access to 50+ cloud models" (alterhq.com and alterhq.com/pricing, read 15 October 2026). | Not offered as something you choose — not mentioned on the pages read today (novavoice.app, read 15 October 2026). |
| Privacy | "Chats stay encrypted and local. We don't train on your data," and local processing is available "via Ollama and LM Studio" (alterhq.com, read 15 October 2026). | Not stated on the pages read today |
| Platforms | "macOS Ventura 13 and newer," on "both Apple Silicon and Intel processors" — Mac only (alterhq.com, read 15 October 2026). | Apple Silicon Macs, "Windows 10 and 11," and a ".deb package for Debian / Ubuntu" (novavoice.app/downloads, read 15 October 2026). |
| Free tier | "Completely free. Use Alter with all features unlocked," connecting your own AI providers or running local models, plus a 7-day trial of "unlimited access to 50+ AI models" (alterhq.com and alterhq.com/pricing, read 15 October 2026). | "$0/month" with "Limited AI-powered voice dictation," "Limited formatting and personalization," and "Limited connectors & actions execution in apps" (novavoice.app/pricing, read 15 October 2026). |
| Paid price | Pro: $240 a year billed annually, with a separate one-time Lifetime plan at $720 and an optional Local+ add-on at $29 a year for on-device speech-to-text (alterhq.com/pricing, read 15 October 2026). | Standard: $10 a month, "locked for life for the first 5,000 paying users"; Team: $8 a seat a month (novavoice.app/pricing, read 15 October 2026). |
The quotes above are dated so you can check them against both sites yourself.
What Memoe does
Hold one key from any app, say what you need, and Moe answers out loud and goes and does it: reads the mail and calendar you've connected, takes meeting notes on your Mac with nothing joining the call, drives some Mac apps itself for a specific task, and touching the trackpad stops it. Before Moe sends anything to another person it shows you exactly what will go out and waits for your click.
What it remembers about you is kept in plain files on your disk that you can read, edit and delete. The thinking comes from your own ChatGPT or Claude plan, an API key, or a model on your Mac — not resold, not marked up. Memoe is a free Mac app, and everything that runs on your Mac is free; Away, from $20 a month, is a cloud computer of your own that keeps going when the Mac is shut, and Away+ is $50 a month. It needs an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 15 or later.
See also: Wispr Flow vs Raycast AI and Raycast AI vs the ChatGPT desktop app, the other Mac AI-tool pairings.