Island · v0.3.2 · Windows 11 x64
Island is a free app that sits at the top of your Windows desktop. Hit a shortcut and talk, and your words land in whatever app you had open. The rest of the time it's a clock and a music player, with notes, files and the weather a click away.
Pick up coffee on the way home.
Scroll down and the island next to the text switches to whatever it's describing.
Kora Voice is the dictation engine inside Island. While you talk, the island shows it's listening and your words come up live. When you stop, it pastes the text into whatever app you were in.
Anything that shows up in the Windows media controls works here, Spotify included. You get album art, level bars that follow your audio, and lyrics that scroll along in your accent color.
Most glass effects are a blur and nothing else. Island captures the screen behind it, bends it at the rim with a pixel shader and adds a little color split at the edge. On bright backgrounds it tints itself so you can still read it.
There are six tabs: Music, Files, Clips, Notes, Voice and Weather. Hit Escape or wander off for a few seconds and it closes again.
Over a fullscreen app it shrinks to a thin line at the top. Hover and it drops down. Move away and it tucks back up. You can also turn that off and have it hide completely.
All of it ships in 0.3.2.
The last 25 copied text entries. Click one to copy it again. Anything a password manager marks private is skipped.
A notes panel that saves as you type. It's plain text on your PC.
Drop files to keep references. Drag them back out to copy, or reveal them in Explorer. Originals never move.
One shortcut mutes the mic for every app. A red dot shows whenever anything is recording.
Charging and low-battery alerts with the percentage. On a desktop without a battery, it doesn't show up.
Press the keys you want to record a shortcut. It warns you about conflicts before saving and only registers the ones you pick.
Even collapsed, the pill shows album art and level bars from your audio output.
Choose the display and the offset, hide it for 15 minutes from the tray, or start it with Windows.
Pick any accent color and the button text switches between black and white so it stays readable. Glow effects pause with Reduce motion.
Transcription happens on your PC, and your recordings, notes and history stay there too. There's no telemetry, no account and no auto-updater.
Some features do go online. Weather sends coordinates to Open-Meteo, and lyrics send the song title and artist to LRCLIB. Text polishing is off until you turn it on, and then it sends the transcript to the AI service you choose. You can switch any of these off.
Liquid Glass keeps its screen captures in memory, and the island leaves itself out of screenshots and screen sharing while it shows. Read the privacy details.
Experimental · unsigned
Island 0.3.2 is built for Windows 11 x64. It installs just for your account, with no admin prompt, and Kora Voice comes with it. The installer isn't signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen will warn you: choose More info, then Run anyway.
Credits
Island is an independent MIT-licensed project, inspired by DynamicLake. It is not affiliated with DynamicLake or Microsoft.
Kora Voice includes MIT-licensed code by CJ Pais and contributors, along with whisper.cpp, ggml, and ONNX Runtime. Microsoft runtime components and downloaded speech models carry their own terms.