Handy crashes when loading Whisper Small on older Intel CPUs

[adops-qvant]

Hello!

I’d like to describe in detail an issue I ran into while using the Handy app for voice recording and transcription on Windows.

System:

• OS: Windows 10 Pro (x64)
• CPU: QuadCore Intel Core i7-950, 3200 MHz (24 x 133)
• Instruction sets: MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, EM64T, VT-x

ChatGPT suggested that the problem is most likely due to my CPU — it’s a desktop i7-950 from 2009, an older processor that supports AVX but not AVX2.

Handy versions tested: 0.5.1 and 0.7.1
I’m using the built-in model download feature through the Handy interface.

The issue

After installing and launching the app, I try to download the Whisper Small model through Handy’s interface. I also tried installing other Wisper models (Medium/Turbo). As soon as the model finishes downloading, the app immediately crashes. When I reopen it, the model’s green status indicator isn’t lit. If I try to start recording, the app crashes again right away. I’ve tried installing both the .exe and .msi versions — no difference.

If I delete the problematic model:

Handy launches normally again. But as soon as I download the model again, the same issue happens

What I’ve already tried

• Completely deleting the models folder
• Downloading models manually from Hugging Face
• Trying different versions of the Small model
• Checking file permissions
• Launching from the terminal
• Comparing model file sizes between Handy versions

Conclusion

The issue clearly seems related either to CPU incompatibility with the downloaded models, or to the way Handy loads/initializes them.

It looks like a situation where the model was built with AVX2/AVX512 support, while my CPU doesn’t support those instructions, causing the app to crash without any error message.

It’s also possible that:

Handy doesn’t check model compatibility before loading

Or it crashes during initialization of the whisper/parakeet backend

I really like the idea behind Handy — especially the hotkeys and quick transcription insertion. It’s exactly what I need for my workflow, so I’d love to help figure out what’s causing this and hopefully get it fixed.

Thanks for developing Handy!

[cjpais]

Yep this is a known issue and I'd like to fix it!