DashVox
DashVox is a voice-first IDE for AI coding agents. It drives Claude Code and Codex sessions running on your own machine over SSH, from a phone, a watch or a car, with spoken output and an optional screen.
What is DashVox?
DashVox presents itself as a voice-first IDE for AI coding agents. It is not a text editor, and it does not run the model itself: the coding agent, Claude Code, Codex or any CLI tool you give it a profile for, keeps running on your own machine, and DashVox connects to it over SSH to act as its voice interface. One design constraint drives everything else, namely that your attention is elsewhere: on the road, on a walk, at the gym. As the site puts it, the tool is built for your ears, not your eyes, so agent output is spoken and summarised, approvals are verbal, and the screen is optional by design.
Three surfaces carry it: an iPhone app written in SwiftUI, a native CarPlay app that is a real app on the car screen rather than a phone mirror, and Apple Watch or Wear OS through mirrored notifications; Android Auto is announced. In the car you can either use a fully hands-free voice mode with the phone on the dashboard and no tap at all, or the CarPlay app with its large controls: press to record, press to send, back to cancel.
Four pillars structure the product. Voice chat spans several LLMs, Claude, GPT and Gemini plus custom endpoints, with model switching mid-conversation. Remote session management opens SSH sessions to your machine through the JSch library and tmux, starts, stops and switches between them, and takes prompt approvals by voice. Agent Mode is a meta-agent that starts several sessions itself, frontend, backend and tests, watches their progress, approves prompts and reports back, leaving a full audit trail. Smart connectivity handles mobile reality with exponential backoff and jitter, background ping, automatic resume and idempotent delivery, so a tunnel produces no duplicate messages.
Two hosting modes exist. The self-hosted backend is a single Java 21 JAR for Windows, macOS or Linux, with an embedded H2 database or an external PostgreSQL, 512 MB of RAM and port 8081 by default, server version v1.0.143. DashVox Cloud Ultimate instead provides a managed VM with pre-configured coding agents, PostgreSQL on Google Cloud SQL and Firebase authentication, while an Enterprise tier adds per-seat machines, org budgets, SAML/OIDC SSO and an admin dashboard. The publisher calls it a passion project built by a solo developer; the iOS app shipped on 16/05/2026 and reached version 1.13.1 on 31/08/2026.
What it does
- Start, stop and switch between several AI coding agent sessions using your voice
- Approve or reject an agent step with a spoken command, without touching the screen
- Listen to agent output read out loud and summarised for the ear
- SSH into your development machine from your phone, your watch or your car
- Launch a test suite, a build or a health check by voice
- Let a meta-agent orchestrate several sessions at once in Agent Mode
- Check logs and restart a service while on call, away from a keyboard
When to use DashVox / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if DashVox is the right fit.
When to use DashVox
- Developers with a long daily commute who want that hour, close to an hour a day on the site's own example, to stay productive
- On-call engineers who get paged when they are nowhere near a keyboard and need to read logs or restart a service
- Developers already running Claude Code or Codex on their own machine and looking for a second way in
- People whose typing is limited: the founder built it after developing carpal tunnel syndrome
- Privacy-conscious users who want a self-hosted setup with no account, no analytics and no telemetry
When not to use DashVox
- Anyone looking for a text editor: DashVox drives coding agents by voice, it does not let you type code
- Users with no development machine reachable over SSH and no DashVox Cloud subscription
- Android users for now: the app is announced as coming soon, with a public beta in preparation
- Regulated environments that require secrets encrypted at rest: cloud-stored SSH keys and provider API keys are not yet
- Organisations that need a signed DPA or documented GDPR compliance, neither of which the site publishes
How to use DashVox
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Download the DashVox app from the App Store on your iPhone: the download itself is free
- Choose a hosting mode: self-host the backend for free, or subscribe to DashVox Cloud Ultimate for a managed VM with pre-configured agents
- To self-host, install Java 21 (brew install openjdk@21, apt install openjdk-21-jdk, or adoptium.net), download dashvox-server.jar from dashvox.ai/downloads, then run java -jar dashvox-server.jar
- Double-click the JAR to open the control window, which shows the LAN URL to enter in the app and lets you change the default port 8081; start.sh and start.bat scripts are provided
- Optionally protect remote access with the DASHVOX_API_TOKEN variable, or DASHVOX_AUTH_ENABLED=true to have one generated: it is disabled by default, and the app must be updated first
- Connect your development machine from the app: Settings then SSH Profiles, add the host, authenticate with a password or a private key
- For access beyond the local network, use port forwarding, or direct-client mode where the device connects over Tailscale, a VPN or the open internet without going through the backend
- Open the app on the phone, in the car or on the watch, speak your request and listen to the reply: speech is transcribed live and answers are read back through text-to-speech
- In CarPlay, open DashVox from the car screen, open a chat, press the main button to record, press again to send, and use back to cancel
- Switch each session between Agent Mode for autonomous orchestration and Terminal Mode for direct SSH; Cloud subscribers can also enable the SMS assistant in Settings, SMS Assistant, with a six-digit confirmation code
Pros & Cons
Pros
- The agent runs on your real machine, with your repository, your branches and your environment, not in a throwaway cloud sandbox
- The self-hosted mode is free and account-free: no data leaves your own network, and there is no analytics or telemetry
- A genuine native CarPlay app, plus a hands-free mode that works in any car, rather than a phone screen mirrored onto a dashboard
- Spoken, summarised output makes the screen genuinely optional instead of merely smaller
- Serious network resilience for mobile use: automatic resume and idempotent delivery mean no duplicates after a tunnel or a basement
- LLM-agnostic by design: Claude, GPT, Gemini and custom endpoints, with model switching mid-conversation
- Light self-hosted footprint, one JAR on 512 MB of RAM and 100 MB of disk, and an unusually frank privacy policy with quantified retention and in-app account deletion
Cons
- In cloud mode, SSH keys and provider API keys are not yet encrypted at rest, a limitation the publisher acknowledges itself
- No public cloud price: the amount is only visible inside the app, and Enterprise is quoted case by case
- No Android app at the time of collection, announced as coming soon with a public beta in preparation
- No mention of the GDPR, no DPA and no Article 27 representative anywhere on the site
- No registered company name and no postal address published; the App Store lists the publisher as an individual
- A solo developer project on a domain registered in April 2026, with the continuity risk that implies
- Interface and documentation in English only, with no public API documentation and no demo page
Pricing & Plans
A permanently free plan exists: the Self-Hosted tier costs 0 USD for life, with no account and no data collection, and the iOS app is a free download. Paid tiers are not publicly priced. DashVox Cloud Ultimate combines an access subscription with prepaid usage credits whose amount is only shown inside the app, and Enterprise is quoted per seat with invoice billing available. Credits are consumed by AI usage measured in tokens and by managed cloud compute measured in VM time, at the prevailing rate, which includes a margin over provider cost. Subscriptions are billed through Stripe, renew automatically and can be cancelled at any time with effect at the end of the period. Purchased credits and paid subscriptions are non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise, and credits do not expire while the account exists. No free trial is announced.
- unlimited conversations
- unlimited SSH sessions
- all LLM providers
- Agent Mode
- full control of your data and no account required
- everything in Self-Hosted plus a managed cloud VM
- pre-configured coding agents
- multi-device sync
- managed AI and compute billed on usage
- automatic updates and push notifications
- managed per-seat machines
- organisation-level seats and budgets
- SAML/OIDC SSO
- admin dashboard and seat management
- and priority support from the founders
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how DashVox handles your data.
GDPR overview
There is no mention of the GDPR anywhere on the site. A grep across the twelve archived files, text and HTML alike, returns zero occurrence of GDPR, CCPA or any other data protection framework. No Article 27 representative is designated, no DPO is named, no dedicated privacy contact address is published, and no DPA is offered or available. The privacy policy, effective July 2026, is written in plain language but states no legal basis and lists no data subject rights; the terms are governed by the law of the State of California. Several elements nevertheless line up with GDPR expectations: self-service account deletion, quantified retention periods, a named list of third parties and TLS 1.3. One limitation is acknowledged outright: SSH keys and provider API keys stored in cloud mode are not yet encrypted at rest.
Who owns the data?
Ownership follows the hosting mode. Self-hosted, nothing leaves your machine: no account, no analytics, no telemetry, and the privacy policy states that all data stays on your machine and that DashVox has zero access to your conversations, SSH keys or session data; provider API keys stay local and travel straight from your server to the LLM provider. In cloud mode DashVox holds your user id, email and display name through Firebase Auth, your conversations in PostgreSQL on Google Cloud SQL, your SSH keys, your LLM API keys and your session metadata. Card details go to Stripe; DashVox keeps only a Stripe customer reference, subscription status, credit balance and transaction history. Deleting the account is self-service in the app, or by email within 30 days.
Reuse rights
The support page states plainly that conversations are not used for model training or ad targeting. LLM API keys are passed straight to whichever provider you chose to serve the request, and the privacy policy adds that API keys, SSH passwords and conversation content are never written to application logs. Your chat messages do, however, reach Anthropic, OpenAI or Google depending on the model selected, and those third parties may keep a copy under their own policies, outside DashVox's control. Session metadata such as session names, connection status and timestamps is used to resume your sessions between app launches. SMS traffic is conversational and account-related only, never marketing, requires an explicit opt-in, and the number is neither sold nor shared. Aggregated, de-identified analytics, for example how many chats were created in a month, are kept indefinitely.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Hosting depends on the mode. Self-hosted, data stays on your own machine: an embedded H2 database by default, or an external PostgreSQL, in a ./data directory beside the JAR. In cloud mode, conversations sit in PostgreSQL on Google Cloud SQL, encrypted at rest by Google Cloud, with the rest of the infrastructure on Google Cloud Platform and authentication handled by Firebase Auth. Communication with the cloud uses TLS 1.3. Two caveats matter. First, no hosting country and no region are named anywhere on the site: neither a jurisdiction nor a Google Cloud region is stated, so where your cloud data physically sits is simply not documented. Second, SSH keys and provider API keys held server-side in cloud mode are not yet encrypted at rest, a limitation the publisher acknowledges and says it is actively addressing.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting DashVox.
- SSH keys and provider API keys stored in cloud mode are not encrypted at rest: only entrust DashVox Cloud with credentials whose exposure you consider an acceptable risk
- Using the tool at the wheel remains entirely the driver's responsibility, in accordance with local law: a voice interface reduces distraction, it does not remove it
- The LLM providers, Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, may keep a copy of your requests under their own policies, outside DashVox's control
- The service is provided as is, without warranty, and the publisher reserves the right to modify or discontinue the cloud service at any time, with or without notice
- Prepaid credits and subscriptions are non-refundable except where the law requires otherwise, and prices and usage rates may change, with prior notice of material changes
- You remain responsible for the SSH credentials you configure, and must not enter those of systems you are not authorised to use
- No company name and no postal address are published, which makes it hard to identify who you would have legal recourse against
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Two levels. Cloud mode requires nothing to provision: download the app, sign in, and the VM and coding agents are already configured. Self-hosting is announced in three commands, install Java 21, download the JAR, run it, then point the app at the LAN URL the server window displays, with modest requirements of 512 MB of RAM and 100 MB of disk. It still assumes you can install a JDK, open or forward a port and configure an SSH profile. Access beyond the local network means port forwarding, Tailscale or a VPN. Optional server authentication uses DASHVOX_API_TOKEN, disabled by default.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind DashVox
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Can I really drive Claude Code while I am driving a car?
Do I need my own development machine?
Do I have to look at the screen?
Which models can I use?
How much does it cost?
Are my conversations used to train models?
Is there an Android app?
Are my SSH keys encrypted in the cloud?
What do I need to self-host the backend?
How do I delete my account and my data?
Should you pick DashVox?
DashVox is a very young product, on a domain registered on 04/04/2026 with an iOS app shipped in May 2026, and it is carried by a single developer who says so openly on the site. That youth cuts both ways: the value proposition is unusually clear and well bounded, but the continuity risk of a one-person project is real.
What it does well, it does deliberately. Rather than adding another disposable cloud sandbox with no access to your real repository, DashVox makes the coding agents you already run on your own machine drivable by voice, with your branches, your environment and your tooling untouched. The spoken, summarised output and the verbal approvals make the screen genuinely optional, and the connectivity work, automatic resume and idempotent delivery, reads like the work of someone who has actually used the thing in a tunnel. The free, account-free, telemetry-free self-hosted tier neutralises most privacy objections before they are raised, and the privacy policy is unusually frank about its own gaps.
Those gaps are the reservations. In cloud mode, SSH keys and provider API keys are not yet encrypted at rest, which the publisher states plainly, recommending self-hosting when the threat model demands it. The cloud price is published nowhere but inside the app. The Android app is announced and not shipped. There is no mention of the GDPR anywhere on the site, no DPA, no Article 27 representative, no company name and no postal address, which makes any legal recourse hard to identify.
The audience is easy to name: developers whose usable time is mobile, on-call engineers away from a keyboard, and anyone whose hands limit how much they can type. For them, in self-hosted mode, the cost of trying is zero. For a regulated organisation, the honest answer today is not yet.
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