faster-whisper · whisper.cpp · Parakeet
Local, private transcription
Whisper large-v3 by default, plus large-v3-turbo and distil-large-v3.5. Pick the backend that fits your hardware.
Free · Offline · BSD-3-Clause
Drag in audio or video.
Get a timed transcript back.
Whisper Transcriber Suite runs OpenAI's Whisper model entirely on your own machine — via faster-whisper, whisper.cpp or NVIDIA Parakeet. No cloud, no account, no per-minute cost, and your recording never leaves your computer.
Windows · macOS · Linux
BSD-3-Clause license
No account, no API key, no subscription
Offline by default
Everything you'd want from a transcription tool — running on your machine
srt vtt ass docx pdf +9 more
14 output formats
Written right next to your input file — plus oTranscribe, ELAN, InqScribe and Express Scribe for professional transcript workflows.
Mic · system audio
Live transcription
Transcribes a microphone — or whatever this machine is playing — as it happens. Cuts are made at natural pauses so words are never split.
Per-word timestamps
Speaker diarisation
Optional "Identify speakers" pass, plus per-word timestamps and time-range clipping for editing precise segments.
Pause · resume · re-run
Batch queue
Live status for every pending and running job, with full control over each row always one click away.
yt-dlp powered
Video & audio downloads
Anything yt-dlp handles, with optional transcribe-on-finish. Downloads resume rather than restart.
Measures before it filters
Adaptive denoise
Measures each recording first and only cleans it when that helps — checks its own output and reverts if it removed speech.
Plus speaker post-processing, a local-network mode, and an optional offline voice-cloning tab — full list in the README.
What it looks like
Drop a file, pick your options, press Transcribe. That's the whole workflow — four more tabs cover queueing, downloads, video tiling and LAN sharing.
How it works
The Tk interface runs in the main process. Every transcription job runs in its own long-lived worker subprocess that holds the Whisper model in memory and streams progress back over newline-delimited JSON — so the window never freezes while a file transcribes. A per-worker token and a heartbeat keep this routing robust and let the app detect a stuck worker instead of hanging with it.
Read the full architecture →
Download
Everything needed is bundled — a private Python runtime, ffmpeg, ffprobe and yt-dlp. Only the speech model itself downloads later (about 1-3 GB, once); after that the app is fully offline.
| Asset | Size | Best for |
|---|---|---|
Setup-Standard.exe | ~215 MB | Most people — normal installer, Start-menu shortcut, upgrades in place. |
Portable.zip | ~330 MB | Unzip and run. No install, no admin rights, happy on a USB stick. |
macOS-*.dmg | ~400 MB | macOS, x64 and arm64 builds published separately. |
Frequently asked questions
Is Whisper Transcriber Suite free?
Yes. It's BSD-3-Clause licensed, with no subscription, no per-minute cost and no telemetry by default. The Whisper model itself downloads once (about 1-3 GB) on first launch; after that the app runs fully offline.
Does it upload my audio or video anywhere?
No, not by default. Every default backend — faster-whisper, whisper.cpp, NVIDIA Parakeet — runs locally on your machine. Two backends are opt-in only (a cloud Gemini-API backend, and Google Cloud Speech-to-Text), and both stay off until you enable them yourself in Advanced → Backend.
What platforms does it run on?
Windows, macOS and Linux. Published downloads are a Windows installer, a Windows portable ZIP, and a macOS DMG; Linux runs from source.
What transcript formats can it produce?
srt vtt ass tsv txt json lrc md docx pdf, plus oTranscribe, ELAN, InqScribe and Express Scribe.
Can it label who is speaking?
Yes — optional speaker diarisation ("Identify speakers"), with per-word timestamps and time-range clipping.
Can it transcribe a live microphone or system audio?
Yes, from the Live tab — a microphone or the system audio, transcribed as it happens.
Can it download and transcribe online videos, e.g. from YouTube?
Yes, any site yt-dlp supports, with an optional transcribe-on-finish step.
Can it summarize a transcript, pull out action items, or answer questions about it?
Yes, via the optional AI Tools tab in the transcript viewer — summarize, action items, ask-a-question, and a per-segment translate pass that writes a bilingual .srt. It's off by default.
Can it clone a voice and make it say new text?
Yes, via the optional Clone Your Voice tab, using OmniVoice (Apache-2.0) entirely on your machine. Off by default; opt in at install time, and you must confirm you have permission to clone the reference voice.
How is this different from calling the Whisper API directly?
It runs the model locally via faster-whisper by default, so there's no per-minute API cost and no audio leaves your machine — unless you explicitly opt into one of the two cloud backends.
Can several people on the same network use it without installing it on every machine?
Yes — Web/LAN access mode turns this machine into a transcription page the other devices on the network can use.
Support the project
Whisper Transcriber Suite is free and BSD-3-Clause licensed, maintained in the open. If it saved you time, a star on GitHub helps others find it — and a coffee is always appreciated.