Alternatives to MacWhisper
A Mac app that transcribes audio and video files to text on your own machine. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
MacWhisper
A Mac app that transcribes audio and video files to text on your own machine.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as MacWhisper.
Vibe
Transcribe audio and video files on your own computer.
Vibe is free and MIT open source on Windows, macOS and Linux, with batch jobs and several subtitle formats.
Buzz
Turn speech recordings into text with a desktop transcription app.
Buzz is a free MIT desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux that adds microphone transcription and subtitle exports.
noScribe
Transcribes recorded audio to text on your own computer, with speaker separation.
noScribe is free GPL-3.0 software on Windows, macOS and Linux with local speaker separation, though transcription is slow without a capable GPU.
whisper.cpp
C/C++ port of OpenAI's Whisper for fast offline speech-to-text on your own hardware.
whisper.cpp is a free MIT command-line tool across platforms that runs offline on CPU or GPU, without a graphical interface.
WhisperX
A speech recognition tool that adds word-level timestamps and speaker diarization to Whisper transcription.
WhisperX adds word-level timestamps and speaker diarization but is command-line and Python only, with CUDA setup and an unstated license.
Whisper
An open-source speech recognition model from OpenAI for transcribing and translating audio on your own machine.
Whisper is OpenAI's free MIT model that also translates to English, but needs command-line and Python setup.
aTrain
Transcribe recorded interviews on your own computer.
aTrain is a free AGPL-3.0 interview transcriber with speaker detection, available for Windows and Linux rather than macOS.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Superwhisper
A voice dictation app that turns speech into text in any app, using offline or cloud recognition.
Handy
Dictate into desktop text fields with local speech recognition.
Meetily
Record and transcribe meetings with local AI processing.
