Transcriptor is a native macOS app that transcribes your calls in real time — your voice and the other person's, kept separate — then writes you a summary when it's done.
- 🔒 Privacy-first & offline. Everything happens on your Mac. No accounts, no sign-in, no API keys, no uploads. Nothing you say is ever sent anywhere.
- 🪶 Light. A small native app, not a bundled browser — it starts instantly and barely uses any resources.
- 🍎 Native. Built with Swift and SwiftUI, using Apple's own on-device speech and AI frameworks — it feels like part of macOS, because it is.
- Live transcription of both sides of a call — You and the Caller — shown as it happens.
- Works without headphones: it's smart enough not to transcribe the caller's voice twice just because it's coming out of your speakers.
- Mute your side any time without losing the caller's transcript.
- AI summary after every call: key points, action items, decisions and open questions — written on-device, in whatever language you spoke.
- Speaker recognition: name a caller once, and Transcriptor remembers their voice for next time.
- Meeting detection: offers to start recording when it notices Zoom, Teams or Webex running — it never starts on its own.
- Saved transcripts: every call is saved locally as plain Markdown files you can search, browse, or open in any text editor.
- macOS Sequoia 15.0 or later
- An Apple Silicon or Intel Mac
- For AI summaries: Apple Intelligence enabled (Apple Silicon only — without it, transcription still works and you get a simpler summary)
The only network request Transcriptor ever makes is a one-time ~50 MB download the first time you finish a call, to fetch the speaker-recognition models. No call content is ever sent. If you're offline, or it fails, everything else still works.
Transcriptor asks for two things the first time you use it:
- Microphone access — to hear you.
- System audio access — to hear the caller.
Neither is used for anything except live transcription.
Grab the latest Transcriptor-*.zip from Releases,
unzip it, and drag Transcriptor.app into /Applications.
The first time you open it, macOS will say "Transcriptor is damaged and can't be opened". It isn't — Transcriptor just isn't signed with a paid Apple Developer certificate, so macOS quarantines it on download. Clear the quarantine flag once:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Transcriptor.appThen open it normally. You'll need to repeat this after each update, and because the app has no stable signing identity, macOS treats every release as a new app and re-asks for microphone and system-audio permission.
Transcriptor is built with Swift, so you'll need the Swift toolchain (Xcode's Command Line Tools are enough — you don't need Xcode itself).
git clone https://github.com/sim-pez/transcriptor.git
cd transcriptor
swift run Transcriptor- Pick a language on the startup screen, then hit Start Recording.
- Talk — your words and the caller's appear live, in real time.
- Use Mute Mic (⇧⌘M) to silence your side, Pause (⌘P) to pause both, or Stop (⌘.) to end and save the call.
- When you stop, an AI summary appears next to the transcript.
- Switch to Saved (⌘2) to browse, search, and revisit past calls.
MIT License. See LICENSE for details.