Transcripts

Voice notes and meeting transcripts, recorded and transcribed on your own device.
transcripts.doughatcher.com · User guide · Issues

---

Two apps sharing a core.

macOS — a menu-bar recorder. Notices when a call starts, captures your microphone and the other participants as separate tracks, transcribes and summarizes on-device, tells the speakers apart, and files the result into your vault. Writes a live transcript to a plain file while the call is still running, so an AI assistant can be pointed at a meeting during it.

iPhone and iPad — a pocket recorder, complete on its own. Records with the screen locked, transcribes live on the device, and hands finished takes to the Mac through a folder they share. With iCloud on both, there is nothing to configure.

Recording, transcription and summarization all happen on the device. The iOS app makes no network requests at all; the Mac app's only one is its update check. Files you place in a sync folder are of course synced by that service — that is the point of choosing one — but nothing is sent anywhere by Transcripts itself.

Layout

Sources/
  TranscriptsCore/     shared, zero external dependencies — pipeline, config,
                       routing, models, audio maths, speaker profiles
  TranscriptsEngine/   macOS only — FluidAudio (diarization), MLX (local LLM)
  TranscriptsMac/      the menu-bar app
  Transcripts/         the iOS app
  TranscriptsWidgets/  iOS Live Activity
docs/guide/            the user guide, rendered to the site
site/                  marketing page + guide generator

TranscriptsEngine is macOS-only on purpose: MLX alone would drag a ~1.8 GB model download onto a phone, and its licence along with it. The iOS target compiles TranscriptsCore's sources directly rather than linking the package, which is what keeps the shipping iOS binary free of third-party code.

Building

Requires Xcode 26+ (Xcode 27 for iOS 27 devices) and the Metal toolchain — without it, mlx-swift silently ships no shaders and the summarizer takes the process down at first use:

xcodebuild -downloadComponent MetalToolchain
brew install xcodegen just

just project                    # regenerate Transcripts.xcodeproj from project.yml
scripts/make-signing-cert.sh    # one-time: stable identity so TCC grants persist
scripts/make-app.sh             # build the Mac app, install to ~/Applications, launch
swift test                      # 164 tests, TranscriptsCore
python3 site/build.py --serve   # the site, on :8000

The .xcodeproj is generated — project.yml is the source of truth.

Releasing

scripts/release.sh 1.0.0-beta.1

Builds, signs with Developer ID, notarizes, staples, zips, checksums, and writes both appcast.json and the Homebrew cask from the same artifact — so the in-app updater and brew can never disagree about what version exists. Refuses to run without a Developer ID certificate unless NOTARIZE=0 is explicit.

Then npx wrangler pages deploy site/public --project-name=transcripts, and copy dist/transcripts.rb into doughatcher/homebrew-tap.

Privacy

Full policy: docs/guide/privacy.md.

Recording consent is your responsibility — laws vary by country and state, and some require every participant's consent. Only record where you lawfully may.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Copyright © 2026 Doug Hatcher.

Third-party components and their terms are listed in NOTICE.