WhisperDesk – A Simple opensource Mac App for Whisper

[pedrovsiqueira]

WhisperDesk – A Simple Desktop App for Whisper

🎙️ What It Is

I’ve been working on a small project called WhisperDesk. I built it because I needed a clean, easy way to run Whisper locally, and I couldn’t find anything that felt simple and nice to use. So I made my own and decided to open-source it.

WhisperDesk is a lightweight macOS desktop app for transcribing audio and video using whisper.cpp everything runs locally on your machine. It’s free, MIT-licensed, and available for anyone who wants it.

Why I Made It

I transcribe a lot of audio and I didn’t want to upload private files to cloud services or keep opening terminal windows just to get a transcript. Whisper is great, but the CLI workflow wasn’t ideal for me.

So WhisperDesk came out of a pretty simple need:

• local processing
• privacy
• very fast runs on Apple Silicon
• and an interface that doesn’t get in your way

I figured if it helps me, it might help others too.

✨ Highlights

• Fully local no servers, no uploads
• Native-style UI built with Electron + React
• GPU acceleration for M-series and Intel Macs
• Drag & drop workflow (drop a file, hit transcribe)
• Multiple models (tiny → large)
• Export options: SRT, VTT, JSON, text, PDF, Word, Markdown
• Dark Mode
• Transcription history
• Free, open source, no limits

🛠️ Stack

• Electron
• React + TypeScript
• whisper.cpp
• Metal acceleration on Apple Silicon

🚀 Try It Out

Download
https://github.com/PVAS-Development/whisperdesk/releases/latest

Source
https://github.com/PVAS-Development/whisperdesk

Website
https://pvas-development.github.io/whisperdesk/

💾 Install

Option 1: Download the DMG (recommended)

Install from releases and drag to Applications
https://github.com/PVAS-Development/whisperdesk/releases/latest

Option 2: Build it yourself

git clone https://github.com/PVAS-Development/whisperdesk.git
cd whisperdesk
npm install
npm run setup:whisper
npm run electron:dev

What You Get

• Drag-and-drop UI
• Works with several audio/video formats
• Multi-language support
• Auto-update prompts
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Dark mode
• 100% local processing
• MIT license

A Small Note

This started as something I put together to make my own workflow smoother.

Stars, issues, suggestions, and PRs are all welcome.

🤝 Contribute

If you want to help with ideas, bugs, docs, or code check out the contributor guide:

https://github.com/PVAS-Development/whisperdesk/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md

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Thanks for reading ✌️
Hope it’s useful.

Repo: https://github.com/PVAS-Development/whisperdesk
License: MIT