I built a simple open-source macOS app to run Whisper locally to transcribe audio/video files

Pedro Siqueira — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 11:26:20 +0000

WhisperDesk – A Simple Mac 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.

🛠️ 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

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

Thanks for reading ✌️
Hope it’s useful.

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

Forem: Pedro Siqueira

I built a simple open-source macOS app to run Whisper locally to transcribe audio/video files