How-to guides for
voice and text.
Step-by-step setups for transcribing audio, recording calls, dictating into any app and running speech models yourself, with the one-step alternative at the end of each.
Getting started
Get started with ThinkScribe on iPhone and iPad
Set up ThinkScribe on your iPhone or iPad, turn on the voice typing keyboard, make your first recording, and share an audio file from another app to transcribe it.
5 min readGet started with ThinkScribe on Mac
Install ThinkScribe on your Mac, grant the two permissions it needs, and make your first voice typing, recording and file import in about five minutes.
6 min readVoice typing
Build offline Whisper dictation on a Mac with a hotkey
Whisper dictation on a Mac, built by hand: record with ffmpeg on a hotkey, transcribe with whisper-cli, paste at the cursor. Hammerspoon, Shortcuts or Raycast.
10 min readBuild your own push-to-talk dictation on a Mac with a cloud speech API
Cloud dictation on a Mac, built by hand: record with ffmpeg on a hotkey, POST the clip to a transcription API, paste at the cursor. Script, keychain, latency.
11 min readCustom vocabulary: teach transcription your names and jargon
How to add names, product words and jargon to ThinkScribe's custom vocabulary on Mac and iPhone, and what biasing can and cannot fix.
7 min readDictate into any Mac app with the Option-Space shortcut
How to dictate into Mail, Slack, a browser or your editor on a Mac: the Option-Space shortcut, the floating voice bar, Escape to cancel, and rewrites.
5 min readVoice typing on Mac, dictation setup that works in any app
How to set up voice typing on Mac. Turn on Apple Dictation, understand its limits, then dictate into any app with a global hotkey that runs on-device.
8 min readMeetings
Build an automatic meeting notes pipeline on a Mac
Automatic meeting notes workflow on a Mac: capture the audio, transcribe to JSON with timestamps, summarize to Markdown, and file a note with front matter.
11 min readRecord a Zoom, Teams or Meet call on Mac without a bot
How to record both sides of a video call on a Mac with ThinkScribe using System audio capture, with no bot joining the meeting and nothing uploaded.
5 min readSpeakers
Speaker diarization on a Mac, locally: whisperX and pyannote
Speaker diarization on a Mac, fully local: whisperX with --diarize, pyannote.audio aligned to whisper.cpp output, and FluidAudio on Core ML, with common errors.
9 min readSpeaker identification: name who is speaking in a transcript
How speaker identification works in ThinkScribe: name Speaker 1 once, enroll a colleague, fix a wrong label, and merge duplicate speakers.
7 min readImport
How to transcribe a video to text on Mac and iPhone
Get text out of an MP4 or MOV: importing video, batch transcribing a folder on Mac, exporting SRT or VTT captions, and how it compares with auto-captions.
9 min readTranscribe an audio or video file on Mac, iPhone and iPad
How to transcribe an audio or video file on Mac, iPhone or iPad: importing, drag and drop, the share sheet, batch imports, language and engine.
6 min readMac
How to Transcribe Audio to Text on a Mac (Free and Local)
Three ways to transcribe audio to text on a Mac without uploading anything: Apple's built-in tools, whisper.cpp in Terminal, and a one-step on-device app.
7 min readRecord Zoom and Teams meetings on Mac with system audio
How to record a Zoom or Teams meeting on a Mac with system audio: Zoom local recording, QuickTime with BlackHole, or an app that captures the call directly.
8 min readSummarize meeting transcripts locally on a Mac with Ollama
Summarize a transcript locally on your Mac with Ollama: install, pull a model, a working prompt, chunking long transcripts, and a one-tap alternative.
7 min readiPhone
Voice Memos transcription on iPhone and Mac, and where it stops
How to see, search and copy a Voice Memos transcript on iPhone and Mac, which devices and languages Apple supports, and what to do when you need more.
6 min readOffline dictation on iPhone with a voice typing keyboard
Set up offline dictation on iPhone. See which Apple keyboard dictation languages run on-device, then add a voice typing keyboard that works with no connection.
7 min readTranscribe WhatsApp voice messages on iPhone, three ways
Three ways to transcribe WhatsApp voice messages on iPhone. WhatsApp's own transcripts, Voice Memos, and a share-to-app route that works offline for any audio.
8 min readTurn long voice messages into text you can read
How to turn a long voice message into text you can skim, search and quote, why long voice notes are the real problem, and how it works with no connection.
8 min readVoice journaling that stays on your own device
How to keep a spoken journal on iPhone, Apple Watch or Mac, why an on-device transcript matters for something this private, and how to find an old entry.
8 min readTranscription
How to record a lecture and turn it into study notes
Record the lecture on a phone or laptop, get a transcript you can search, and turn it into summaries, key points and questions you can revise from before the exam.
5 min readHow to transcribe research interviews without uploading them
Interview transcription for research: verbatim or intelligent verbatim, speaker labels, anonymising as you go, and getting the file into your analysis tool.
6 min readTurn a podcast episode into a transcript, show notes and chapters
A repeatable workflow for podcast transcription: clean speaker-labelled text, show notes and chapter markers, subtitles for the video cut, all from one recording.
6 min readHow to Create SRT Subtitles from an Audio File on Mac
Create SRT or VTT subtitles from an audio file on a Mac with ffmpeg and whisper.cpp, fix the timing and line breaks, then get the same file in one step.
7 min readSelf-host a transcription server your own devices can call
Self-hosted speech to text: three ways to run a transcription server on hardware you own, with auth, TLS, GPU sizing, throughput numbers and the honest running cost.
12 min readSermon Transcription Guide, from Recording to Transcript
A practical sermon transcription guide: how to record in a sanctuary, transcribe a sermon to text on a Mac or iPhone, label Q&A speakers, and publish it.
8 min readSpeech models
Run NVIDIA Parakeet locally on Apple Silicon: MLX, Core ML and NeMo
Run NVIDIA Parakeet TDT 0.6B locally on a Mac: parakeet-mlx CLI and API, FluidAudio Core ML, NeMo on CPU, speed vs Whisper, the 25 v3 languages and errors.
10 min readRun Whisper Locally on a Mac with whisper.cpp (Step by Step)
Run Whisper locally on a Mac with whisper.cpp: install, model download, ffmpeg conversion to 16 kHz WAV, output formats, Apple Silicon notes and common errors.
8 min read