How offline transcription software works

Most transcription apps upload your recording and process it in the cloud. That means you need a connection, and because every minute of processing costs the provider money, free plans usually come with a monthly limit on minutes.

Offline transcription software puts the speech recognition model on your computer instead. Alt does the work on your device's own chip, so it keeps going on a plane, in a basement lecture hall, or anywhere the Wi-Fi drops. There's no server cost behind each minute, which is why the desktop app's Free plan has no time or usage limits.

Many offline tools only transcribe a file after the fact, or only type out what you dictate. Alt is built as a note-taking app: it records and transcribes live, writes a summary when you're done, and keeps everything organized as notes you can come back to.

What works without an internet connection

On an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer) or a Windows PC, all of this runs offline:

• Recording meetings, lectures, and interviews while Alt transcribes in real time
• Uploading recordings you already have, such as voice memos from your phone, and converting them to text
• Creating AI summaries of a transcript with a local AI model
• Saving recordings and notes on your computer so you can review them later
• Transcribing Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Discord calls from your computer's audio (the call itself needs internet, but the transcription happens on your device)

Your audio stays on your device

When you use Alt's on-device AI, your audio and transcripts are processed and stored on your device. They aren't uploaded to Alt's servers.

Content leaves your device only if you turn on a cloud feature yourself: cloud AI models, sharing a note, or syncing between devices.

Going offline isn't only about having no signal. People choose it for privacy, for cost, and because it keeps working when the network doesn't. Offline transcription is a good fit for:

• Internal meetings or client calls whose audio shouldn't go to an outside service
• Interviews for reporting or research that you'd rather keep on your own machine
• Lectures in rooms with spotty campus Wi-Fi
• Flights, trains, and trips where you can't count on a connection
• Long recordings that would burn through a free plan's monthly minutes

Offline transcription on Mac, Windows, iPhone, and iPad

Transcribing offline requires a device that can run the AI model locally. Here's what Alt supports as of October 2026:

• Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer): on-device transcription with no internet required
• Windows PC: on-device transcription; Intel 11th gen or newer is recommended, and AMD support is in beta
• iPhone (iPhone 12 or newer, iOS 18+) and iPad (A14 Bionic or M1 or newer, iPadOS 18+): on-device mode transcribes offline with no time limit
• Intel Mac (macOS 14.4 or later): Alt uses cloud transcription, so you need an internet connection

Transcribe recordings you already have

Offline transcription isn't only for live recording. If you have voice memos from your phone, an interview you recorded last week, or a meeting someone sent you, upload the recording to Alt and convert it to text.

On the Free plan on an Apple Silicon Mac or a Windows PC, uploaded recordings are transcribed by the same local engine, so there are no time or count limits and the audio stays on your computer.

What's free and what Pro adds

On the Free plan, recording, transcription, and AI summaries run locally on your Mac or Windows PC with no time or usage limits. You also get speech recognition in 100+ languages, real-time translation, meeting minutes, PDF summaries, and limited access to low-cost cloud models.

Pro adds the latest cloud frontier models, such as Gemini and GPT, for summaries, translation, and AI chat. Speaker diarization, which labels who said what, is also a Pro feature, along with sharing audio when you share a note. Pro's cloud features need an internet connection.

Offline use comes with one trade-off: the Free plan runs AI models installed on your computer, so your machine does the heavy lifting. With Pro, you can rely on cloud models instead of installing heavy local ones. Either way, you choose when anything goes online.

See plans and pricing