OpenTranscribe
Private, offline voice journal
Only for iPhone
Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPhone. Not verified for macOS.
iPhone
OpenTranscribe is a voice journal that runs entirely on your iPhone. You speak, it writes it down, and nothing leaves the device.
Recording, transcription, and storage all happen locally. There is no account to create, no sync, no analytics, and no networking code in the app at all. It works the same in airplane mode, because being offline is not a setting here, it is how the app is built.
Tap once and talk. A live transcript appears while you speak, and when you stop, the full recording is transcribed on the device. Finished entries land on a simple home screen, organized by day across the week. Each entry keeps its transcript and its recording, so you can read it back, play it, or transcribe it again later with a better engine.
OpenTranscribe can also look back for you. When a day, week, or month ends, it can write a short reflection over the entries from that period, generated on the device by Apple Intelligence. Nothing about your journal leaves the phone to produce it, you choose which periods reflect and how the writing reads, and a quiet stretch is left quiet rather than invented. On iPhones without Apple Intelligence the feature simply stays out of the way.
Your recordings are yours. Audio is kept on the device by default so an entry can be re-transcribed, and you can turn that off to have recordings deleted automatically once they are transcribed. Entries are stored encrypted on the phone. Transcripts can be edited in place, and every prior version is kept. A recording can also start without opening the app: from the lock screen, a widget, the Action button, Siri, or Shortcuts.
And your journal can leave with you. Everything exports as Markdown, as Obsidian notes, or as a website that opens in any browser with a built-in player, and a sealed archive backs the whole journal up for a later restore. The archive is free for everyone, always, so your data never sits behind a paywall. The formatted exports are the first feature of the OpenTranscribe Club, a one-time purchase that supports the app, with more club features to come.
The transcription engine is built to be swappable, and it must declare that it runs on the device. The app refuses any engine that does not, so audio can never be quietly sent off the phone.
OpenTranscribe is open source and MIT licensed. A privacy claim cannot be proven by a policy, only by source you can read, so the code is public. You can check exactly what the app does and does not do at github.com/theiskaa/opentranscribe.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
Whisper, a third engine that runs every language from one model you pick, on any iPhone.
- Whisper joins SpeechAnalyzer and Dictation. Pick one of five models, from Tiny to Large Turbo, and one download covers ninety-nine languages, including ones Apple's engines don't offer. Your words appear after you stop.
- Faster with the Neural Engine: an optional second download lets Whisper run on the Neural Engine.
- Downloading a model is the only thing the app ever does over the network. It comes from one fixed host, picks up where it left off if interrupted, and sends nothing. Everything else still works in airplane mode.
- Long recordings are transcribed in pieces, so an hour costs the phone no more memory than a minute, and the entry shows how far along the run is.
- While Whisper works, a new entry holds its place with a shape the size of the words to come.
- Switching language mid-recording now cuts at the pause around your switch, so the words on each side land whole and in their own language.
- A new transcription screen: your language on top, a switch between the three engines, and a line on each saying when your words appear.
- The first run asks when you want your words to appear, as you speak or after you stop, and picks the engine for you.
- The Cache screen shows what the app keeps in one bar, models included.
- VoiceOver names every model control.
The developer, Ismayil Shahverdiyev, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Ismayil Shahverdiyev
- Size
- 28.8 MB
- Category
- Productivity
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 17.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 14.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
English and 7 more
- English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- OpenTranscribe Club $25.00
- Copyright
- © 2026 theiskaa
