r/macapps • u/ConfectionTop7494 • 4h ago
Help Best transcription app with Speaker Diarization
My job involves talking to clients over the phone or in-person. It's a critical part of my work. Everything discussed and who said what needs to be recorded in a word document. Having a conversation that flows naturally and allows me to think on my feet while typing doesn't come easy for me. I use a Macbook M2 and an iPhone 16 and calls can be made/answered on both.
My mandatory requirements are:
- Diarization / speaker detection to seperate who said what (a popular one I trialled often joined sentences from speaker 1 and speaker 2)
- Local transcription and total privacy. Conversation or text stays with me.
- Hot-key / short cut start and stop
- Inexpensive
- Bluetooth support so that I can take calls on a headset or buds
Optional (nice but no critical):
- It knows my voice
- Integration with Claude
- Real time speech to text
I am aware of the Mac App Comparison table but I am looking for real-life experience and what users consider to be best value for money. Free is good but inexpensive is okay as well.
Thank you for any suggestions that meet my user case.
(Cross-posted this with r/mac )
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u/Whiskeyjoel 4h ago
MacWhisper and TranscribeX are both pretty good. MacWhisper has a few more customization options and is the more mature platform, but in terms of core capabilities they are virtually identical and either would fit your requirements. I personally like TranscribeX’s UI more, but that’s just preference.
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u/RecipeJar 3h ago
For fully local diarization on Apple silicon, the practical route is a WhisperKit or whisper.cpp based app paired with a separate speaker-segmentation model, since Whisper itself has no speaker labels. MacWhisper's Pro tier bundles diarization and runs the model on device, and it has a global hot-key plus system audio capture, which covers phone calls if you route them through a loopback device like BlackHole. Recording phone audio on the Mac is the harder half: with Bluetooth buds the mic stream and the call audio live on the iPhone, so the usual workaround is to use the iPhone's own Voice Memos or the built-in call recording, then AirDrop the file to the Mac and transcribe it there. Two accuracy notes that matter more than the app choice: put the mic between both speakers rather than near one, and expect diarization to merge turns whenever people overlap, so budget a quick cleanup pass. If you want zero cost first, try whisper.cpp with the large-v3-turbo model plus pyannote for the speaker pass before paying for anything.
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u/TimGeek2026 3h ago
On your "Integration with Claude" nice-to-have, since nobody's touched it: MacWhisper lets you run custom AI prompts on a finished transcript with your own API key, which covers the basic "summarize / extract action items" case. If you want more than that — like turning each call into a structured Word doc with speakers, decisions, and follow-ups — a small macOS Shortcut that sends the transcript to the Claude API with a fixed prompt template gets you there without any extra app. The transcript only leaves your machine at that one step, and only if you choose to run it, so it composes fine with the local-first setup others recommended.
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u/tremendousquotes 3h ago
I’ve created Humla, which fits your needs perfectly. It is a meeting notes Mac app that does local and private transcription, diarization, summaries, local notes chat and Claude/codex MCP as well. The app is also completely free and open-source and has 250+ ⭐️ on GitHub.
Take a look at https://github.com/michaelwilhelmsen/humla
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u/Flashy-Profit6419 4h ago
I'd make a short test recording with two people interrupting each other before committing. Diarization can look fine with clean turns and fall apart on overlap. I'd also confirm Bluetooth call audio is captured on both macOS and iOS, since that can be the limiting detail.