Voibe: Voibe is a private, offline AI dictation app for Apple Silicon Macs that converts speech to text on-device and inserts it into any app via a hold-to-speak hotkey. aTrain: Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection. We compare them on cost, capture approach, and day-to-day fit so you can choose faster.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Voibe when dictating emails, messages, and long-form documents directly into any mac app matters most, and aTrain when universities and public bodies needing gdpr-friendly local transcription matters most. Run both through a week of actual calls to see which suits your workflow.
Voibe is a private, offline AI dictation app for Apple Silicon Macs that converts speech to text on-device and inserts it into any app via a hold-to-speak hotkey.
Open-source offline transcription tool from the University of Graz that turns recorded meetings and interviews into text using Whisper and speaker detection.
Voibe is a Mac dictation app that turns speech into text entirely on-device, so audio never leaves the machine. Built for Apple Silicon Macs (M1 through M4) running macOS 13 or later, it runs optimized OpenAI Whisper models locally and works with no internet connection. You hold a hotkey (such as the Fn key), speak, and release; Voibe transcribes the audio and inserts the resulting text directly into whatever app is focused. It works system-wide across Mail, Notes, browsers, Slack, VS Code, ChatGPT, Claude and other text fields, rather than in a single dedicated window. The app supports a custom dictionary for names, jargon and technical vocabulary, plus smart punctuation. Because everything is processed locally and the audio is discarded after transcription, it is positioned for professionals handling confidential or NDA-protected work, including lawyers, consultants and developers. Voibe is a voice-to-text dictation tool focused on fast, accurate, private text entry; it is not a meeting recorder or conversation-intelligence platform. A Windows version is on a waitlist.
Best suited for
aTrain is a free, open-source desktop application for offline speech transcription, developed by researchers at the Business Analytics and Data Science Center of the University of Graz in Austria. It provides a graphical interface around OpenAI's Whisper model (via the faster-whisper implementation) so users with no programming experience can transcribe recorded meetings, interviews, lectures, and other audio. Because all processing happens locally on the user's own computer, no audio or text is uploaded to any server, which makes it well suited to privacy-sensitive and GDPR-conscious environments such as universities, public institutions, and research teams. aTrain supports a wide range of languages and adds speaker detection through pyannote.audio so contributions from different participants can be separated. Transcripts can be exported in formats compatible with qualitative-analysis software such as MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo. It runs on Windows (including a Microsoft Store distribution) with GPU acceleration on NVIDIA hardware, and is distributed under the AGPL-3.0 license. It is best for researchers, academics, and organizations that need accurate, local, no-cloud transcription of recorded conversations. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Voibe is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Voibe | aTrain |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Automatic smart punctuation | Offline, fully local transcription with no data leaving the device |
| Standout feature | Fully on-device speech-to-text using OpenAI Whisper models optimized for Apple Silicon (no cloud upload) | Built on OpenAI Whisper via the faster-whisper engine |
| Team usage | Hold-to-speak hotkey that inserts dictated text into any app's focused text field | Speaker detection/diarization using pyannote.audio |
| Integrations | Works offline with no internet connection required | Exports compatible with MAXQDA, ATLAS.ti, and NVivo |
| Languages & capture | Custom dictionary for names, jargon, and technical vocabulary | Graphical interface requiring no programming skills |
| Best-fit workflow | System-wide compatibility across Mail, Notes, browsers, Slack, VS Code, ChatGPT and more | NVIDIA GPU acceleration support |
Voibe
Choose Voibe if you need dictating emails, messages, and long-form documents directly into any mac app — strengths include strong privacy posture: transcription happens locally and audio is discarded, so no data leaves the mac.
aTrain
Choose aTrain if you need researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis — strengths include free and open source under agpl-3.0.
Voibe
aTrain
It depends on your workflow. Voibe is strong for dictating emails, messages, and long-form documents directly into any mac app, while aTrain is strong for researchers transcribing recorded interviews for qualitative analysis. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Voibe is a free tier with paid upgrades and aTrain is a free tier with paid upgrades. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
Sure. Running both makes sense when their strengths don't overlap and the budget allows.
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