HomeGuide · Updated 2026-08-30
Offline transcription on a Mac. Nothing leaves the room.
Offline transcription means the audio is turned into text on your own Mac, with no upload and no account. It matters for interviews, client calls, medical or legal recordings, and anything you would not paste into a web form. Parlin transcribes MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, FLAC, MP4, MOV, and WebM files and live meetings on-device, with speaker labels, in 99 languages, for $39 once.
Why offline
Most transcription services are websites. You upload a recording, a server transcribes it, and you download text. That is convenient and it is also a copy of your recording on someone else's machine, under their retention policy. Offline transcription removes the question: the file never leaves the Mac. You can verify it by turning Wi-Fi off before you start.
What you can transcribe
Parlin handles the common cases on one Mac.
- Audio files: MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, FLAC.
- Video files: MP4, MOV, WebM. The direct build converts any format ffmpeg understands.
- Live meetings: record, then get speaker-labeled notes, a summary, and action items.
- Links: paste a YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok URL and get the transcript (direct build).
Accuracy and languages
English uses Parakeet on the Neural Engine, measured at about 98% on the LibriSpeech test-clean set. Other languages use Whisper, with larger models downloadable in Settings when you want higher accuracy on a difficult recording. Parlin detects the spoken language on its own and can translate the transcript as it goes. A two-hour file is fine; the Mac's own chip does the work.
Getting the text out
Export as TXT, Markdown, or PDF for notes, or SRT and VTT for captions. Transcripts stay in Parlin's library on your Mac until you delete them. Parlin is $39 once, rising to $69 on October 31, 2026, with a 7-day free trial and no card required.