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Steno transcribes with two on-device engines: Parakeet (the default, NVIDIA Parakeet TDT v3 running via MLX on Apple Silicon) and Whisper (an optional alternate, OpenAI’s Whisper large-v3-turbo). Both run entirely on your device — your audio is never sent to any server. You choose the engine in Settings → Transcribe.

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How it works

Transcription runs on-device and is fast on Apple Silicon. With the default Parakeet engine, a live transcript appears while you record, and Steno finalizes it when you stop. With the Whisper engine, transcription runs after you stop the recording. Either way, the active engine processes the audio file locally and outputs a verbatim transcript with timestamps.

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Language support

Language coverage depends on the engine. Steno auto-detects the language — you do not need to set it manually.
  • Parakeet (default) transcribes 25 European languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, and Polish. A curated subset of six (English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese) can be pinned as the summary output language.
  • Whisper (optional) covers the full set of 99 languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, and Arabic. To transcribe any of these, switch to the Whisper engine in Settings → Transcribe.

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Speaker labels

Transcripts include [You] and [Others] labels when system audio is enabled. [You] labels lines from your microphone; [Others] labels the audio from your speakers.

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Viewing the transcript

The full transcript appears in the right pane of any saved note, below the AI summary. Transcripts are also saved as plain text files in ~/Library/Application Support/stenoai/transcripts/.

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Choosing an engine

See Transcription models for a comparison of the Parakeet and Whisper engines.
Yes. On macOS with the default Parakeet engine, a live transcript appears while you record. If you switch to the Whisper engine, transcription runs after you stop the recording.
Transcripts are saved as plain text files. You can open and edit them in any text editor. Changes to the transcript file are reflected in Steno the next time you open the note.