noScribe — a privacy-first, local alternative to Google transcription

I've built the habit of recording important meetings for future reference. My current pipeline: Google Pixel's automatic transcription in the Recorder app (from English, French, Dutch, and Turkish input) → NotebookLM → to-do's, slides, and meeting notes. It works perfectly across languages and integrates seamlessly across Google services.

I have two problems with it. First, I don't like being dependent on a single company for such a crucial workflow. Second, there is no need to broadcast sensitive meeting contents to Google — in a contractual setting, this type of data leak is neither acceptable nor GDPR-compliant.

Looking for an open-source local alternative, I stumbled upon noScribe, a fantastic tool developed by a Swiss sociologist/computer scientist for transcribing interviews. It accepts multi-language input with customization options, runs entirely locally (using OpenAI Whisper and Pyannote), and from what I've seen so far, works on par with Google's online service in terms of transcription and translation quality. The interface is clunky and the software sometimes crashes during transcription, but the switch is easy and a no-brainer for privacy. Kudos to the developers.

What I will cover in a future TIL: Open Notebook, the open-source and local replacement for NotebookLM.