Transcribe a Podcast on Mac

Why transcribe on-device instead of uploading to a website

Most podcast and audio transcription tools are web services. You upload the file, it sits on someone else's server, and you wait for a job to finish. That is fine for a public episode, but it is a problem for an unreleased recording, a confidential meeting, a medical or legal interview, or anything you would rather not hand to a third party.

Vidgest takes the opposite approach. The transcription engine runs locally on your Mac. The audio file never leaves your machine during transcription, which means it works on a plane with no internet, it does not depend on an upload speed, and there is no copy of your recording sitting in a cloud account. The only step that ever leaves your Mac is an optional AI summary, and that sends only the resulting text, not the audio.

How to transcribe a podcast on Mac with Vidgest

1. Install Vidgest and unlock Pro

Download Vidgest from the Mac App Store. It is free to install, and on-device audio and video transcription is a Pro feature ($4.99/mo or $34.99/yr). Requires macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later. Apple Silicon and Intel Macs are both supported.

2. Drag in your audio or video file

Drop a podcast episode, a Zoom or meeting recording, a lecture, an interview, or a video file into Vidgest. Common audio formats such as .mp3, .m4a, and .wav work, along with common video files. Pick the language if it is not English. The engine handles 19 languages.

3. Transcribe locally

Vidgest runs the transcription on-device. Nothing uploads. A long episode takes longer than a short clip, but the file stays on your Mac the whole time. When it finishes, the transcript appears in a scrollable view that you can search with Cmd+F.

4. Export or summarize

Export the transcript to TXT on the free tier, or to PDF, Markdown, SRT, VTT, JSON, and Obsidian on Pro. The SRT and VTT exports keep timing data so they work as subtitle or caption files for the episode. Or press the AI button to generate a summary, chapters, or key takeaways from the transcript. The free tier includes 3 AI analyses per day, Pro includes 500 per month, and Max ($49.99 one-time) lets you bring your own API key.

What you can transcribe

The on-device engine is not limited to podcasts. Anything you have as an audio or video file works the same way:

• Podcast episodes you downloaded or recorded yourself
• Zoom, Teams, and other meeting recordings
• Lectures, seminars, and recorded classes
• Interviews for research, journalism, or hiring
• Voice memos and dictation
• Video files where you want the spoken content as text

If the content is on YouTube rather than a local file, you do not need transcription at all. Paste the URL and Vidgest pulls the existing transcript directly. See the YouTube transcript on Mac page for that workflow.

19 languages, on your Mac

The transcription engine supports 19 languages, so a Spanish interview, a French lecture, or a German podcast transcribes the same way an English one does, all without leaving your machine. This matters for researchers and journalists working with non-English source audio who cannot upload sensitive recordings to a web service.

Privacy

Transcription happens entirely on-device. The audio file is never uploaded by Vidgest. Transcripts are stored in a local SQLite library on your Mac with no cloud sync and no account. The only data that ever leaves your machine is the transcript text, and only if you choose to run an AI summary, at which point it goes to the AI provider you selected and nowhere else. For a confidential recording, you can transcribe, read, and export it without anything touching the internet.

Frequently asked questions