OpenTranscribe vs Teika

OpenTranscribe is a voice journal that runs entirely on your iPhone. You speak, it writes it down, and nothing leaves the device. Recording, transcription, and storage all happen locally. There is no account to create, no sync, no analytics, and no networking code in the app at all. It works the same in airplane mode, because being offline is not a setting here, it is how the app is built. Tap once and talk. A live transcript appears while you speak, and when you stop, the full recording is transcribed on the device. Finished entries land on a simple home screen, organized by day across the week. Each entry keeps its transcript and its recording, so you can read it back, play it, or transcribe it again later with a better engine. OpenTranscribe can also look back for you. When a day, week, or month ends, it can write a short reflection over the entries from that period, generated on the device by Apple Intelligence. Nothing about your journal leaves the phone to produce it, you choose which periods reflect and how the writing reads, and a quiet stretch is left quiet rather than invented. On iPhones without Apple Intelligence the feature simply stays out of the way. Your recordings are yours. Audio is kept on the device by default so an entry can be re-transcribed, and you can turn that off to have recordings deleted automatically once they are transcribed. Entries are stored encrypted on the phone. Transcripts can be edited in place, and every prior version is kept. A recording can also start without opening the app: from the lock screen, a widget, the Action button, Siri, or Shortcuts. And your journal can leave with you. Everything exports as Markdown, as Obsidian notes, or as a website that opens in any browser with a built-in player, and a sealed archive backs the whole journal up for a later restore. The archive is free for everyone, always, so your data never sits behind a paywall. The formatted exports are the first feature of the OpenTranscribe Club, a one-time purchase that supports the app, with more club features to come. The transcription engine is built to be swappable, and it must declare that it runs on the device. The app refuses any engine that does not, so audio can never be quietly sent off the phone. OpenTranscribe is open source and MIT licensed. A privacy claim cannot be proven by a policy, only by source you can read, so the code is public. You can check exactly what the app does and does not do at github.com/theiskaa/opentranscribe.

CATCH THE THOUGHT BEFORE IT’S GONE. Accurate, fast, and private speech-to-text notes for iPhone and Apple Watch—made for the moments when you cannot stop to type. HOW IT WORKS • Start from what is closest. Use the app, Apple Watch, a widget, Control Center, or Shortcuts. On iPhone, you can also say “Siri, start recording with Teika.” • Talk until you are done. Teika keeps listening when you pause to think and stops when you tap again. • Paste it now or find it later. Every transcription is copied to your clipboard and saved in a searchable library on your iPhone. PRIVATE, ON-DEVICE TRANSCRIPTION Teika runs its speech recognition model on your iPhone. Nothing you say is uploaded, and your recordings, transcripts, and notes are not sent to an AI service. After setup, transcription works in Airplane Mode. Record on your paired Apple Watch and the clip is transferred to your nearby iPhone for local transcription. ONE-TIME SETUP Teika needs a one-time speech-model download of about 0.5 GB. Before it starts, Teika shows the size and provider and asks for your permission. Free. No account, ads, subscription, or tracking.