Moonshine Note Taker

Moonshine Note Taker is an open-source application for macOS designed to provide private, on-device speech transcription. The tool enables users to transcribe any speech on their Mac without requiring an internet connection, cloud services, or user accounts, ensuring that all audio and transcript data remain local and private. It is intended for users who need to capture and transcribe spoken content—such as meetings, podcasts, Zoom calls, or any audio played on their Mac—while prioritizing privacy and data security.

The application supports recording from a microphone, system audio, and other sources, and allows users to drag and drop audio or video files in all major formats for transcription. Moonshine Note Taker features real-time editing, letting users correct mistakes and format text as the transcription process runs, eliminating the need to wait for completion before making changes. Its synced playback function highlights text in tandem with audio playback, streamlining the review and verification process. Export options include formatted text, WAV audio, and SRT caption files, providing flexibility for use in other applications.

Under the hood, Moonshine Note Taker is powered by the Moonshine Voice framework, which is noted for achieving a lower word error rate and faster performance compared to Whisper Large v3, with support for at least eight languages including English, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. The tool is fully open source and distributed under the MIT License, allowing users to inspect the code, contribute improvements, or integrate the underlying voice technology into their own applications. Moonshine Note Taker is available as a free download from the Mac App Store and requires macOS 15 Sequoia or later.