VoiceNote

Local-first voice recording, transcription, and summarization app for macOS. Korean and English bilingual. No server required — bring your own Gemini API key.

What it does

VoiceNote records or imports audio, transcribes it using Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash model, identifies speakers automatically, and generates concise summaries. Everything runs locally on your Mac with data stored in iCloud for multi-device sync.

Who it's for

Anyone who needs to capture and organize voice content — meeting notes, interviews, lectures, personal memos. Especially useful for Korean/English bilingual users.

Features

• Record audio directly or import existing files (WebM, MP3, WAV, M4A)
• Automatic transcription with speaker diarization via Gemini 2.0 Flash
• AI-powered summarization with action items
• Export to Markdown (full transcript, summary only, or both)
• iCloud sync across devices
• Dark theme UI inspired by Linear
• Command palette for keyboard-driven workflow
• Polling-based auto-processing — drop files and they get transcribed automatically

Architecture

Turborepo monorepo with two apps:

• Desktop app (apps/tauri) — Tauri 2.0 with React + Vite frontend and Rust backend. All heavy operations (audio chunking, Gemini API uploads, file I/O) run in Rust to avoid IPC overhead.
• Landing page (apps/landing) — Next.js 15 static site.

Shared packages for TypeScript types, i18n locales, and tsconfig bases.

Requirements

• macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel)
• Gemini API key (get one free at https://aistudio.google.com/apikey)
• No other dependencies — ffmpeg is auto-downloaded on first use

Setup

# Install dependencies
pnpm install

# Run the desktop app in development mode
pnpm --filter @voicenote/tauri tauri:dev

# Build the macOS .app bundle
pnpm --filter @voicenote/tauri tauri:build

First Rust compile takes several minutes. Subsequent builds are incremental (~6 seconds).

Configuration

Open the app and go to Settings. Enter your Gemini API key. Select your preferred language (Korean or English). Recordings will be auto-processed once the key is set.

Data Storage

Recordings are stored in ~/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~com~voicenote~app/Documents/. Each recording gets its own directory with metadata, audio, transcript, and summary files. Settings are stored separately in ~/Library/Application Support/com.voicenote.app/settings.db.

Cost

Transcription and summarization use Gemini 2.0 Flash. Approximate cost is $0.003 per minute of audio.

License

MIT