Private, offline transcription on your own hardware
If your recordings contain anything sensitive — interviews, meetings, medical or legal audio — uploading them to a cloud transcription service means handing that data to a third party. Txtify is open source and self-hosted, so the audio is transcribed on infrastructure you control and never leaves it.
What "private" actually means here
- Runs on your machine. One Docker container; the Whisper model does the transcription locally.
- No account, no telemetry. Txtify doesn't require sign-up and doesn't phone home.
- You stay the data controller. Recordings sit on your storage, under your policies.
- Open source (Apache 2.0). You can read exactly what it does — no black box.
Be precise about the one exception: translation uses DeepL's API, which is an external network call. Transcription itself is local, but if you enable translation, that text is sent to DeepL. For a fully offline / air-gapped workflow, leave translation off. We'd rather state this plainly than imply Txtify is 100% offline in every configuration.
Why it helps with GDPR and confidentiality
Under GDPR, sending personal data to a third-party transcription service makes that service a processor and adds contractual, transfer and retention obligations. Transcribing on your own infrastructure avoids that hand-off entirely — the data doesn't leave your control. That reduces exposure and simplifies your compliance story.
This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm any setup against your organisation's own requirements and DPA.
Typical private use cases
- Journalists protecting sources and unpublished interviews
- Researchers handling participant recordings under ethics approval
- Legal and medical audio that can't go to a public cloud
- Companies transcribing internal meetings without a SaaS processor
FAQ
Does anything get uploaded?
Not for transcription — it's local. Only optional DeepL translation sends text off your machine.
Can I run it air-gapped?
Yes, once the Whisper model is downloaded and with translation disabled.
Is it free?
Yes — open source under Apache 2.0. You host it yourself.
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