# noScribe
### Cutting Edge AI Technology for Automated Audio Transcription
</br>

> [!NOTE]
> ### 🚀 The new official website for noScribe: https://noscribe.de
> Learn how to install and use the software, and find tips to improve transcription quality.
>
> 🌐 Available in **English, German, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch**.
>
> Please update your links. 

---

> [!WARNING]
> Somebody has registered the domain **noscribe(dot)ai** to sell transcription services. **Stay away from this platform, I have nothing to do with it.** The real noScribe is free and always will be. This is obviously an attempt to profit from the popularity of my software and the reputation it gained over the years. Very sad. 

## What is noScribe?
- An app to produce **high quality transcripts of interviews** for qualitative social research or journalistic use
- noScribe is **free and open source** ([GPL-3.0](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html)), available for Windows, MacOS and Linux 
- It runs **completely locally** on your computer, protecting the confidentiality of your interviews. No cloud, no worries
- It can distinguish between different **speakers** and understands around 60 languages (more or less, see below)
- It includes a **nice editor** to review, verify and correct the resulting transcript
- It is standing on the shoulders of giants: [Whisper from OpenAI](https://github.com/openai/whisper), [faster-whisper by Guillaume Klein](https://github.com/guillaumekln/faster-whisper) and [pyannote from Hervé Bredin](https://github.com/pyannote/pyannote-audio)

</br>

![Main window](img/noScribe_main_window.png)
(The transcript is from [this interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOwajAbvPzQ&t=2018s) which I did in May 2022 with the Russian sociologist Natalia Savelyeva.)

## Download, Installation, and Usage

See the corresponding sections on my website: https://noscribe.de 

To run noScribe without its window in a Docker container (CPU or CUDA, for servers and batch jobs), see [docker/README.md](docker/README.md).

## Experimental Local Inference Server

The development branch can run Whisper and Pyannote as a queued, local-only
inference service for small teams. Deployment, security, reverse-proxy, and
zero-retention details are documented in [noScribe/server/README.md](noScribe/server/README.md).

## About Me
**Kai Dröge**, PhD in sociology (with a background in computer science), qualitative researcher and teacher, [Lucerne University for Applied Science (Switzerland)](https://www.hslu.ch/de-ch/hochschule-luzern/ueber-uns/personensuche/profile/?pid=823) and [Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt/M. (Germany)](https://www.ifs.uni-frankfurt.de/personendetails/kai-droege.html).

## Donate
NoScribe is free and always will be. However, developing it costs real money. I have purchased hardware for testing and pay Apple annually for a developer ID. If you would like to support this project, you can make a donation on Ko-Fi. Thanks! 

[![ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/img/githubbutton_sm.svg)](https://ko-fi.com/noscribe)

## Citation (APA Style)
Dröge, K. (2026). noScribe. AI-powered Audio Transcription (Version XXX) [Computer software]. https://github.com/kaixxx/noScribe

## Other Software
If you are interested in open source software for the analysis of qualitative data, take a look at [QualCoder](https://github.com/ccbogel/QualCoder), where I am a regular contributor.