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Private interview transcription for journalists
Transcribe interviews without your source audio ever leaving your Mac. Lesskeys does it on-device — offline, with automatic speaker labels, in 99 languages — so confidentiality is built into where the work happens.
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Can journalists transcribe interviews privately on a Mac?
Yes. Lesskeys transcribes on your Mac using Apple Silicon's GPU, so an interview recording is never uploaded to a transcription service. There's no account, no cloud queue, and it works offline. For reporting where a source's identity or a recording's contents must stay protected, keeping the audio on your own machine removes an entire category of exposure.
Why "on your device" matters for source protection
Cloud transcription tools send your recording to a third-party server to process it. That means a copy of a sensitive interview exists somewhere you don't control, subject to that company's retention, security, and legal obligations. Lesskeys keeps the recording and the transcript on your device — a practical safeguard, not a promise you have to take on trust.
What you get
- Automatic speaker labels for multi-person interviews (name them if you like).
- 99 languages with auto-detect for foreign-language sources.
- A transcript-synced player to jump straight to a quote.
- System-wide dictation for writing up notes and drafts, too.
A working setup for interview days
- Record or import — capture a call locally (Zoom, Meet, phone on speaker) or drop in a field recording. Audio and video files both work.
- Transcribe on your Mac — the interview is transcribed and speaker-labeled on-device. A two-hour recording never touches a server.
- Name the voices — label "Speaker 1" as your source once; recurring voices can be recognized across recordings, locally.
- Pull quotes with confidence — click any line to jump the synced player to that exact moment and verify the quote against the audio before it goes in the piece.
Pay once. No subscription. · macOS 13+
FAQ
Can journalists transcribe interviews privately on a Mac?
Yes. Lesskeys transcribes entirely on your Mac, so the source audio is never uploaded. It works offline and needs no account.
Does Lesskeys keep source audio confidential?
The audio and the transcription stay on your device — nothing is sent to a server, which is what makes it suitable for protecting sources.
Can it transcribe interviews in other languages?
Yes — 99 languages with automatic detection, all on-device.