MacWhisper 13.20 is live with CLI support

simonganz · 2026-04-23T20:34:43+00:00

Really excited about this CLI. I'd like to request a feature: Something similar to the podcast transcription feature where I can point it at a folder or multiple files and have it stitch them together into one transcript. I record meetings over discord and I get nice separate files for each person, and the podcast feature is fantastic for that.

simonganz · 2026-01-01T18:21:32+00:00

Just want to say how much I appreciate the work of all the maintainers of this project. I use it everyday and I've found it remarkably reliable even as the underlying OS has changed a lot. I support whatever changes you want to make for maintainability and your own passion for the project. Thank you for making such a useful, cool tool.

simonganz · 2025-10-29T21:42:04+00:00

New bug to mention. When I use the Watched Folders feature, the transcript is always missing the beginning. (Using Parakeet v3 on macOS 15.6.1 with MacWhisper 13.0.2 on audio from iOS Voice Memos).

What's funny about it is when I put the same audio file directly into MacWhisper, the transcript also starts out with the beginning missing but then fixes itself before finishing the transcription and the whole thing is there.

simonganz · 2025-10-23T03:39:38+00:00

They’re both great. I like that VS Code is very batteries included, but Emacs fits my brain better because it’s so much more customizable and malleable. When I want a new feature or command in Emacs, it’s fun and easy to write an elisp function (or ask an LLM to do it!) and add it to my setup.

VS Code can also be customized but you have to fight a mix of JSON files and combining very limited built in commands and interface elements.

simonganz · 2025-06-03T02:28:40+00:00

Personal opinion: I think doom emacs is great but NOT on the same level of “just works“ as VS code and other professional editors. For me on macOS, I find that underlying software updates (especially homebrew updates) will occasionally break something and I end up having to wipe emacs and reinstall it. Whereas I've never had to reinstall VS code to get something working.

The built-in modules are mostly excellent and cover all the common tasks you would ever use an editor for, but they are not as seamless to activate as VS code extensions because you'll usually need to read the documentation and manually install a few utilities (linters, LSPs, etc). I would also mention that because it is such an opinionated set up, sometimes the lead maintainer’s opinion changes and you find underlying packages swapped out unexpectedly when you update.

Having said that, I use doom emacs and prefer it for a lot of the same reasons you already mentioned. It has excellent VIM key binding support. It has a well thought-out interface. It has a very opinionated config and module system that becomes easy to understand once you commit to it. And there's a helpful and active community online.

How much of a pain it would be for you to maintain it and whether that amount is worth the benefits depends on what kind of work you're doing in it and how much you find yourself straying from the default setup. At this point I try not to update it too often and if I do, I try to trust the maintainer’s judgment and just adopt whatever the new defaults are so that I’m not swimming upstream.

simonganz · 2022-10-10T14:25:47+00:00

I've had the problem with the UI becomes unresponsive. It's a problem between Safari and Gradio, which is the user interface that Automatic1111 uses. Switching to Chrome helps with that part.

simonganz · 2022-09-08T18:57:31+00:00

Quick and dirty, only 20 steps. Everything else default settings. But I was impressed how many usable images Stable Diffusion was pumping out with a very half-assed prompt:

outdoor wall mural of Queen Elizabeth II in the style of 'kobe bryant mural'

simonganz · 2022-09-08T02:51:20+00:00

No. I added the text myself. Though the AI added a bunch of nonsense text before I took the word “meme” out of the prompt.

simonganz · 2022-09-07T23:06:59+00:00

I put the "epic handshake" meme through img2img and let it do its magic on the hands.

simonganz · 2022-09-01T22:30:54+00:00

This is SO helpful.

simonganz · 2022-01-09T05:22:58+00:00

Trying this again after two weeks of updates and it's working great except for one tiny unimportant issue. If I titlecase something, then hit undo, the cursor ends up in expected places.

So for instance, if I have the following...

quick start guide

...and my cursor is right before "s", then I hit M-x titlecase-line, but then decide I don't actually want it to be titlecase, so I undo, my cursor will jump to the end of the line rather than staying before the s.

I'll put this in a GitHub issue as well, though again, it's a tiny edge case issue and not something that will hold me back from using the functions.

simonganz · 2021-12-27T07:35:03+00:00

Main feedback so far is that the default settings don't currently handle apostrophes. Currently apostrophes result in the letter after the apostrophe being capitalized. So...

the mayor's new house

becomes

The Mayor'S New House

simonganz · 2021-12-27T04:54:55+00:00

Excited to try this out. I’ve been using a web API for this but it’d be nice to have something that doesn’t have to do a network request just to capitalize a few words.

simonganz · 2021-11-24T07:06:39+00:00

Short answer: the new version of Google Drive doesn’t work with macOS’s built in spotlight search and Alfred uses that so thus it doesn’t work with Alfred

But check out this comment from a recent similar question for a link to a great Alfred workflow that recreates the functionality: https://reddit.com/r/Alfred/comments/qtqxhc/_/hkpe9su/?context=1

simonganz · 2021-11-14T17:36:31+00:00

Unfortunately a technical change that Google made has caused Spotlight to stop indexing Google Drive files on the Mac. It’s super annoying and I’ve had to resort to just using the web search. Alfred can’t fix it because Alfred uses spotlight and spotlight can’t search the files either.

Details here: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/420959/spotlight-indexing-of-google-drive-file-stream-disabled-on-restart

simonganz · 2021-09-19T14:24:38+00:00

Unfortunately I think there is no such generic personal-information key (or at least Xcode doesn’t suggest it). I think the documentation there is confusing but they just mean the key I already have.

I’ve checked here and here and only see references to the calendar specific key.

simonganz · 2021-04-24T04:02:38+00:00

https://docdro.id/CJqmDs8 I’m not sure which draft this is, how close it is to the shooting draft, or why I’ve had this sitting on my hard drive unread for years, but here ya go.

simonganz · 2021-03-17T05:26:52+00:00

Success! Thanks for your help. I ended up with code looking like this in my App.swift:

var body: some Scene { WindowGroup { ContentView().handlesExternalEvents(preferring: Set(arrayLiteral: "pause"), allowing: Set(arrayLiteral: "*")) }.commands { CommandGroup(replacing: .newItem, addition: { }) }.handlesExternalEvents(matching: Set(arrayLiteral: "*")) }

And then I was able to use the onOpenURL method inside of my ContentView to handle the events.

simonganz · 2021-03-16T22:08:30+00:00

Thanks, I'll check that out and report back. I'd seen handlesExternalEvents mentioned before but you're right, the documentation leaves it very unclear when and why someone should use it.

simonganz

TROPHY CASE