Etch: Whisper Transcription

Etch is a private AI transcription app, voice recorder and note taker for Android. Record a lecture, a meeting or a doctor's appointment, and Etch turns English speech to text right on your phone. Offline, no account, no subscription, and no transcript is ever locked behind a paywall. Someone talks faster than you can write. A colleague runs through the whole plan over lunch. The doctor explains it once. You nod along, and an hour later you have half of it. Tap record. When you're done you have: - The audio recording - The full transcript - A short summary - A checklist of what you actually need to do PAY ONCE. EVERY TRANSCRIPT IS YOURS. A lot of transcription apps let you record for free, then hold the transcript back until you subscribe. Etch is a one-time purchase: no subscription, no in-app purchases, no ads, no sign-in. Your recordings and transcripts stay on your phone. WHISPER TRANSCRIPTION ON YOUR PHONE, NOT ON A SERVER Most voice transcription apps upload your audio to a company's servers and send text back. Etch doesn't. It uses Whisper, OpenAI's open-source speech recognition model, to transcribe speech entirely on your phone. Etch downloads the model once, the first time you use the app, and keeps it on the device. It's the full model, not a trimmed-down version that quietly sends the hard parts off to a server. So voice to text works in a basement, on a plane, on a train in a tunnel, or in airplane mode. Your recording is never uploaded, because there is no NeoVetta server for it to sit on. No login, no analytics. AI NOTES, SUMMARIES AND ACTION ITEMS A ten-minute ramble becomes three lines you'll actually read again, plus a checklist of the things you said you'd do. This part is optional, and it uses an AI service you choose and pay directly. OpenRouter, OpenAI, Groq, xAI, DeepSeek and Mistral all work, as does anything that speaks the OpenAI chat format, including a model on your own computer, in which case nothing leaves your house. OpenRouter also offers free models. Only the text of the transcript is ever sent, never the audio. FIX A NAME ONCE AND IT STAYS FIXED Every speech-to-text model trips over unusual names. So the transcript is fully editable, with find and replace built in. Correct a name in one place and every other mention changes with it. Ask for the summary again and the correction carries through to your notes and checklist. ON-DEVICE TRANSCRIPTION ON ANY ANDROID PHONE Offline audio transcription has mostly been limited to a few flagship phones. Etch does the same job on any 64-bit ARM phone running Android 8.0 or newer, nearly every Android phone sold since 2017, and adds the summary and the checklist. EVERYTHING ELSE - Transcribe audio to text from voice notes, lectures and interviews you already recorded - Playback with 10-second skip and adjustable speed - Tags to label and filter notes, stored only on your phone - Export the original recording, or a smaller version to send - Keeps recording with the screen off; splits long sessions automatically - Light and dark themes WHO USES IT Students who need a lecture recorder and note taker. Anyone walking out of back-to-back meetings who needs the meeting notes. Journalists transcribing interviews. Parent-teacher conferences, the car shop, the bank, the insurance office, your own medical appointments. Or just you in the car, using it for quick dictation before you forget a thought. GOOD TO KNOW English only for now; more languages are next. Requires a 64-bit ARM phone on Android 8.0 or newer, and won't run on an emulator. It can't record a call on the same phone, because Android doesn't allow any app to do that, but speakerphone and anything said in the room work fine. Cloud AI providers are reached over HTTPS. A local AI server on your own network may use plain HTTP, which is why the Play safety label says data isn't encrypted. Etch uses OpenAI's open-source Whisper model and is not affiliated with or endorsed by OpenAI.