No admin rights. No IT ticket. Still transcribed.
The usual advice for private transcription is to install Whisper. On a locked work laptop, you can't. Ratproof is a web page, so there is nothing to install.
Why the usual options fail here
Desktop apps need an install, and you don't have admin rights. Cloud tools upload your recording, which is what you are trying to avoid. A web page that does the work on your computer avoids both.
The note to send IT
Copy this. A clear request gets a faster answer.
Subject: Assessment request: browser-based transcription tool
I need to transcribe a recording and would rather it was not uploaded to a third-party
service. The tool runs entirely in the browser: app.ratproof.app
What it is:
• A static web page. No installer, no executable, no browser extension, no administrator
rights.
• The audio file is read from local disk and processed inside the browser tab. Neither the
audio nor the transcript is transmitted anywhere.
• It is served with Content-Security-Policy: connect-src 'self', which instructs
the browser to block the page's code from connecting to any other origin. This is verifiable from
the response headers rather than taken on trust.
• About 235 MB of model files are cached by the browser on first use and reused afterwards.
Clearing site data removes them.
• Recordings and transcripts are kept in the browser's storage on this machine unless the
user turns keeping off. Clearing the site's data removes them.
• The components are open source and listed with their licences at
app.ratproof.app/licenses.txt
What I would like confirmed:
• That the domain is permitted on this network.
• That a cached download of roughly 235 MB is acceptable on this machine.
I am not claiming this satisfies any specific compliance requirement. I would just like it assessed on what it actually does.
Keep the last line. Requests that overclaim get refused.
It won't help if your network blocks the site itself. For that, use a copy on your own network. The tab also needs about 2.3 GB of memory with the standard model, so thin clients may struggle. It transcribes English, Spanish, Italian and Swedish.
Questions
Can I transcribe audio without admin rights?
Yes. It is a web page, and opening a web page needs no admin rights. Nothing is installed.
Will IT see what I transcribe?
They can see that your browser opened the page, like any other site. They cannot see the audio or the text, because neither is ever sent anywhere.
Do I need permission to use it?
That depends on your organisation. What helps is a clear description of what the tool does. There is one on this page, ready to paste into an email.
Does anything get left behind on the machine?
The speech model, cached by your browser on first use. Also your recordings and transcripts, kept in the browser storage unless you turn keeping off. Clearing site data removes all of it. Nothing is installed and nothing runs at startup.
What if my organisation blocks the website itself?
Then no browser tool will work. Use a self-hosted copy instead: the same software, served from your own network.