Free & open source  ·  Windows 10/11

Your notes, transcribed by AI
on your own PC

Record voice notes on your phone, anywhere. FasterNotes transcribes with Whisper and summarises with Ollama — all on your own machine. No cloud accounts. No subscriptions. Nothing leaves your desk.

No subscription Runs entirely locally Whisper + Ollama

How it works

From install to your first AI-summarised note in under five minutes

Install the Windows app

Download and run the installer. FasterNotes starts a local server in your system tray — no configuration needed on first run.

Pair your phone

Open the dashboard, click "Connect Phone", and scan the QR code with your phone's browser. No app store needed — it's a web app.

Record anywhere

Tap the mic on your phone and speak. Notes queue offline in your browser and sync automatically when you're back in range.

AI transcribes & summarises

Your PC runs Whisper to transcribe, then Ollama to extract summaries, action items, and tags — structured notes, automatically.

Everything you need, nothing you don't

Built for one user running their own setup — no SaaS overhead, no vendor lock-in

Offline-first recording

Notes queue in your phone's browser storage and sync automatically when the server is reachable. Record in a meeting, upload when you get home.

Local Whisper transcription

faster-whisper runs entirely on your CPU. Supports auto language detection and forced modes for Danish, Swedish, and English.

Pluggable AI skills

Skills are editable Markdown files that define the prompt, output shape, and actions. Ships with meeting notes, journal, quick-note, and curator.

Privacy by design

Nothing leaves your machine by default. The server only listens on your local network; your audio, transcripts, and summaries stay on your own disk.

Optional remote access

Enable the built-in Cloudflare Tunnel and your phone reaches the home server from anywhere — real TLS certificate, no port forwarding required.

Multi-modal capture

Compose notes with voice, typed text, and photos in one message. Vision-capable Ollama models can read image content directly.

v1.0  ·  June 2026  ·  Free forever

Download FasterNotes

Windows installer — one click, starts automatically on login.

Download for Windows

Unsigned installer — Windows SmartScreen may warn on first run. Click "More info → Run anyway".

System requirements

  • Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit)
  • 8 GB RAM minimum
  • ~1.5 GB disk for Whisper models
  • A phone with a modern browser
  • Ollama — optional, for AI summaries

The Whisper model (~460 MB) downloads automatically on first launch.

Frequently asked questions

Yes, always. FasterNotes is free and open source. There are no plans, no trials, no paywalls — the full feature set is available from day one.

A Windows 10/11 PC (64-bit) with at least 8 GB of RAM and around 1.5 GB of disk for the Whisper model. For AI summaries, install Ollama and pull any model — e.g. ollama pull qwen2.5:3b. Transcription works perfectly fine without Ollama.

No. Your audio, transcripts, and summaries stay on your Windows PC in %LOCALAPPDATA%\FasterNotes\. The server only listens on your local network by default. The optional Cloudflare Tunnel only forwards encrypted traffic — Cloudflare never sees your audio or note content.

Whisper auto-detects the spoken language. The phone app also lets you force a language — currently Danish, Swedish, and English have dedicated modes. For best accuracy in Danish/Norwegian/Swedish, switch to the NB-Whisper model in Settings (downloads ~1.5 GB on first use).

No. Whisper transcription works completely standalone. Ollama is only needed for AI summaries, action items, and tags. If Ollama isn't running, notes are transcribed and saved without a summary — you can always re-transcribe and re-summarise later.

Open the desktop dashboard and click "Connect Phone". Scan the QR code with your phone's browser — no app installation required. By default the phone connects over your local Wi-Fi. If you enable the optional Cloudflare Tunnel in Settings, the QR code automatically switches to the public hostname so pairing works from anywhere in the world.

Yes, in two ways. Notes always queue in your phone's browser storage first, then sync when the server is reachable — so you can record in a meeting and they upload when you get home. Optionally, enable the Cloudflare Tunnel and your phone can reach the home server in real time from anywhere.

All notes are stored in a SQLite database at %LOCALAPPDATA%\FasterNotes\activity.db, with full-text search built in. You can also configure a vault folder and use the journal or curator skills to write notes as Markdown files to any folder — great for Obsidian or similar tools.