SubVoce

SubVoce turns any video into a clean, translated subtitle file — quietly, locally, on your Mac. I built this for my own podcast. I needed a way to transcribe episodes and generate Spanish subtitles without uploading files to a cloud service, paying per minute, or dealing with a clunky web interface. So I made the tool I actually wanted.

WHAT IT DOES

Drop in a video. SubVoce transcribes it using Whisper large-v3-turbo, running entirely on your machine with Apple Silicon GPU acceleration. It reformats the raw transcript into natural, sentence-aware subtitles. Then it translates — English to Spanish, or Spanish to English — using Claude AI. Both SRT files are exported, ready for any video player or editor. Everything runs on your computer. Your files never leave your machine.

HOW IT WORKS

1. Drop in a video (MP4, MOV, MKV, AVI, M4V)

2. Choose direction — EN → ES or ES → EN

3. Run the pipeline — transcribe, reformat, translate

4. Export your SRT files

WHAT YOU NEED

— Mac with Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, or M4)

— macOS 12 or later

— Free Anthropic API key for translation

  (console.anthropic.com — new accounts include free credits)

Transcription runs 100% locally via Whisper. Translation calls Claude AI directly using your own key — no markup, no middleman, roughly $0.05–0.10 per episode.

FIRST LAUNCH NOTE

macOS may show a "SubVoce is damaged" warning when you try to open the DMG. This is a Gatekeeper security notice — the file is not actually damaged.

To fix it:

1. Open Terminal (press ⌘ + Space, type Terminal, press Enter)

2. Run this command: xattr -cr ~/Downloads/SubVoce-1.0.0-arm64.dmg

3. Double-click the DMG again — it should open normally

4. Drag SubVoce to your Applications folder

5. If you see the warning again after installing, run: 

xattr -cr /Applications/SubVoce.app

This is a one-time step. It happens because the app isn't codesigned yet — your Mac is just being cautious about software downloaded from outside the App Store.

ABOUT

I'm Nando — a UX/UI designer and podcast host based in Barranquilla, Colombia. SubVoce is a personal tool I built and decided to share.

Podcast: nandologia.com