SonicBrief 0.1.10 (Windows desktop)

Download guide

File	Who is it for?
SonicBrief-Setup-cpu.exe (167 MB)	Almost everyone. Runs fully offline on any 64-bit Windows PC, no NVIDIA GPU needed.
SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe (167 MB)	PCs with an NVIDIA GPU. You must also install SonicBrief-CudaPack.zip — without it the GPU has nothing to compute with.
SonicBrief-CudaPack.zip (1.19 GB)	The NVIDIA CUDA libraries. Unzip so a cuda folder lands in %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief\cuda, then restart SonicBrief.

Verify a download with certutil -hashfile SonicBrief-Setup-cpu.exe SHA256 against the matching .sha256 file.

If SonicBrief reports CPU mode in /api/health while you own an NVIDIA GPU, the CUDA pack is missing or in the wrong folder — that is exactly the %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief\cuda path above.

Fixed in 0.1.10

• GPU detection now finds the CUDA pack. 0.1.9 checked for cublas64_12.dll with a bare library name, which does not search PATH — so a correctly installed pack looked missing and transcription silently stayed on the CPU. The DLLs are now looked up in the same folders the launcher uses (%LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief\cuda, cuda beside the executable, PATH) and loaded by absolute path.

Fixed in 0.1.9 — the "stuck at 25%" hang

Transcription could freeze forever at 25% (Whisper is transcribing on CUDA (float16)…): the app asked Windows whether a GPU exists — which still answers yes with no CUDA pack installed — chose CUDA, then failed inside a native call that nothing reported. The job never advanced, the queue behind it never started, and no error was shown.

• Honest GPU detection — cublas64_12.dll, cublasLt64_12.dll and cudnn64_9.dll must actually load before CUDA is selected; otherwise SonicBrief transcribes on the CPU and says why.
• Automatic CPU fallback — if CUDA fails at runtime anyway, the job is retried on the CPU instead of dying.
• Stall watchdog — a job with no progress for 15 minutes is stopped with an actionable reason instead of waiting forever. Any transcript already produced is kept.
• The queue keeps moving — a stuck job no longer blocks every following job.
• Visible cause — /api/health reports gpu_reason, so the GPU/CPU decision is diagnosable.
• Progress in the Gemini fallback, a 60 s timeout on the media probe, and unbuffered server logs so a future hang leaves evidence behind.

Upgrading

Install as usual — settings and history are preserved. A job that froze at 25% in an older build cannot resume; cancel or delete it in the app and run it again.

Full Changelog: see the compare link below.

SonicBrief 0.1.9 (Windows desktop)

Download guide

File	Who is it for?
SonicBrief-Setup-cpu.exe (167 MB)	Almost everyone. Runs fully offline on any 64-bit Windows PC, no NVIDIA GPU needed.
SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe (167 MB)	PCs with an NVIDIA GPU for faster transcription. Also install SonicBrief-CudaPack.zip (below), or the GPU has nothing to compute with.
SonicBrief-CudaPack.zip (1.19 GB)	The NVIDIA CUDA libraries. Unzip it so a cuda folder lands in %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief\cuda, then restart SonicBrief. Required for the GPU build.

Verify a download with certutil -hashfile SonicBrief-Setup-cpu.exe SHA256 against the matching .sha256 file.

Fixed in 0.1.9 — the "stuck at 25%" hang

Transcription could freeze forever at 25% ("Whisper is transcribing on CUDA (float16)…"): the app asked Windows whether a GPU exists — which still answers yes with no CUDA pack installed — chose CUDA, then failed inside a native call that nothing reported. The job never advanced, the queue behind it never started, and no error was shown.

• Honest GPU detection — SonicBrief now verifies cublas64_12.dll, cublasLt64_12.dll and cudnn64_9.dll actually load before selecting CUDA; otherwise it transcribes on the CPU and says so.
• Automatic CPU fallback — if CUDA fails at runtime anyway, the job is retried on the CPU instead of dying.
• Stall watchdog — a job with no progress for 15 minutes is stopped with a clear reason (install the CUDA pack, or set SONICBRIEF_FORCE_CPU=1) instead of waiting forever. Any transcript already produced is kept.
• Queue keeps moving — a stuck job no longer blocks every following job.
• Visible cause — /api/health now reports gpu_reason, so the GPU/CPU decision is diagnosable.
• Progress in the Gemini fallback, a 60 s timeout on the media probe, and unbuffered server logs so a future hang leaves evidence behind.

Upgrading from 0.1.8

Install as usual (settings and history are preserved). If a previous job froze at 25%, cancel or delete it in the app and run it again — it cannot resume by itself.

Full Changelog: see the compare link below.

SonicBrief 0.1.8 (Windows + Android)

🖥️ Windows — which file should I download?

File	Who is it for?
SonicBrief-Setup-cpu.exe (167 MB)	Almost everyone. Runs fully offline on any 64-bit Windows PC.
SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe (167 MB)	PCs with an NVIDIA GPU for faster transcription.
SonicBrief-CudaPack.zip (1.19 GB)	Only needed together with the gpu installer — the NVIDIA CUDA libraries it loads at runtime. Skip it if you installed the cpu build.

Verify with certutil -hashfile SonicBrief-Setup-cpu.exe SHA256 against the matching .sha256 file.

🤖 Android — which file should I download?

File	Who is it for?
app-arm64-v8a-release.apk (~30 MB)	Almost all modern phones. Download this one if unsure.
app-universal-release.apk (~71 MB)	Works on any device — pick this if the arm64 APK won't install.
app-armeabi-v7a-release.apk	Older 32-bit ARM phones only.
app-x86_64-release.apk	Emulators and rare Intel-based Android devices.

All APKs are signed; verify with SHA256SUMS.txt, e.g. certutil -hashfile app-arm64-v8a-release.apk SHA256.

What's new in 0.1.8

• Groq Whisper as an optional transcription provider (Android + desktop) — bring your own Groq key (gsk_…), pick whisper-large-v3-turbo (default) or whisper-large-v3. Uploads are chunked to stay under provider limits, with per-chunk retry and timestamp validation. Gemini summarization is unchanged and stays the default.
• iPhone-style motion on Android — pages push/pop with a spring slide (no more fades), tabs switch instantly, predictive back-gesture support on Android 13+.
• Stuck FAILED badge fixed — a failed summary no longer fails a good transcript; a successful regenerate clears the FAILED state on Library/Home cards.
• Keys stay on your device: encrypted on the phone (Keystore), backend/.env on desktop — never sent anywhere except the provider you chose.

Full Changelog: see the compare link below.

SonicBrief Android 0.1.7 (standalone)

First standalone Android release

SonicBrief on your phone: paste a YouTube or Bilibili link, or share one from any app, and get a timestamped transcript plus a summary — transcribed and summarized on-device with your own Gemini key. No account, no desktop pairing, no Supabase.

What's inside

File	For
app-universal-release.apk	Any phone — use this if you are unsure
app-arm64-v8a-release.apk	Most modern phones (smaller download)
app-armeabi-v7a-release.apk	Older 32-bit devices
app-x86_64-release.apk	Emulators and x86 tablets

All APKs are signed. SHA256SUMS.txt is attached for verification.

Highlights

• 🎬 Links and local files — YouTube/Bilibili URLs, or any local audio/video file, with long recordings split into 20-minute ranges and merged back.
• 📤 Share target — share a video from YouTube, Bilibili or a file manager and land straight on a prefilled Home screen.
• 🪜 Five-step live progress — check link → download → upload → transcribe → summarize, with an elapsed clock in the app, on the job card, and in the notification.
• 🔔 A notification that tells you what's happening — step counter, determinate progress, expandable detail, a working Cancel action, and tap-to-open the job.
• 📝 Summaries that read properly — headings, lists, quotes, tables and inline timestamp chips instead of raw Markdown markers.
• 🎨 Quiet, modern UI — brand indigo design system, Manrope typography, light and dark themes, five summary styles, per-job instructions.
• 📚 Library and history — search, filter, rename, delete, transcript revisions with editing, and TXT/Markdown/SRT/WebVTT export.
• 🔐 Private by design — the API key is encrypted with the Android Keystore and only ever sent to Google; media is uploaded with your key and deleted from Google's Files API afterwards.
• 🩺 Self-healing downloader — detects a stale yt-dlp, refreshes it and retries the job automatically when a site changes.

Install

1. Download the universal APK (or the split for your phone).
2. Allow installing from unknown sources when prompted — the APK is signed but not distributed through Play.
3. Open Settings → API key, paste a key from Google AI Studio, and press Validate & save.
4. Paste a link or pick a file, then press Transcribe & summarize.

Requires Android 8.0 or newer.

Notes

• YouTube may occasionally ask you to prove you are not a bot. If that happens, import a cookies.txt from a signed-in browser in Settings → Browser cookies; only YouTube/Google/Bilibili rows are kept.
• Summaries and transcription use your own Gemini quota — the app ships with no key and collects nothing.
• This release is the first Android build, so please report anything odd with your phone model and Android version.

android/ is licensed GPL-3.0-only; the rest of the repository remains MIT. Third-party notices are in the repository.

Full changelog: compare with the previous tag, or read the README.

SonicBrief 0.1.7 (Windows desktop)

SonicBrief for Windows — install it, open SonicBrief from the Start Menu, and send videos to it from the Chrome extension with one click (or paste a link, or upload a file).

Everything runs on your own computer: transcription is local (Whisper via CTranslate2). Only summaries leave the machine, and only if you add a Gemini API key.

What's new in 0.1.7

Hotfix: jobs run with the Automatic cookie mode failed with ERROR: unsupported browser: "auto" — the mode was being handed to the downloader as if it were a browser name. Fixed, with regression tests so a mode can never reach that path again. If you saw that error, this release fixes it; no setting needs changing.

What's new in 0.1.6

• YouTube “confirm you’re not a bot” is handled automatically. Settings → Downloads now has an Automatic mode: it tries anonymously first, and only if YouTube refuses does it retry with Firefox cookies, then an imported cookies.txt, then the Chromium browsers on the machine — remembering whichever worked.
• cookies.txt import, for anyone whose browsers are not signed in. The file is validated (YouTube/Google cookies only, 1 MB cap), stored on this computer with a user-only ACL, never logged and never returned by the API.
• Test YouTube access button: reports which source works, with the reason for each that doesn't, instead of a raw yt-dlp error.
• The Chrome extension finally shows the SonicBrief mark in Chrome’s toolbar and extensions list instead of the leftover placeholder icon.

What's new in 0.1.5

• The app finally looks like SonicBrief. The window, taskbar, tray, Start Menu shortcut and the installer all carried the generic blue four-square placeholder that Tauri scaffolds; they now use the SonicBrief mark, generated from a single 1024 px artwork (scripts/make_icons.py).
• The installer itself is branded too, and the README shows the logo.
• The sidebar logo is no longer served from a stale cache after the artwork changes.

What's new in 0.1.4

• The browser extension now ships with the app, and Settings installs it for you. A new Settings → Browser extension tab has Chrome and Edge buttons (they open the extensions page and copy the folder path), a five-step guide with diagrams of the Developer-mode switch and the Load unpacked button, the real path with a Copy button, and troubleshooting for the common "nothing appeared" mistake.
• The settings dialog now scrolls its own content instead of scrolling the page behind it.

What's new in 0.1.3

• The download stage now shows what it is doing. A dedicated progress bar tracks the actual transfer, with the downloaded size, percentage, speed and time remaining — so a long video on a slow connection no longer sits on a silent "4%" that looks like a hang.
• Before the first byte arrives the job says "Fetching media information…", and when the transfer ends it says "Download complete · preparing audio…".

What's new in 0.1.2

• Consistent Simplified Chinese. Whisper's Chinese output used to flip between Simplified and Traditional depending on the audio, and a Traditional transcript dragged the summary with it. Chinese audio is now transcribed in Simplified characters and summaries follow that, whatever the source uses.
• Long-video results from testing: a 52-minute and a 131-minute Bilibili video both transcribed and summarised with no warnings (1,240 and 2,604 segments).
• Silent and music-only media explain themselves instead of failing with a raw FFmpeg error or finishing with an unexplained empty transcript.

Which file do I need?

Download	Use it when
SonicBrief-Setup-cpu.exe (167 MB)	Any Windows 10/11 PC. Works everywhere; transcription is slower.
SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe (167 MB)	You have an NVIDIA GPU. Same app, and it also runs on the CPU if no CUDA runtime is found.
SonicBrief-CudaPack.zip (1.2 GB)	GPU users without a CUDA 12 runtime already installed. Most PCs with a recent NVIDIA driver already have one.

Installing

1. Run the installer. It installs per user — no administrator rights — into %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief.
2. Windows SmartScreen warns that the app is unsigned: choose More info → Run anyway.
3. GPU users only: quit SonicBrief, unzip the CUDA pack so that a cuda folder appears at %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief\cuda, then start the app again. The status pill reports GPU mode once the DLLs are picked up.

Transcripts, settings, Gemini key and downloaded models live in that same folder and survive upgrades and reinstalls.

What it does

• Local transcription with Whisper — Turbo, Large v3, Distil Large v3 or Small — on GPU or CPU.
• Optional Gemini summaries (bring your own API key) in English, Simplified Chinese, Malay, Japanese, Korean or Indonesian, with several styles.
• Import from YouTube, Bilibili, Vimeo, TikTok, X/Twitter, SoundCloud, Twitch, Douyin, Instagram and Facebook.
• Lives in the tray, notifies you when a job finishes, and registers sonicbrief-desktop:// so the Chrome extension can start it and hand over the video you are watching.
• Export a transcript as text.

Known limitations

• The installers are not code-signed.
• Instagram and Facebook usually need a signed-in session. Those jobs fail with a clear message unless the app is started with SONICBRIEF_YTDLP_COOKIES_FROM_BROWSER=chrome (or edge).
• X posts without video, and live Twitch channels, cannot be downloaded.
• The GPU build is only faster once the CUDA runtime is available; otherwise fall back to the CPU installer.

Verify your download

Each installer has a .sha256 file beside it:

certutil -hashfile SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe SHA256

SonicBrief 0.1.6 (Windows desktop)

SonicBrief for Windows — install it, open SonicBrief from the Start Menu, and send videos to it from the Chrome extension with one click (or paste a link, or upload a file).

Everything runs on your own computer: transcription is local (Whisper via CTranslate2). Only summaries leave the machine, and only if you add a Gemini API key.

What's new in 0.1.6

• YouTube “confirm you’re not a bot” is handled automatically. Settings → Downloads now has an Automatic mode: it tries anonymously first, and only if YouTube refuses does it retry with Firefox cookies, then an imported cookies.txt, then the Chromium browsers on the machine — remembering whichever worked.
• cookies.txt import, for anyone whose browsers are not signed in. The file is validated (YouTube/Google cookies only, 1 MB cap), stored on this computer with a user-only ACL, never logged and never returned by the API.
• Test YouTube access button: reports which source works, with the reason for each that doesn't, instead of a raw yt-dlp error.
• The Chrome extension finally shows the SonicBrief mark in Chrome’s toolbar and extensions list instead of the leftover placeholder icon.

What's new in 0.1.5

• The app finally looks like SonicBrief. The window, taskbar, tray, Start Menu shortcut and the installer all carried the generic blue four-square placeholder that Tauri scaffolds; they now use the SonicBrief mark, generated from a single 1024 px artwork (scripts/make_icons.py).
• The installer itself is branded too, and the README shows the logo.
• The sidebar logo is no longer served from a stale cache after the artwork changes.

What's new in 0.1.4

• The browser extension now ships with the app, and Settings installs it for you. A new Settings → Browser extension tab has Chrome and Edge buttons (they open the extensions page and copy the folder path), a five-step guide with diagrams of the Developer-mode switch and the Load unpacked button, the real path with a Copy button, and troubleshooting for the common "nothing appeared" mistake.
• The settings dialog now scrolls its own content instead of scrolling the page behind it.

What's new in 0.1.3

• The download stage now shows what it is doing. A dedicated progress bar tracks the actual transfer, with the downloaded size, percentage, speed and time remaining — so a long video on a slow connection no longer sits on a silent "4%" that looks like a hang.
• Before the first byte arrives the job says "Fetching media information…", and when the transfer ends it says "Download complete · preparing audio…".

What's new in 0.1.2

• Consistent Simplified Chinese. Whisper's Chinese output used to flip between Simplified and Traditional depending on the audio, and a Traditional transcript dragged the summary with it. Chinese audio is now transcribed in Simplified characters and summaries follow that, whatever the source uses.
• Long-video results from testing: a 52-minute and a 131-minute Bilibili video both transcribed and summarised with no warnings (1,240 and 2,604 segments).
• Silent and music-only media explain themselves instead of failing with a raw FFmpeg error or finishing with an unexplained empty transcript.

Which file do I need?

Download	Use it when
SonicBrief-Setup-cpu.exe (167 MB)	Any Windows 10/11 PC. Works everywhere; transcription is slower.
SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe (167 MB)	You have an NVIDIA GPU. Same app, and it also runs on the CPU if no CUDA runtime is found.
SonicBrief-CudaPack.zip (1.2 GB)	GPU users without a CUDA 12 runtime already installed. Most PCs with a recent NVIDIA driver already have one.

Installing

1. Run the installer. It installs per user — no administrator rights — into %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief.
2. Windows SmartScreen warns that the app is unsigned: choose More info → Run anyway.
3. GPU users only: quit SonicBrief, unzip the CUDA pack so that a cuda folder appears at %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief\cuda, then start the app again. The status pill reports GPU mode once the DLLs are picked up.

Transcripts, settings, Gemini key and downloaded models live in that same folder and survive upgrades and reinstalls.

What it does

• Local transcription with Whisper — Turbo, Large v3, Distil Large v3 or Small — on GPU or CPU.
• Optional Gemini summaries (bring your own API key) in English, Simplified Chinese, Malay, Japanese, Korean or Indonesian, with several styles.
• Import from YouTube, Bilibili, Vimeo, TikTok, X/Twitter, SoundCloud, Twitch, Douyin, Instagram and Facebook.
• Lives in the tray, notifies you when a job finishes, and registers sonicbrief-desktop:// so the Chrome extension can start it and hand over the video you are watching.
• Export a transcript as text.

Known limitations

• The installers are not code-signed.
• Instagram and Facebook usually need a signed-in session. Those jobs fail with a clear message unless the app is started with SONICBRIEF_YTDLP_COOKIES_FROM_BROWSER=chrome (or edge).
• X posts without video, and live Twitch channels, cannot be downloaded.
• The GPU build is only faster once the CUDA runtime is available; otherwise fall back to the CPU installer.

Verify your download

Each installer has a .sha256 file beside it:

certutil -hashfile SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe SHA256

SonicBrief 0.1.5 (Windows desktop)

SonicBrief for Windows — install it, open SonicBrief from the Start Menu, and send videos to it from the Chrome extension with one click (or paste a link, or upload a file).

Everything runs on your own computer: transcription is local (Whisper via CTranslate2). Only summaries leave the machine, and only if you add a Gemini API key.

What's new in 0.1.5

• The app finally looks like SonicBrief. The window, taskbar, tray, Start Menu shortcut and the installer all carried the generic blue four-square placeholder that Tauri scaffolds; they now use the SonicBrief mark, generated from a single 1024 px artwork (scripts/make_icons.py).
• The installer itself is branded too, and the README shows the logo.
• The sidebar logo is no longer served from a stale cache after the artwork changes.

What's new in 0.1.4

• The browser extension now ships with the app, and Settings installs it for you. A new Settings → Browser extension tab has Chrome and Edge buttons (they open the extensions page and copy the folder path), a five-step guide with diagrams of the Developer-mode switch and the Load unpacked button, the real path with a Copy button, and troubleshooting for the common "nothing appeared" mistake.
• The settings dialog now scrolls its own content instead of scrolling the page behind it.

What's new in 0.1.3

• The download stage now shows what it is doing. A dedicated progress bar tracks the actual transfer, with the downloaded size, percentage, speed and time remaining — so a long video on a slow connection no longer sits on a silent "4%" that looks like a hang.
• Before the first byte arrives the job says "Fetching media information…", and when the transfer ends it says "Download complete · preparing audio…".

What's new in 0.1.2

• Consistent Simplified Chinese. Whisper's Chinese output used to flip between Simplified and Traditional depending on the audio, and a Traditional transcript dragged the summary with it. Chinese audio is now transcribed in Simplified characters and summaries follow that, whatever the source uses.
• Long-video results from testing: a 52-minute and a 131-minute Bilibili video both transcribed and summarised with no warnings (1,240 and 2,604 segments).
• Silent and music-only media explain themselves instead of failing with a raw FFmpeg error or finishing with an unexplained empty transcript.

Which file do I need?

Download	Use it when
SonicBrief-Setup-cpu.exe (167 MB)	Any Windows 10/11 PC. Works everywhere; transcription is slower.
SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe (167 MB)	You have an NVIDIA GPU. Same app, and it also runs on the CPU if no CUDA runtime is found.
SonicBrief-CudaPack.zip (1.2 GB)	GPU users without a CUDA 12 runtime already installed. Most PCs with a recent NVIDIA driver already have one.

Installing

1. Run the installer. It installs per user — no administrator rights — into %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief.
2. Windows SmartScreen warns that the app is unsigned: choose More info → Run anyway.
3. GPU users only: quit SonicBrief, unzip the CUDA pack so that a cuda folder appears at %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief\cuda, then start the app again. The status pill reports GPU mode once the DLLs are picked up.

Transcripts, settings, Gemini key and downloaded models live in that same folder and survive upgrades and reinstalls.

What it does

• Local transcription with Whisper — Turbo, Large v3, Distil Large v3 or Small — on GPU or CPU.
• Optional Gemini summaries (bring your own API key) in English, Simplified Chinese, Malay, Japanese, Korean or Indonesian, with several styles.
• Import from YouTube, Bilibili, Vimeo, TikTok, X/Twitter, SoundCloud, Twitch, Douyin, Instagram and Facebook.
• Lives in the tray, notifies you when a job finishes, and registers sonicbrief-desktop:// so the Chrome extension can start it and hand over the video you are watching.
• Export a transcript as text.

Known limitations

• The installers are not code-signed.
• Instagram and Facebook usually need a signed-in session. Those jobs fail with a clear message unless the app is started with SONICBRIEF_YTDLP_COOKIES_FROM_BROWSER=chrome (or edge).
• X posts without video, and live Twitch channels, cannot be downloaded.
• The GPU build is only faster once the CUDA runtime is available; otherwise fall back to the CPU installer.

Verify your download

Each installer has a .sha256 file beside it:

certutil -hashfile SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe SHA256

SonicBrief 0.1.4 (Windows desktop)

SonicBrief for Windows — install it, open SonicBrief from the Start Menu, and send videos to it from the Chrome extension with one click (or paste a link, or upload a file).

Everything runs on your own computer: transcription is local (Whisper via CTranslate2). Only summaries leave the machine, and only if you add a Gemini API key.

What's new in 0.1.4

• The browser extension now ships with the app, and Settings installs it for you. A new Settings → Browser extension tab has Chrome and Edge buttons (they open the extensions page and copy the folder path), a five-step guide with diagrams of the Developer-mode switch and the Load unpacked button, the real path with a Copy button, and troubleshooting for the common "nothing appeared" mistake.
• The settings dialog now scrolls its own content instead of scrolling the page behind it.

What's new in 0.1.3

• The download stage now shows what it is doing. A dedicated progress bar tracks the actual transfer, with the downloaded size, percentage, speed and time remaining — so a long video on a slow connection no longer sits on a silent "4%" that looks like a hang.
• Before the first byte arrives the job says "Fetching media information…", and when the transfer ends it says "Download complete · preparing audio…".

What's new in 0.1.2

• Consistent Simplified Chinese. Whisper's Chinese output used to flip between Simplified and Traditional depending on the audio, and a Traditional transcript dragged the summary with it. Chinese audio is now transcribed in Simplified characters and summaries follow that, whatever the source uses.
• Long-video results from testing: a 52-minute and a 131-minute Bilibili video both transcribed and summarised with no warnings (1,240 and 2,604 segments).
• Silent and music-only media explain themselves instead of failing with a raw FFmpeg error or finishing with an unexplained empty transcript.

Which file do I need?

Download	Use it when
SonicBrief-Setup-cpu.exe (167 MB)	Any Windows 10/11 PC. Works everywhere; transcription is slower.
SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe (167 MB)	You have an NVIDIA GPU. Same app, and it also runs on the CPU if no CUDA runtime is found.
SonicBrief-CudaPack.zip (1.2 GB)	GPU users without a CUDA 12 runtime already installed. Most PCs with a recent NVIDIA driver already have one.

Installing

1. Run the installer. It installs per user — no administrator rights — into %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief.
2. Windows SmartScreen warns that the app is unsigned: choose More info → Run anyway.
3. GPU users only: quit SonicBrief, unzip the CUDA pack so that a cuda folder appears at %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief\cuda, then start the app again. The status pill reports GPU mode once the DLLs are picked up.

Transcripts, settings, Gemini key and downloaded models live in that same folder and survive upgrades and reinstalls.

What it does

• Local transcription with Whisper — Turbo, Large v3, Distil Large v3 or Small — on GPU or CPU.
• Optional Gemini summaries (bring your own API key) in English, Simplified Chinese, Malay, Japanese, Korean or Indonesian, with several styles.
• Import from YouTube, Bilibili, Vimeo, TikTok, X/Twitter, SoundCloud, Twitch, Douyin, Instagram and Facebook.
• Lives in the tray, notifies you when a job finishes, and registers sonicbrief-desktop:// so the Chrome extension can start it and hand over the video you are watching.
• Export a transcript as text.

Known limitations

• The installers are not code-signed.
• Instagram and Facebook usually need a signed-in session. Those jobs fail with a clear message unless the app is started with SONICBRIEF_YTDLP_COOKIES_FROM_BROWSER=chrome (or edge).
• X posts without video, and live Twitch channels, cannot be downloaded.
• The GPU build is only faster once the CUDA runtime is available; otherwise fall back to the CPU installer.

Verify your download

Each installer has a .sha256 file beside it:

certutil -hashfile SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe SHA256

SonicBrief 0.1.3 (Windows desktop)

SonicBrief for Windows — install it, open SonicBrief from the Start Menu, and send videos to it from the Chrome extension with one click (or paste a link, or upload a file).

Everything runs on your own computer: transcription is local (Whisper via CTranslate2). Only summaries leave the machine, and only if you add a Gemini API key.

What's new in 0.1.3

• The download stage now shows what it is doing. A dedicated progress bar tracks the actual transfer, with the downloaded size, percentage, speed and time remaining — so a long video on a slow connection no longer sits on a silent "4%" that looks like a hang.
• Before the first byte arrives the job says "Fetching media information…", and when the transfer ends it says "Download complete · preparing audio…".

What's new in 0.1.2

• Consistent Simplified Chinese. Whisper's Chinese output used to flip between Simplified and Traditional depending on the audio, and a Traditional transcript dragged the summary with it. Chinese audio is now transcribed in Simplified characters and summaries follow that, whatever the source uses.
• Long-video results from testing: a 52-minute and a 131-minute Bilibili video both transcribed and summarised with no warnings (1,240 and 2,604 segments).
• Silent and music-only media explain themselves instead of failing with a raw FFmpeg error or finishing with an unexplained empty transcript.

Which file do I need?

Download	Use it when
SonicBrief-Setup-cpu.exe (167 MB)	Any Windows 10/11 PC. Works everywhere; transcription is slower.
SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe (167 MB)	You have an NVIDIA GPU. Same app, and it also runs on the CPU if no CUDA runtime is found.
SonicBrief-CudaPack.zip (1.2 GB)	GPU users without a CUDA 12 runtime already installed. Most PCs with a recent NVIDIA driver already have one.

Installing

1. Run the installer. It installs per user — no administrator rights — into %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief.
2. Windows SmartScreen warns that the app is unsigned: choose More info → Run anyway.
3. GPU users only: quit SonicBrief, unzip the CUDA pack so that a cuda folder appears at %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief\cuda, then start the app again. The status pill reports GPU mode once the DLLs are picked up.

Transcripts, settings, Gemini key and downloaded models live in that same folder and survive upgrades and reinstalls.

What it does

• Local transcription with Whisper — Turbo, Large v3, Distil Large v3 or Small — on GPU or CPU.
• Optional Gemini summaries (bring your own API key) in English, Simplified Chinese, Malay, Japanese, Korean or Indonesian, with several styles.
• Import from YouTube, Bilibili, Vimeo, TikTok, X/Twitter, SoundCloud, Twitch, Douyin, Instagram and Facebook.
• Lives in the tray, notifies you when a job finishes, and registers sonicbrief-desktop:// so the Chrome extension can start it and hand over the video you are watching.
• Export a transcript as text.

Known limitations

• The installers are not code-signed.
• Instagram and Facebook usually need a signed-in session. Those jobs fail with a clear message unless the app is started with SONICBRIEF_YTDLP_COOKIES_FROM_BROWSER=chrome (or edge).
• X posts without video, and live Twitch channels, cannot be downloaded.
• The GPU build is only faster once the CUDA runtime is available; otherwise fall back to the CPU installer.

Verify your download

Each installer has a .sha256 file beside it:

certutil -hashfile SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe SHA256

SonicBrief 0.1.2 (Windows desktop)

SonicBrief for Windows — install it, open SonicBrief from the Start Menu, and send videos to it from the Chrome extension with one click (or paste a link, or upload a file).

Everything runs on your own computer: transcription is local (Whisper via CTranslate2). Only summaries leave the machine, and only if you add a Gemini API key.

What's new in 0.1.2

• Real download progress. Long downloads used to sit at 4% for many minutes, which looked like a hang. The job now reports the downloaded size, total, percentage and speed as it goes.
• Consistent Simplified Chinese. Whisper's Chinese output used to flip between Simplified and Traditional depending on the audio, and a Traditional transcript dragged the summary with it. Chinese audio is now transcribed in Simplified characters and summaries follow that, whatever the source uses.
• Long-video results from testing: a 52-minute and a 131-minute Bilibili video both transcribed and summarised with no warnings (1,240 and 2,604 segments).

What's new in 0.1.1

• Silent videos explain themselves. Media with no audio track used to fail with a raw FFmpeg/yt-dlp error; it now says the video has no sound and there is nothing to transcribe.
• Music-only videos no longer finish silently. When no speech is detected the job completes with an explicit warning, skips the summary instead of failing, and the stage reads "Transcript ready · no speech detected".

Which file do I need?

Download	Use it when
SonicBrief-Setup-cpu.exe (167 MB)	Any Windows 10/11 PC. Works everywhere; transcription is slower.
SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe (167 MB)	You have an NVIDIA GPU. Same app, and it also runs on the CPU if no CUDA runtime is found.
SonicBrief-CudaPack.zip (1.2 GB)	GPU users without a CUDA 12 runtime already installed. Most PCs with a recent NVIDIA driver already have one.

Installing

1. Run the installer. It installs per user — no administrator rights — into %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief.
2. Windows SmartScreen warns that the app is unsigned: choose More info → Run anyway.
3. GPU users only: quit SonicBrief, unzip the CUDA pack so that a cuda folder appears at %LOCALAPPDATA%\SonicBrief\cuda, then start the app again. The status pill reports GPU mode once the DLLs are picked up.

Transcripts, settings, Gemini key and downloaded models live in that same folder and survive upgrades and reinstalls.

What it does

• Local transcription with Whisper — Turbo, Large v3, Distil Large v3 or Small — on GPU or CPU.
• Optional Gemini summaries (bring your own API key) in English, Simplified Chinese, Malay, Japanese, Korean or Indonesian, with several styles.
• Import from YouTube, Bilibili, Vimeo, TikTok, X/Twitter, SoundCloud, Twitch, Douyin, Instagram and Facebook.
• Lives in the tray, notifies you when a job finishes, and registers sonicbrief-desktop:// so the Chrome extension can start it and hand over the video you are watching.
• Export a transcript as text.

Known limitations

• The installers are not code-signed.
• Instagram and Facebook usually need a signed-in session. Those jobs fail with a clear message unless the app is started with SONICBRIEF_YTDLP_COOKIES_FROM_BROWSER=chrome (or edge).
• X posts without video, and live Twitch channels, cannot be downloaded.
• The GPU build is only faster once the CUDA runtime is available; otherwise fall back to the CPU installer.

Verify your download

Each installer has a .sha256 file beside it:

certutil -hashfile SonicBrief-Setup-gpu.exe SHA256