{"slug": "show-hn-connecting-captions-local-private-ai-interpreter", "title": "Show HN: Connecting Captions Local Private AI Interpreter", "summary": "Developer chrisswimlee released Connecting Captions, an open-source macOS live captioning and translation overlay that runs entirely on-device using Whisper, with no API calls and no audio leaving the machine. The tool offers a sentence mode that buffers to sentence boundaries for more accurate translation and a streaming mode that translates word by word for minimal delay, reporting roughly 200 ms latency across 25 languages. The code is published on GitHub, and the developer is seeking feedback on the self-correction approach and on which use cases matter most.", "body_md": "Hi HN,\n\nI built Connecting Captions, a live captioning and translation overlay for macOS that runs entirely on-device. Nothing goes over the network: no API calls, no audio leaving your machine, and it keeps working offline.\n\nI wanted live translation I could use in meetings and conversations without worrying about connectivity, latency spikes, or sending sensitive audio to a third party.\n\nThe technically interesting part is a low-latency, self-correcting pipeline for speech-to-text and translation. It has two modes:\n\nSentence mode: buffers until a sentence boundary, then translates with full context. It’s more accurate, especially between languages with different word order. Streaming mode: translates word by word as speech arrives, trading grammatical accuracy for minimal delay.\n\nCurrent state:\n\nPlatform: macOS Models: Whisper Latency: ~200 ms Languages: 25\n\nCode: [https://github.com/chrisswimlee/connectingCaptions](https://github.com/chrisswimlee/connectingCaptions)\n\nI’d love feedback, especially on the self-correction approach and which use cases matter most to people.\n\nComments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138839)\n\nPoints: 1\n\n# Comments: 0", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-connecting-captions-local-private-ai-interpreter", "canonical_source": "https://local-host.ai/connectingCaptions/", "published_at": "2026-10-18 07:41:31+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-18 08:14:30.460339+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "natural-language-processing", "large-language-models", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Connecting Captions", "chrisswimlee", "Whisper", "macOS", "GitHub", "Hacker News"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-connecting-captions-local-private-ai-interpreter", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-connecting-captions-local-private-ai-interpreter.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-connecting-captions-local-private-ai-interpreter.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-connecting-captions-local-private-ai-interpreter.jsonld"}}