WhispAssist v0.5.2

Privacy-first, Windows-native meeting assistant — everything on-device, nothing leaves unless you say so.

A small but important bug-fix release. v0.5.2 fixes a startup crash that could stop WhispAssist from opening after an upgrade, and makes any future database problem show a clear message instead of failing silently. No feature or privacy changes — everything optional stays off-by-default and local-first.

One universal installer (MSI and NSIS) covers every machine: Vulkan for all GPUs (NVIDIA/AMD/Intel), the Intel NPU (OpenVINO), a DirectML fallback, and CPU.

🐛 Fixes

Fixed: app failing to launch after an upgrade

On some machines, upgrading could leave the app unable to open at all — no window, no message, just nothing. The cause was a database-migration mismatch during startup: WhispAssist would hit the error while opening its local database (wa.db) and, because the failure happened before the window existed, the process exited silently and Windows reported only a generic crash.

Startup database errors now explain themselves

Instead of that silent exit, a failure to open wa.db now shows a native error dialog naming the problem and pointing at the database location, then exits cleanly. Your recordings and notes are never touched — the message tells you exactly what happened and how to recover, rather than leaving you with an app that won't start.

📦 Install

Requirements: Windows 10 or 11 (x64). WhispAssist needs WebView2 (preinstalled on Windows 11; the installer fetches it on Windows 10). Importing from a file/URL additionally needs ffmpeg (and yt-dlp for URLs) on your PATH — install those separately.

Download WhispAssist_0.5.2_x64_en-US.msi (or the NSIS WhispAssist_0.5.2_x64-setup.exe).
Run it and accept the UAC prompt. If SmartScreen appears, choose More info → Run anyway.
Launch WhispAssist from the Start menu.

On first run WA picks the best transcription backend (NPU → NVIDIA → AMD → Intel → CPU). It runs without admin rights, never adds itself to startup, and keeps all data under %LOCALAPPDATA%\WhispAssist.

🔐 Checksums (SHA-256)

b173b6b15590a65e96d3b24d0ad97666b8d1da905169d807ecc1c51df0584d3e  WhispAssist_0.5.2_x64_en-US.msi
441b2e7ec7c68be39f9d2381af59ab9eadf916d6d23d0c5541d78bdd88c588b2  WhispAssist_0.5.2_x64-setup.exe

Verify after download:

Get-FileHash .\WhispAssist_0.5.2_x64_en-US.msi -Algorithm SHA256

Privacy, unchanged

Everything optional is off by default. With nothing configured, WhispAssist makes no content egress at all. Recording is opt-in; sync/AI credentials live only in the OS credential store; the MCP server is loopback-only and adds no egress. The reachable-host allowlist is derived from your settings and enforced in the core.

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