WhispAssist v0.7.1

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

A quality-of-life release focused on importing meetings, taking notes, and living in the background. Adding a meeting from a file or link now runs without freezing the app and shows you exactly where it's up to; notes gained AI cleanup and quick formatting; and WhispAssist can now mute your mic mid-meeting and tuck itself into the system tray. No feature here changes the privacy posture: 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.

✨ New

Add a meeting — now in the background, with a progress tracker

Importing a recording (a local audio/video file or a YouTube/streaming/direct URL) no longer blocks the app while it works. Click Import and the meeting appears in your list immediately with a four-step progress tracker — Transcode → Transcribe → Identify speakers → Finalize — where the current step pulses and finished steps show how long they took. A 25-minute video that used to lock the window for ~13 minutes now transcribes quietly in the background.

Pick the transcription model right in the dialog, and see "Transcribed with …" on the finished meeting so you always know how it was produced.
One-click links to download ffmpeg and yt-dlp (still external, not bundled).
A failed import stays in your list marked error instead of vanishing.

Better notes

AI-enhance (✨): turn rough notes into clean, structured notes using your local LLM, with a one-step Undo. Off unless you have a local model configured.
Slash commands & a formatting toolbar: type /todo, /h1, /quote, … or use the toolbar for headings, lists, checkboxes, quotes, and dividers.
Fix: notes no longer show stale text after re-transcribing a meeting — the pane updates in place, no restart needed.

Mute your microphone — press M

Mute/unmute the mic mid-meeting with the M key or the new mic button by the level meter. The mic channel goes silent (recording, live transcript, and meter) while system/loopback audio keeps capturing.

Close to system tray

Closing the window now keeps WhispAssist running in the background instead of quitting. Reopen it from the tray icon; the tray's Quit exits fully. On by default — toggle it in Settings ▸ Recording ▸ Close to system tray. (This release also fixes a bug that showed two WhispAssist icons in the tray — there's now just one.)

Privacy & hardware odds and ends

Vault lock card in Settings ▸ Privacy: lock/unlock the encrypted store and change its password at a glance.
Test your audio devices: a live level meter for your mic and system audio, plus a test tone.
Quick hardware stress test: benchmark the available backends against your installed models and apply the fastest real-time combination.
Tidier recording header.

📦 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 — the Import dialog now links to both.

Download WhispAssist_0.7.1_x64_en-US.msi (or the NSIS WhispAssist_0.7.1_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, does not add itself to startup unless you opt in, and keeps all data under %LOCALAPPDATA%\WhispAssist.

Deploying to many machines? See docs/enterprise-deployment.md.

🔐 Checksums (SHA-256)

bd96a059db3658a9bee81161edc709cfc4741ed99d6c66a12194403b339f9369  WhispAssist_0.7.1_x64_en-US.msi
711fa7df618c8fc3f03c18d543abad2288d56f750b532288204e0ec0f9426595  WhispAssist_0.7.1_x64-setup.exe

Verify after download:

Get-FileHash .\WhispAssist_0.7.1_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 deployment file never carries secrets. The reachable-host allowlist is derived from your settings and enforced in the core.

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