3.7 KiB
WhispAssist v0.7.4
Privacy-first, Windows-native meeting assistant — everything on-device, nothing leaves unless you say so.
A small, focused performance release for CPU transcription. If WhispAssist runs the Whisper engine on your CPU — either because your machine has no usable GPU/NPU, or because you selected the CPU backend — this update takes it from far-slower-than-real-time to comfortably real-time. Machines on the NPU or GPU backends are unaffected in behavior and simply pick up a better-optimized build. Nothing here changes the privacy posture; there are no new downloads.
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.
⚡ CPU transcription fixed (up to ~90× faster on hybrid Intel CPUs)
Whisper-on-CPU previously spawned one worker thread per logical CPU. On modern hybrid Intel processors (P-cores + E-cores + low-power E-cores) the workers synchronize in lock-step, so the two slow low-power cores stalled every step while the remaining threads burned CPU waiting — transcription ran ~20× slower than real time while looking like it was using the whole machine.
WhispAssist now caps Whisper's CPU decode at 4 threads (the whisper.cpp upstream default). Measured on a Core Ultra 5 135U over a 4-minute test corpus, same accuracy:
| before | after | |
|---|---|---|
| Speed vs real time | 20× slower | 4.6× faster (RTF 0.218) |
| CPU cost per second of audio | 232.6 cpu-sec | 0.83 cpu-sec |
Live (streaming) transcription shares this code path and benefits equally. If you want to
experiment, the WA_WHISPER_THREADS environment variable overrides the cap.
🔧 Native code now built fully optimized
A build-toolchain issue caused the bundled native libraries (including whisper.cpp's CPU kernels) to be compiled without compiler optimization. That's fixed; this release ships optimized native code across the board. (For CPU transcription the thread fix above is the dominant win; this one is belt-and-suspenders for everything else.)
📦 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 links to both.
- Download
WhispAssist_0.7.4_x64_en-US.msi(or the NSISWhispAssist_0.7.4_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)
5c4e6d6b23a4b404c6fa200b6491e74f143c3a886042dc3bef3c2861168ef17c WhispAssist_0.7.4_x64_en-US.msi
eb2ececff06373e9cbb43ee6455c433c1b88785e9060b68ef7bed193191d9761 WhispAssist_0.7.4_x64-setup.exe
Verify after download:
Get-FileHash .\WhispAssist_0.7.4_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.