Every screen,every prompt, every platform.

What the download needs from you.

Less than you would expect. The installer carries its own Python and every library it needs, so there is nothing to install first.

Audio and transcripts never leave your computer. Without Ollama you still get a complete, timestamped transcript of every meeting.

Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.

Install

1. Download vlocalhost-1.3.1-windows-x64-setup.exe from the downloads page.
2. Double-click it.
3. Windows will show a blue “Windows protected your PC” screen. This is expected — see the note below. Click More info, then Run anyway.
4. Choose where to install it. The default sits inside your user folder and needs no administrator rights. Any drive works — D:\Apps\Vlocalhost is fine.
5. Leave Create a desktop shortcut ticked if you want one.
6. Click Install, then Finish. The app opens and asks two setup questions.

Why the warning appears. Windows shows that screen for any program without a paid code-signing certificate. It is not a virus warning and says nothing about the file's contents. Vlocalhost is open source — you can read every line of what the installer puts on your machine. A signed build is planned.

The installer needs no administrator password, so it works on a locked-down work laptop.

Or: the portable ZIP

Every release also ships vlocalhost-1.3.1-windows-x64.zip: the same build with no installer. Take this one if a virus scanner refuses the .exe, if Chrome reports “Virus scan failed”, or if you want nothing written outside a single folder.

1. Unpack the .zip anywhere you can write. Keep the path short — a folder buried deeper than about 140 characters cannot unpack cleanly, because the files inside are already long.
2. Open the folder and run Vlocalhost.cmd.
3. That is the whole install. Nothing is written outside this folder.

No desktop icon? Correct — the ZIP deliberately touches nothing outside its own folder. A helper in the folder does it for you:

Create desktop shortcut.cmd

It adds Vlocalhost.AI to your desktop and Start menu, pointing at the copy you unpacked, and finds the real desktop folder even when OneDrive has moved it.

Uninstall

Settings → Apps → Installed apps → Vlocalhost.AI → Uninstall, or use the shortcut in the Start menu folder. Your meeting notes and settings are deliberately kept. To remove those too, delete this folder afterwards:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Vlocalhost

The portable ZIP has no uninstaller — that is what portable means. Delete the folder you unpacked, and run Remove desktop shortcut.cmd first if you made shortcuts.

macOS 12 Monterey or newer.

Pick the right build

Apple menu → About This Mac, and look at the chip:

Install

1. Download the .dmg and double-click it.
2. Drag Vlocalhost onto the Applications folder in the window that opens.
3. Eject the disk image, then open Vlocalhost from Applications or Launchpad.
4. macOS will refuse the first launch — see below.
5. The first time you record, macOS asks for microphone permission. Allow it, or the app records silence.

“Apple could not verify Vlocalhost”

macOS blocks apps that have not been notarised by Apple, which requires a paid developer account. Until that is in place, open it manually once:

1. Try to open the app. Dismiss the warning.
2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security.
3. Scroll down. There is a line naming Vlocalhost with an Open Anyway button. Click it.
4. Confirm. macOS remembers, so you only do this once.

On older macOS the shortcut was to right-click the app and choose Open. That no longer works on macOS 15 and later — use System Settings.

Recording the other people on a call

macOS has no built-in way to capture what your speakers are playing, so out of the box Vlocalhost records only your microphone. To capture the far end, install BlackHole (free, open source), route your output through it, then choose it in Settings → What to listen to. Windows and Linux need no such step.

Uninstall

Drag Vlocalhost from Applications to the Bin. To remove notes and settings as well:

~/Library/Application Support/Vlocalhost

64-bit, glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04+, Debian 12+, Fedora 36+).

Coming soon. The Linux archive is packaged but not yet published to the releases page. Today, Linux runs from source — see the README in the repository.

Unpack the archive into your home folder and run the install script inside it. It installs for your user only, needs no root, and adds Vlocalhost.AI to the applications menu. The exact commands ship with the build, once that build has been tested on each distribution named above.

The microphone needs libportaudio2. The script names the package for your distribution rather than guessing.

Notes and settings are kept in ~/.local/share/vlocalhost.

Two questions, both changeable later.

The first time it opens, Vlocalhost asks two questions. Both can be changed in Settings → Models, and the whole wizard can be re-run from Settings → Run setup again.

1. How accurate should transcription be?

Light is the default, and the reason is not accuracy. A bigger model keeps every core busy for as long as the recording runs, and on some machines that is enough to make your voice break up for the other people on a call in a browser — Google Meet, Teams on the web, Zoom in a tab. You cannot hear it; they can. Light leaves enough of the machine free that it does not happen.

Pick Balanced or Accurate when nothing else needs the machine — recording a room, a call in a desktop app rather than a browser, or transcribing a file afterwards. If people tell you that you sound distorted while you are recording, come back here and choose Light.

You can also point it at your own model folder. The model downloads once, the first time you record — expect a wait of a minute or two on that recording only.

2. Do you want written summaries?

Summaries are written by a second model running locally through Ollama. This is entirely optional:

• Skip it and you still get a complete timestamped transcript of every meeting, saved as a .txt file. Nothing else is lost.
• Set it up and you additionally get a Markdown file with a summary, key points, decisions and action items.

If Ollama is not installed, get it from ollama.com, then return to Settings and press Run setup again. The wizard detects it and offers to download the summary model (about 2 GB).

That is the whole of it for most people. If it does not go that smoothly — or you want to know which model to choose and why — the Summaries Setup guide covers Ollama on all three platforms, choosing a model, and every failure this can produce. It ships beside this one, as vlocalhost-summaries-setup.pdf.

Recording without leaving the meeting

Ctrl+Shift+Space starts recording and transcribing, and the same key stops and saves. It works while your call — not Vlocalhost — has focus, which is the whole point: the first half-minute of a meeting is where people say what it is about, and that is the time otherwise spent finding the window.

Change it in Settings → Record without leaving the meeting. That panel also shows when the key was last pressed, which tells you whether a press reached the app at all — worth knowing on a laptop whose function row is media-locked, where a chord using F1–F12 may never produce a keypress unless you also hold Fn.

Windows only for now. On macOS and Linux recording starts from the window and the tray as usual; Settings says so rather than leaving you pressing a key that does nothing.

Where your files live

These sit deliberately outside the program folder, so updating, reinstalling or uninstalling never touches your meetings. Not sure? The app will tell you:

Vlocalhost --paths

The failures people actually hit, and what each one means.

Installing

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Vlocalhost.app

Starting

"%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Vlocalhost\runtime\python.exe" "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Vlocalhost\app\vlocalhost.py"

Recording

Vlocalhost --devices

Summaries

The two that account for nearly all of them are below. The Summaries Setup guide has the rest, along with how to install Ollama on each platform.

http://localhost:11434/api/tags

What to send, and where.

Write a diagnostic report and attach it to your message. It lists your settings, versions and recent log lines — no meeting audio, transcripts or notes. Read it before sending; it is a plain text file.

Vlocalhost --diagnose