News
Engineering notes and product news from Nib — a notepad for Mac and iOS with on-device transcription.
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Does Otter.ai work offline? Partly — here's what actually happens (2026)
Otter can record offline, but it can't transcribe offline — your audio waits on the device, then uploads to Otter's servers once you reconnect. If you need the transcript to appear while you're still offline, you need transcription that runs on the device itself.
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Verifying App Attest in a Cloudflare Worker: four things Apple's docs don't quite say
I verify StoreKit 2 receipts and App Attest assertions in a Cloudflare Worker with zero dependencies — about 400 lines of WebCrypto, X.509 chain walking included. Four findings cost me real time: a double hash, a wrong DER length byte, the gap root-pinning leaves open, and what to do about macOS.
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A Superwhisper alternative for notes and meetings, not just dictation (2026)
Superwhisper is a system-wide dictation tool that happens to record meetings. Nib is a notepad built around recording them. Both transcribe locally and respect your privacy — the difference is what happens to the words afterward.
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An Otter.ai alternative that transcribes on your Mac, not in the cloud (2026)
Otter.ai uploads your meeting audio and, per its own privacy policy, trains its AI on de-identified recordings. Nib transcribes on your device — the audio never leaves your Mac or iPhone, with no monthly cap on transcription.
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A Notta alternative where your voice never reaches a server (2026)
Notta's free plan caps recordings at 3 minutes, requires an account, and — outside the Enterprise plan — your audio may be used to train a partner's speech engine. Nib transcribes on-device: 30-minute free recordings with no monthly cap, no account, no training.
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A MacWhisper alternative that's a notepad, not a transcript file (2026)
MacWhisper and Nib agree on the important thing — transcription belongs on your Mac, not in the cloud. The difference is what you get afterward: MacWhisper produces a transcript file, Nib puts the words inside a note you can write in, search, and carry on your iPhone.
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A Granola alternative where the audio never leaves your device (2026)
Granola doesn't store your meeting audio — but it does stream it to cloud transcription providers, and it trains on your anonymized data by default. Nib transcribes on the device itself: nothing to stream, nothing to opt out of, no account to create.
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Your CloudKit sync isn't broken, it just never told anyone
Two silent failures in SwiftData + CloudKit on macOS. Push notifications never arrive unless the app registers for them itself, and imports land in the store without notifying your UI. Both look identical from the outside — remote edits appear only after a relaunch.
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SpeechAnalyzer, crash-safe recording, and an input node that lies
Four things that surprised me building on-device transcription on Apple platforms: fastResults is a correctness option, only PCM CAF survives a crash, AVAudioEngine silently ignores your device selection, and a 4k context window decides your architecture.