backchannel
Windows x64
For Windows 10 or later on 64-bit Intel or AMD processors.
- Download
Backchannel-windows-x64-v0.6.6.zip. - Unzip it and run
Backchannel.exe. - If SmartScreen appears, choose More info, then Run anyway.
Release v0.6.6
Your meetings, in your language. Still on your machine.
Tell Backchannel which language a meeting is in, and every transcriber that accepts a language uses it. Two new on-device models cover German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and dozens more, so non-English calls stay private with the PII Shield or Privacy First switched on.
Download Backchannel v0.6.6
These unsigned open-source builds are delivered through the Backchannel download portal. Downloads are open to everyone; no account or GitHub sign-in is required.
The Windows and Linux bundles include ffmpeg. On macOS, voice calibration and compressed audio imports still need ffmpeg on PATH.
macOS Apple Silicon
For Apple Silicon Macs. Intel macOS builds are not included in this release.
- Download
Backchannel-macos-arm64-v0.6.6.zip. - Unzip it and move
Backchannel.appwherever you keep apps. - Right-click
Backchannel.appand choose Open the first time.
Linux x64
A portable bundle for 64-bit Intel or AMD Linux systems.
- Download
Backchannel-linux-x64-v0.6.6.tar.gz. - Extract it with
tar -xzf Backchannel-linux-x64-v0.6.6.tar.gz. - Run
Backchannel/Backchannel.
What changed
v0.6.6 is about meetings that aren't in English: a language setting every transcriber respects, and on-device models that cover far more than English.
A meeting-language setting
Admin, Transcription & Audio has a Meeting language picker. It starts on Detect automatically. Pick a language and on-device Whisper, Gemini and OpenAI transcription, and Gemini Live and OpenAI Realtime captions, all use it. They transcribe what is said and never translate it.
Parakeet v3 for 25 European languages
A new on-device model covers English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian and 15 more, and detects which one is spoken. It writes the saved transcript and powers a new experimental live-caption option, Parakeet v3 Live, so a German or French call can have private captions. The first download is about 0.7 GB.
Whisper Large v3 Turbo for everything else
For Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi and the other languages Parakeet does not cover, this on-device model is far more accurate than Whisper Base. It is several times slower on a CPU, so it writes the saved transcript and leaves live captions to faster models. The first download is about 1.1 GB.
Recommendations follow your language
The Local Model Fit Test only recommends a model that covers the meeting language, and prefers one built for that language over a general one. If the model you selected can't transcribe the language you chose, the Transcription & Audio tab says so.
Languages without spaces are kept
Chinese, Japanese and Thai are written without spaces, so a whole sentence used to look like one word and get discarded as noise. Those transcripts are now measured in characters. Whisper's non-English silence phrases, such as subtitle credits, are filtered like the English ones.
The Docker image builds again
A newly released speech toolkit broke the optional Sortformer install, so a clean Docker build of the backend failed. The toolkit is now held to the version Backchannel was built against.
First-run notes
| Need | What to do |
|---|---|
| Release access | Nothing - downloads are open to everyone; no account or sign-in is required. |
| Provider key | Follow the guided setup on first launch, or add a key later in Admin -> Connections. Calls will not start until the transcription model has a usable credential; local ONNX transcription needs none. |
| Voice calibration | Works out of the box on Windows and Linux. On macOS, install ffmpeg and make sure it is on PATH before enrolling your voice. |
| Upgrading | An install on v0.5.3 or later updates itself in place, verifies the new build first, and waits for recording and post-processing to finish before restarting. An install on v0.5.2 or earlier will not see this release from inside the app: download the bundle above, quit the old version from the tray, and run the new one. Session data is stored per-user and shared by every version. |
| Desktop launch | Backchannel opens a dedicated local app window in your default browser when it supports app windows, otherwise it uses a standard browser tab. It remains available from the system tray or menu bar. |
| Docker | Check out the v0.6.6 source tag and rebuild Compose to run the same release through containers. If you reach the stack by a DNS hostname rather than an IP address or localhost, set BACKCHANNEL_ALLOWED_HOSTS to that name in .env first. |
Start with the desktop app or self-host the stack
Both paths run Backchannel on your machine. Choose the desktop bundle for the fastest start, or Compose for maximum control.