Installation
What's required, what the installer does, and how to update or remove BananaScribe afterward.
01System requirements
| OS | Windows 10/11, 64-bit. |
|---|---|
| GPU | Optional. An NVIDIA GPU with current drivers speeds up transcription and diarization significantly; the app runs on CPU alone if none is present or usable. |
| Disk space | Room for the installed app, any speech/diarization models it downloads on first use, and whatever media/transcripts a production keeps locally. |
| Network (one-time) | Required the first time a given speech or diarization model is used, to download that model's files. Not required for transcription itself afterward. See Security — the one network dependency. |
| Permissions | Installing requires administrator rights (standard for writing to Program Files); running the app afterward does not. |
02Installing
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Run the installer
Launch
BananaScribeInstaller.exe. It's a self-contained installer — nothing needs to be pre-installed on the target machine for the installer itself to run. -
Prerequisite check
The installer checks for anything it needs that isn't already present and installs it as part of the same flow — there's no separate manual setup pass before or after.
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Files are placed under Program Files
The app is installed to a standard Program Files location. Because that location requires elevation to write to, but the app itself must run fine for a normal, non-elevated user afterward, the installer explicitly grants the account that will run it the permissions it needs on its own data folders (so the very first double-click of the desktop shortcut doesn't fail with a permissions error).
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Desktop shortcut
A shortcut is created on the Desktop that launches the app normally (not elevated), pointing at the installed runtime.
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First launch
The app opens its window. On first run with no accounts configured yet, a default first-run login is seeded — see Security — known tradeoffs for why, and change it immediately from the user-administration screen if running in shared mode.
03Updating
Run the installer again. It checks the currently installed build against the latest published one and walks through the same install flow to bring the machine up to date; package integrity is verified by checksum after download, over HTTPS. See Security — updates & integrity for exactly what that verification covers. BananaScribe never updates itself silently in the background — updating is always something a user or operator initiates.
04Uninstalling
Remove BananaScribe the same way as any other Windows application (Settings > Apps, or Control Panel > Programs). This removes the installed program files; a production's own job data and accounts live in their own data folders rather than inside the program folder, so they aren't silently deleted by an uninstall unless an operator removes those folders too — worth keeping in mind if the intent of an uninstall is also to wipe stored transcripts.
05Running from source (developers only)
Outside of the packaged installer, the app can also run directly from
source for development: python run.py creates an isolated
virtual environment next to itself, installs dependencies into it, and
launches the app — the machine's system Python, if any, is never
touched. A headless mode (TRANSCRIBE_NO_UI=1) runs just
the backend with no window, useful for scripting or remote use. This
path is not the one described in the rest of this guide, which assumes
the packaged installer.