#3535th of 49 in Desktop AI appsFor image, video and design, video and animation, voice, speech and music
smartsub
Desktop app for subtitle transcription, translation, dubbing and burn-in
- Stars
- 6k
- License
- MIT
- Last commit
- Nov 2026
- Last release
- Nov 2026
- Language
- TypeScript
3,667 on 21 Apr 20266,012 on 10 Nov 2026
From GitHub's daily star counts.
Checked on GitHub.
Overview
SmartSub is an Electron desktop app that runs a subtitle pipeline: download online video, transcribe locally (whisper.cpp, faster-whisper, FunASR, Qwen3-ASR, FireRedASR, Parakeet), translate, proofread, dub with TTS and voice cloning, then burn or mux subtitles with ffmpeg. It has an in-app AI assistant and exposes 111 MCP tools and a smartsub CLI so external agents or scripts can drive the same pipeline.
Who it is for: Video creators and translators who want local subtitle and dubbing workflows
Strengths
- Full local path: transcription, TTS, voice cloning and ffmpeg burn-in need no API key
- Seven local transcription engines switchable per task, plus 9 optional cloud ASR providers
- 111 MCP tools and a smartsub CLI with headless daemon for Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, CI
- GPU acceleration via CUDA, Vulkan or Core ML/Metal, with CPU fallback on load failure
Weaknesses
- Intel Mac build is CPU only, no GPU acceleration
- Free translation uses unofficial Youdao/Bing/Google endpoints; Edge TTS availability not guaranteed
- README is primarily Chinese; English and Japanese READMEs are separate files
- Desktop only; no Docker image or web server deployment
What it needs
- GPU optional
- Needs yt-dlp, lux, Ollama (optional)
- Models: whisper.cpp ggml, faster-whisper, FunASR, Qwen3-ASR, FireRedASR
Quick answers
Is smartsub open source?
Yes. Its code is on GitHub under the MIT license.
Does smartsub need a GPU?
No. It runs on a CPU and can use a GPU when you have one.
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