Guides

The Mac app

A native SwiftUI app for turning videos into knowledge — notes for your second brain, skills for your AI agent. Everything transcribes locally; you bring the AI.

Install & first run

Download the DMG, open it, and drag TLDW into Applications. It is notarized by Apple. Launch it, complete setup, and choose New conversion.

Connect an AI

Transcription is always local, but summarizing needs a model. Open Settings → AI & Models and pick one:

Ollama — fully local, no key. Install a model from Settings, and nothing leaves your Mac.
OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini / OpenRouter — paste your own API key and use Test connection to verify it.

💡

Your key is stored in the macOS Keychain and only ever used to call that provider directly. TLDW has no server and no account.

Transcription quality

Choose a Whisper model under Options (or set a default in Settings → AI & Models):tiny → base → small (default) → medium → large-v3-turbo. Bigger is more accurate but slower. Models download once into Application Support and are reused (and shared with the CLI).

Notes, a skill — or both

Under Create, choose Notes, Skill, or both:

Notes — a clean Markdown note (TL;DR, key points, etc.) for Obsidian, Notion, or anywhere.
Skill — a reusable agent artifact. Pick a format: Claude Skill, Codex Skill, AGENTS.md, Cursor rule, or a system prompt.

Selecting both produces a note and a skill from a single transcription — the result screen has a Notes / Skill switcher to flip between them.

⚠️

Creating both in one run is a Pro feature. A single output (just notes, or just one skill) is free.

Summary styles

Pick a style per run — Detailed notes, Executive summary, or Key bullet points. Edit built-in templates for free in Settings → Templates. With Pro, add your own custom templates.

The auto-tagged library

Every note and skill you make is saved to your output folder and browsable in Library (notes) and Skills. As each is created, AI tags it from your vocabulary — notes from a general set (Tutorial, Productivity, Finance…), skills from a coding set (Frontend, Backend, DevOps, Testing…). Filter by tag, edit tags inline, or batch-tag your whole back catalog with Tag untagged. Manage the two palettes in Settings → Tags. Note tags also flow into Obsidian/Notion via frontmatter.

Batch processing

Choose Batch in New conversion to queue links and files. Follow progress in Activity, pause and resume the batch, or retry failed items while keeping completed outputs. (Pro)

Send it where it lives

From any result (or any Library item), one click sends it onward:

Notes → Open in Obsidian, export for Notion, save .md, or copy.
Skills → Install to Claude (~/.claude/skills) or Codex (~/.agents/skills), add to a project, or copy.

Where files live

Your output folder      your notes (.md) + skill folders (<slug>/SKILL.md …)
  .tldw/library.json    tag index (per output folder)
~/Library/Application Support/TLDW/
  models/               downloaded Whisper models (shared with the CLI)
  settings.json         non-secret preferences

Updates

TLDW checks for updates automatically and prompts before installing. You can also choose TLDW → Check for Updates… to check manually, then install and relaunch.

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