Sondera

Beta · v0.9.1

Download the Sondera beta.

Free while we test. Signed and notarized by Apple — download, drag to Applications, open. No account, no license key, no cloud.

Sondera 0.9.1 beta

DMG · 12 MB · macOS 14 or later · Apple Silicon (M1+)

Download Sondera-0.9.1.dmg
  • Notarized by Apple
  • Runs fully offline
  • Free during beta

SHA-256: 690cd52ffacd331d03056a2f8d84ff13afcdb5f00ddfe56f4f7451ec39f3792e

What's new in 0.9.1

  • Privacy dashboard — a sidebar view that shows exactly where every file in your project lives on disk, so you can verify the local-first promise instead of taking our word for it.
  • Methodology report — one click exports an audit-trail appendix (how many codes were AI-suggested, accepted, rejected, or applied by hand) ready for a paper or IRB submission.
  • Keyboard coding — press 1–9 to apply codes to the selected segment, with a per-segment coding density bar.
  • Safe re-transcription — re-running transcription now only replaces the old transcript after the new one fully succeeds; a failure or cancel leaves your coding untouched.
  • Quote context — expand the previous and next segment inline in the quote browser before you trust an excerpt.
  • Guided first run — new projects offer a coded sample interview so you can explore the workflow before importing your own data.

Getting started

  1. Open the DMG and drag Sondera into Applications, then launch it.
  2. Create a project, drop in an interview recording (audio or video), and let the on-device model transcribe and separate speakers. Everything stays on your Mac.
  3. Code the transcript by hand, or turn on AI suggestions — see the note on Ollama below.

AI features need Ollama (optional, 5 minutes)

Transcription and manual coding work out of the box. The AI features — code suggestions and theme discovery — run on a small local model via Ollama, so your data still never leaves your Mac. Sondera detects whether Ollama is ready and walks you through setup in-app; the short version:

  1. Install Ollama from ollama.com/download (or brew install ollama).
  2. In Terminal, run ollama pull qwen2.5:1.5b (about 1 GB).
  3. Back in Sondera, click Re-check on the setup banner.

Skip this entirely if you only want transcription and manual coding.

Known limitations in this beta

  • English-language interviews work best; other languages transcribe but AI coding quality varies.
  • Nested code trees, analysis matrices, and REFI-QDA (NVivo) import are on the roadmap, not in this build.
  • Very long recordings (2h+) can take a while to transcribe on M1-generation machines.
  • Projects are saved as .qproj bundles — back them up like any other research file; there is no cloud sync by design.

Feedback

Tell us what broke — or what clicked.

Use Help → Send Feedback inside the app (it prefills your version info), or email hello@sonderalab.com. Beta testers' feedback directly shapes the 1.0.

Join the waitlist to lock in early-bird pricing for the 1.0 launch.