Manual Model Installation

If model downloads fail inside Vowen with an error like “Failed to download model: self signed certificate in certificate chain”, your network is almost certainly intercepting secure connections. This is common on corporate networks running SSL inspection tools such as Netskope or Zscaler. Your browser trusts your company’s certificates, so you can download the models yourself and drop them into Vowen’s models folder. Vowen picks them up on the next launch.

Step 1: open Vowen’s models folder

Quit Vowen completely first (right-click the tray or menu bar icon and choose Quit).

The Developer section of Settings — Settings > Developer holds the actions that open Vowen's own folders.

Windows
macOS

Press Win + R, enter the following, and press Enter:

%APPDATA%\vowen

Open the models folder inside it. If it does not exist, create a folder named exactly models. The full path looks like:

C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\vowen\models

In Finder, press Cmd + Shift + G and go to:

~/Library/Application Support/vowen/models

If the models folder does not exist, create it.

The application-support folder is lowercase vowen, not Vowen. Both Windows and standard macOS volumes are case-insensitive, so either spelling will find it, but the folder on disk is lowercase.

Step 2: download the model you need

Whisper models

Each link downloads a single .bin file. No extraction. The same files work on Windows and macOS.

Model	Size	Download
Tiny	78 MB	ggml-tiny.bin
Base	148 MB	ggml-base.bin
Small	488 MB	ggml-small.bin
Medium	1.53 GB	ggml-medium.bin
Large v3	3.10 GB	ggml-large-v3.bin
Large v3 Turbo	1.62 GB	ggml-large-v3-turbo.bin

English-only variants, slightly better if you only dictate in English:

Model	Size	Download
Tiny (English)	78 MB	ggml-tiny.en.bin
Base (English)	148 MB	ggml-base.en.bin
Small (English)	488 MB	ggml-small.en.bin
Medium (English)	1.53 GB	ggml-medium.en.bin

Parakeet models

Parakeet ships as a .tar.gz archive you extract yourself. The archives differ per platform, so take the right one.

Windows
macOS

Model	Size	Download	Extracts to
Parakeet V3 (25 languages)	501 MB	parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3-int8.tar.gz	`parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3-int8`
Parakeet V2 (English)	473 MB	parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2-int8.tar.gz	`parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2-int8`

Parakeet Japanese and Parakeet Mandarin are macOS only. There is no Windows build.

Model	Size	Download	Extracts to
Parakeet V3 (25 languages)	466 MB	parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3-coreml.tar.gz	`parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3-coreml`
Parakeet V2 (English)	451 MB	parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2-coreml.tar.gz	`parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2-coreml`
Parakeet Japanese	558 MB	parakeet-ja-coreml.tar.gz	`parakeet-ja`
Parakeet Mandarin	1.63 GB	parakeet-ctc-zh-cn-coreml.tar.gz	`parakeet-ctc-zh-cn`

Do not rename the extracted folders. Leave each one exactly as the archive produces it, matching the “Extracts to” column, and Vowen will find it.

Nemotron models (macOS only)

Nemotron streams natively with punctuation and capitalisation in the live preview. Apple silicon only, and there is no Windows build.

Model	Size	Download	Extracts to
Nemotron EN	553 MB	nemotron-streaming-en.tar.gz	`nemotron-streaming-en`
Nemotron Multilingual	616 MB	nemotron-streaming-multilingual.tar.gz	`nemotron-streaming-multilingual`

Parakeet streaming bundle (macOS only)

Parakeet V2 and V3 need a second, separate model to produce a live preview while you speak. Vowen normally downloads this silently in the background after any Parakeet batch model finishes, and deletes it when the last Parakeet model is removed, so you will not see it in the model list. On a restricted network that background download fails silently and you get batch transcription with no live preview.

Component	Size	Download	Extracts to
Parakeet EOU streaming	207 MB	parakeet-eou-streaming.tar.gz	`parakeet-eou-streaming`

The extracted folder must contain a 320ms subfolder with the bundle’s files inside it. If that subfolder is missing or empty, Vowen treats the bundle as not installed. The same bundle serves both Parakeet V2 and V3. Nemotron does not need it, since it streams natively. Parakeet Japanese and Mandarin do not use it either.

Speaker diarization bundle (Windows only)

Windows fetches an offline diarization bundle the first time you run a local diarization. macOS does not use this file.

Component	Size	Download	Extracts to
Vowen diarizer v1	30 MB	vowen-diarizer-v1.tar.gz	`vowen-diarizer-v1`

The extracted folder must contain its two model files directly inside it, not nested one level deeper.

Step 3: place the files

Whisper (.bin files)

Move the .bin file directly into the models folder. Do not rename it.

C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\vowen\models\ggml-small.bin

Everything else (.tar.gz archives)

Extract the archive into the models folder.

Windows
macOS

Open PowerShell and run, adjusting the filename to the one you downloaded:

cd $env:APPDATA\vowen\models
tar -xzf $env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3-int8.tar.gz

7-Zip and WinRAR work too. Extract twice if needed, since .tar.gz unpacks to .tar first.The result must be a folder with exactly the name in the “Extracts to” column, containing the model files directly inside it, not nested one level deeper.

Open Terminal and run, adjusting the filename to the one you downloaded:

cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/vowen/models
tar -xzf ~/Downloads/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3-coreml.tar.gz

The result must be a folder with exactly the name in the “Extracts to” column, containing the model files directly inside it, not nested one level deeper.

Verifying a download (optional)

A file you download by hand is not checked for you. If you want to be sure it arrived intact, compare its SHA-256 checksum against the list below before extracting.

Windows
macOS

Get-FileHash .\parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3-int8.tar.gz -Algorithm SHA256

shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3-coreml.tar.gz

SHA-256 checksums for every archive

parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3-int8.tar.gz       43d37191602727524a7d8c6da0eef11c4ba24320f5b4730f1a2497befc2efa77
parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v3-coreml.tar.gz     1b847dbe22575d8f9e12cb911ff4155649e6a9169be885a127a4d2d3221e8249
parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2-int8.tar.gz       ac9b9429984dd565b25097337a887bb7f0f8ac393573661c651f0e7d31563991
parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2-coreml.tar.gz     5e57d7fe97bea9b17c3158282500028c8cfcaac515cd968a7277953d4167348a
parakeet-ja-coreml.tar.gz              16b6796212041aa5191030f290c11bfa38f8d250606fd6a77f2f262f62dea3d0
parakeet-ctc-zh-cn-coreml.tar.gz       3b3072ab4e4f4e1e790bc93a0a9717b507c1dc4432741b96bbd8b7e59b4d16e4
parakeet-eou-streaming.tar.gz          38925294f982f4db734d46379638b7c58a5594e8225b30480a9a1215f29c7bc6
nemotron-streaming-en.tar.gz           b749e8940d5954f8a8167e3449cbb216585df9c23b29e270c5daafcbbf762174
nemotron-streaming-multilingual.tar.gz cad75d503dec30a1b2ac74b95c7d7481d129676856d710e64f2f7bbe47af1842
vowen-diarizer-v1.tar.gz               63860df744b74bc8421dcd4af0183560add9c9c9b4bbdd00d15c5a420356fa5e

Whisper .bin files have no published checksum. Check them against the sizes in the table above instead.

Step 4: restart Vowen

Start Vowen and open the Speech models page in the left sidebar. The model should now show as downloaded. Select it and try a dictation.

Speech models is a top-level sidebar page, not a section inside the Settings modal.

Troubleshooting

Model not detected after restart

Check the filename matches exactly. Browsers append “(1)” if you download the same file twice, and ggml-small (1).bin will not be detected.
A partially downloaded Whisper file is ignored rather than used. Compare your file against the sizes in the table above and re-download if it is short.

Leftover files in the models folder

Files ending in .part or .partial, and folders ending in .extracting, are the debris of failed in-app downloads. They are safe to delete.

Parakeet or Nemotron shows as not installed

Open the extracted folder and confirm the model files are directly inside it. If extraction produced a folder inside a folder, move the inner one up a level.
Check the folder name against the “Extracts to” column. The name must match exactly.

Live preview does not work with Parakeet

The streaming bundle is missing. See the Parakeet streaming bundle section above. Batch transcription works fine without it, which is why this fails quietly.

Diarization fails on Windows

Confirm vowen-diarizer-v1 exists in the models folder with its two model files directly inside it.

For network administrators

To make in-app downloads work directly, these hosts must be reachable:

huggingface.co for Whisper models
cdn-lfs.huggingface.co and cdn-lfs-us-1.huggingface.co, which Hugging Face redirects downloads to
assets.vowen.ai for Parakeet, Nemotron, the streaming bundle and the diarizer bundle

Allowlisting the domains is not enough if the network performs SSL inspection. Certificate replacement is what produces the “self signed certificate in certificate chain” error, so these hosts need to be exempted from SSL inspection, not merely permitted.

Still stuck?

Join the Discord community or email us. Send a screenshot of the error and the contents of your models folder and we will help you sort it out.

​Step 1: open Vowen’s models folder

​Step 2: download the model you need

​Whisper models

​Parakeet models

​Nemotron models (macOS only)

​Parakeet streaming bundle (macOS only)

​Speaker diarization bundle (Windows only)

​Step 3: place the files

​Whisper (.bin files)

​Everything else (.tar.gz archives)

​Verifying a download (optional)

​Step 4: restart Vowen

​Troubleshooting

​For network administrators

​Still stuck?

Step 1: open Vowen’s models folder

Step 2: download the model you need

Whisper models

Parakeet models

Nemotron models (macOS only)

Parakeet streaming bundle (macOS only)

Speaker diarization bundle (Windows only)

Step 3: place the files

Whisper (.bin files)

Everything else (.tar.gz archives)

Verifying a download (optional)

Step 4: restart Vowen

Troubleshooting

For network administrators

Still stuck?