First run

On first launch EddyLoop downloads the speech model to your disk. Once that finishes, transcription is entirely local: your audio and your words never leave the machine.

The tray icon appears dim, which means idle: the microphone is off and no blue is shown anywhere. Right click the tray icon and choose Start session to go live. The swirl gains a blue outline, which is the one rule worth learning:

Blue means the microphone is live, and how full the swirl is shows what is being heard.

Say a sentence, then choose Open transcripts folder from the same menu. Your words are in a plain text file with a timestamp in front of them. That file is the product.