Liminon

Beta · v1.17.0

Download the Liminon beta.

Free while we test. Developer ID signed for macOS — download, drag to Applications, open. No account, no license key, no cloud. Notarization is not yet complete.

Liminon 1.17.0 beta

DMG · 18 MB · macOS 14 or later · Apple Silicon (M1+)

Download Liminon-1.17.0.dmg
  • Developer ID signed · notarization pending
  • Runs fully offline
  • Free during beta

SHA-256: 96615a1380927615142fe9fafb737a63c10414e0bb78f77a6455675b6e0aacdc

What's new in 1.17.0 beta

  • Unified Reports & Exports center — a single sidebar entry replaces the scattered export buttons; six sections cover transcripts, codebook, matrices, quotations, the methodology report, and one-click full research package.
  • Methodology report as Word and PDF — generate a paper-ready methods appendix with a cover page, citation block, numbered pages, and your full audit trail (AI accept/reject ratios, codebook evolution), not just plain Markdown.
  • Real Excel workbooks (.xlsx) — matrices ship as a single Excel file with frozen headers, bold totals, code × recording, code × speaker, codebook, and summary sheets, no third-party dependency.
  • One-click full research package — zip up every transcript, the codebook, matrices, the quotation table, the methodology report PDF, and the audit CSV into one self-describing archive ready for IRB submission or co-author handoff.
  • Ask AI on a selected phrase — when coding a phrase inside a segment, Ask AI now reasons over just that excerpt and writes a range-precise assignment, instead of always evaluating the whole segment.
  • Speaker count up front — first-time transcription asks "how many people speak?" so diarization has the hint it needs on real recordings; "Not sure" still auto-detects.
  • Video files import natively — drop in an .mp4/.mov and the audio track is transcribed directly, no conversion step.
  • Default AI model moved to qwen2.5:3b — materially better code suggestions than the previous 1.5b default; 1.5b still works if it's what you have pulled.
  • Plus everything from 1.0 beta: text-selection coding, code trees with merge, ⌘F find-in-transcript, playback follow, semantic search, parallel-chunk 3× transcription, a playable sample project, and undo for structural edits.

Getting started

  1. Open the DMG and drag Liminon 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. Liminon 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 qwen2.5:3b (about 2 GB; Liminon will fall back to 1.5b if that's what you have).
  3. Back in Liminon, 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, and speaker separation accuracy on multi-speaker non-English recordings is still being measured.
  • AI code suggestions are deliberately conservative — treat them as a starting point for your own judgment; the methodology report tracks every accept/reject for your audit trail.
  • REFI-QDA (NVivo/ATLAS.ti) project import is on the roadmap, not in this build.
  • 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 [email protected]. Beta testers' feedback directly shapes the next release.

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