What Runs Locally in ClapClip AI for Windows, and What Needs the Internet

"Does it work offline?" is the first question people ask about a local AI app, and the honest answer is almost never a plain yes or no. Installers download, models download, updates download, and some features talk to a server by design. This page is the inventory for ClapClip AI for Windows: what the app needs, what stays on your PC, what leaves it, and what costs money.

Everything here matches the app's published facts and its pages on this site; who builds ClapClip and why is on the company page. Where something is not stated, this page says so rather than guessing.

Key takeaways

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit. The installer is about 2 GB and comes only from the Microsoft Store or clapclip.net; no ClapClip account is needed.
• GPU acceleration through DirectML: NVIDIA, AMD and Intel GPUs all work, and a dedicated GPU is recommended. Transcription falls back to the CPU.
• Face swap, transcription, enhancement and clip rendering run on your PC. Source photos, videos and recordings are not uploaded for these tools.
• One feature sends more than requests: the Shorts generator's clip analysis sends the transcript and a handful of small reference stills, never the video or audio file.
• Downloads are the exception by nature: installation, model downloads, updates and the video downloader all need a connection.
• Free to download and use. Transcription, the format converter, Shorts generation and background cutout are free with no limits; exporting face-swapped or enhanced video and accelerated downloads come with the subscription.

Requirements

Item	Value
Operating system	Windows 10 or Windows 11, 64-bit
Installer size	About 2 GB
Where to get it	Microsoft Store or clapclip.net only
Account	None required
GPU	NVIDIA, AMD or Intel through DirectML; a dedicated GPU is recommended
Without a dedicated GPU	Transcription runs on the CPU, more slowly; GPU-heavy tools such as video face swap will be slow or impractical
Disk	Room for the app, downloaded models, your source files, temporary files and exports

The app publishes no benchmark of how long a given file takes on a given machine, and this site does not invent one. The benchmarks section publishes measured studies with their methods; everything else is "it depends on your hardware".

Tool by tool: what stays on your PC

Tool	Processing	What leaves the PC
Face swap (photos and video)	Local, on the GPU; four models, real-time preview, multi-face scenes, no fixed clip-length cap	Nothing: photos and videos stay on the PC
Transcription	Local, Whisper-class models; TXT and SRT; batch folders	Nothing: recordings and transcripts stay on the PC
Video and image enhancement	Local; keyframes are enhanced and the frames between them reconstructed from motion, which is why it needs far less compute than per-frame tools	Nothing
Shorts generator	Transcription and rendering local	The text transcript and a handful of small reference stills (at most sixteen, 640 pixels), for the AI clip analysis that scores moments and writes captions and hashtags
Format converter	Local, FFmpeg; batches of files, and still images into short videos	Nothing
Background cutout	Local model	Nothing
Video downloader	Fetches from the source site with yt-dlp	Requests to the site you are downloading from

The Shorts row is the one to read twice. The video file, the audio track and the rendered clips never leave the machine; the transcript and a few small sampled stills do, because that is what the clip scorer reads and checks against. If a recording is under an agreement that forbids sharing even its text, do not run it through the clip generator; transcribe it locally instead and cut by hand.

What needs an internet connection

• Installation and updates, from the Store or clapclip.net.
• Model downloads the first time a tool is used; after that the model is on disk.
• The video downloader, which by definition fetches from a site.
• The Shorts clip analysis, which sends the transcript and the sampled stills as described above.
• The online tools on the other ClapClip sites (faceswap.free, enhance.place, cutout.free, clapclip.art), which are separate browser services and not part of the Windows app.

Everything else works with the network off once the models are present. The reliable way to confirm this for yourself is the same as for any local tool: run a job once connected so the models download, disconnect, and run another.

What is free and what is paid

• Download and installation: free.
• Transcription, format conversion, Shorts generation and background cutout: free, with no per-minute fee, no monthly quota and no stated file-length limit.
• Face swap and enhancement: free to use, including the real-time preview; exporting the result is part of the subscription.
• Video downloads: free at a capped speed; the subscription removes the cap.
• Account: none; there is nothing to sign up for.

If a page on this site or elsewhere describes a different price, trust the app's own store listing and the download page, which are kept current.

Privacy, in one paragraph

For face swap, transcription and enhancement, there is nothing to send, so there is nothing stored, logged or trained on. For the Shorts generator, the text transcript and a few sampled stills are sent for analysis. The video downloader contacts the site you give it. The app does not require an account, so there is no profile to tie any of this to. The privacy page is the formal version.

Bottom line

ClapClip AI is a local app with two deliberate exceptions: downloading, which cannot be local, and clip scoring, which sends the transcript and a few stills. Face swap, transcription and enhancement process your files on your own Windows PC and keep them there. Check requirements against your machine, expect a 2 GB installer and a first-run model download, and treat the Shorts tool's transcript-and-stills upload as the one line to read before using it on sensitive footage.

Related guides

• Fast, Balanced or Accurate: which transcription model
• The video enhancement modes
• How an AI clip generator picks Shorts