Oriel
Version 0.97.1 beta out now
The feature guide
From first source to final finding, without the wait.
Oriel is a fast, keyboard-friendly desktop app for qualitative research. Every project gets the same core tools, and your project’s purpose adds the tools for realist work, evidence synthesis, or programme evaluation.
Oriel is free for Windows and Mac, with Linux to follow. Each workflow explains its platform limits and your choices around AI and collaboration.
Built to keep up
Fast enough to stay out of your way.
Analysis is thinking time. Oriel is designed so that opening, coding, searching, and moving around feel immediate, and you keep your attention on the material.
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A Rust core on your own computer
Each project is a single local file. Opening a source, applying a code, or running a query works on your machine rather than waiting on a server.
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No Save button to remember
Coding is saved the moment you apply it. Notes and descriptions save when you click away, unsaved text survives a crash, and anything can be undone.
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Indexed and light on memory
Text search runs on an index. Long PDFs draw only the pages near you, large datasets scroll virtually, and imports stream one file at a time.
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Keyboard-first when you want it
Jump anywhere, code by typing, and step through sources and passages without reaching for the mouse.
⌘K Go to · ⌥← Back · ⌥PgDn Next source
Shortcuts are shown for macOS. On Windows, use Ctrl for ⌘ and Alt for ⌥. Shortcuts can be rebound in Settings.
Work together
Collaborate through OneDrive, Teams, Dropbox, or your network drive.
There’s no Oriel server or new account to set up. Choose a shared folder your team already uses, and each colleague keeps a fast local copy that stays in step.
Start here
One route, shaped by your question.
Tell Oriel what your project is for, and your home page sets out five steps from framing your enquiry to reporting it, with the tools that suit each one. Oriel only switches tools on when you agree, and you can change direction at any time.
Your home page suggests one next step and keeps everything else a click away. Choose a research question and every count follows it.
- 1Frame
- 2Organise
- 3Analyse
- 4Interpret
- 5Report
Choose what your project is for
Choose qualitative analysis, an intervention or programme evaluation, or an evidence synthesis. An evaluation can look at process, implementation, behavioural, or realist questions, in any combination. A synthesis can use qualitative evidence synthesis, realist review, or your own approach.
Five steps on your home page
Your home page sets out five steps: frame, organise, analyse, interpret, and report. Each step shows what you have recorded so far, how much of your material it covers, and the tools that can help, with one suggested next action. The coverage describes your work rather than marking it complete.
Your brief and research questions
Keep your purpose, a short summary, and your research questions together in the project brief. You can link each question to the sources, codes, analyses, models, and findings that answer it, and retire or reorder questions as your work develops.
Focus on one question
Choose a research question, or narrow the scope to particular sources, cases, studies, or attribute values, and the counts follow your choice. Reset scope takes you back to the whole project.
Everything in this workflow 3 more
- Tools suggested for your purpose, which you can switch off or on at any time
- Guidance for each kind of evaluation, with a reference for your methods section
- Suggested supporting work, such as assessing confidence in findings or comparing sites
Project purpose
Note your research questions and analytic approach if they help. Both can stay open and change as your analysis develops.
Supporting tools Project brief · Research journal
Optional supporting work
Project home Your home page sets out five steps and suggests one next action. 
New project Choose your purpose and the methods to start with.
Choose your workflow
Qualitative analysis uses the shared tools on this page. Realist work, evidence synthesis, and programme evaluation each add their own tools, explained on their own pages.
- Qualitative analysis
Interviews, focus groups, documents, and other data you code yourself.
Start with the shared tools ↓ - Realist evaluation or review
Build a programme theory and test it against your data or published studies.
Realist workflow → - Qualitative evidence synthesis
Review published qualitative studies, with extraction, appraisal, and CERQual.
Synthesis workflow → - Programme evaluation
Process, implementation, and behavioural evaluations, with frameworks such as the TDF, COM-B, and CFIR.
Evaluation workflow →
Workflow 01
Drop it in. Oriel sorts the rest.
Start a project, bring in documents, datasets, recordings, images, web material, and references, and keep the originals connected.
Drag files or whole folders straight into the window. Oriel files them into matching folders, shows a summary, and opens the first one.
Begin in seconds
Choose what your project is for and the tools Oriel suggests for it, or open an editable fictional example with interviews, starter codes, cases, saved queries, a memo, and a programme theory.
Drag in files and folders
Drop files on a source folder, the Sources list, or anywhere in the window. A dropped folder becomes a source folder, with its sub-folders inside. Everything is also under File → Import.
Read documents in a useful form
Import TXT, Markdown, DOCX, DOC, RTF, and PDF files. A Word layout preview sits alongside the stable text used for coding. DOC and RTF formatting is kept on macOS, while Windows imports their text only.
Bring an NVivo project across
Import Windows .nvp or Mac .nvpx files without NVivo installed. A REFI-QDA .qdpx export or a codebook, preferably .qdc, restores names. Without one, some names may stay as placeholders.
Everything in this workflow 4 more
- Datasets, audio, video, transcripts, and images, with cases created from spreadsheet rows
- Saved web pages, X and Mastodon archives, and web pages captured by their address
- References from RIS, BibTeX, EndNote XML, or a DOI, kept with their documents
- A Source overview table that filters by folder, type, and status
Sources
- Interview – Amira
Drop files here
Source overview Filter your sources by folder, type, and status. 
Word layout Read a Word document in its original layout beside the text you code.
Workflow 02
Stay with the passage. Code as you read.
Code text, PDF and image areas, recordings, transcripts, and dataset cells, and move around a large project without losing your place.
Select some words and start typing. The Quick codes card filters as you type, and Enter applies the code. Press ⌘K and type three letters to open anything.
Quick codes beside your selection
A small card appears where the selection ends. Type to search the whole hierarchy, browse into a parent code, or create a new code and apply it in the same step.
Code more than ordinary text
Code document text, PDF or image areas, recording time ranges, transcript passages, and dataset cells, with in vivo codes named after a participant’s own words.
Go to anything
Press ⌘K to find sources, codes, cases, memos, findings, studies, saved queries, sets, settings, and commands by name. Recent choices come first.
Maintain a coherent codebook
Nest, reorder, recolour, describe, and merge codes. Fold the Codes panel to a slim rail when you want more room to read.
Everything in this workflow 4 more
- Back and Forward across your last 50 places, and the next or previous coded passage
- Coding progress for each source, which only a person can mark as Coded
- Annotations and highlights in six colours, kept separate from coding
- Excerpts grouped and filtered by code or source, with their original context one click away
- Barriers
- Barriers › Cost of travel
- Barriers we expected
Sources click a ring
Type in the box, use ↑ ↓, then press Enter.
Quick codes Code a passage without leaving it. 
Codebook Nest, describe, and count your codes.
Workflow 03
From recording to codable text, on your computer.
Transcribe interviews, label speakers, and make scanned PDFs searchable, without uploading the material for processing.
Transcribe a whole folder of recordings in one go, and jump from any transcript line straight to that moment in the recording.
Transcribe locally
Download a Whisper speech model (Base, Small, or Large Turbo), then transcribe one recording or a batch. Recordings of up to six hours in common audio and video formats are supported.
Check speakers and wording
Identify speakers automatically or give the number of speakers, check the transcript against playback, and follow linked passages back to the recording.
Rename speakers to pseudonyms
Rename speakers in one undoable step, for transcripts you made or attached. Giving two speakers the same name merges them.
Recognise printed text in PDFs
Run text recognition on scanned PDF pages so their words can be selected, searched, and coded. It uses the engine built into macOS or Windows, with its languages, and isn’t available on Linux.
- Speaker 1What made it easier to keep coming back?
- Speaker 2Honestly, the bus pass. Without that I couldn’t.
- Speaker 3And knowing someone would be there who knew my name.
- Speaker 1So the people mattered as much as the course?
Transcription Choose a model and transcribe on your own computer. 
Speakers Rename speakers to pseudonyms in one step.
Platform notes: Windows transcription needs the graphics runtime supplied by a compatible driver, even when using CPU fallback, so virtual or remote desktops may not have it. Local processing covers the transcription and recognition steps. If you choose shared-folder collaboration, your folder provider also copies the project’s recordings and transcripts.
Workflow 04 · Optional
Suggestions you inspect, rather than decisions it makes.
Local AI runs on your own computer. It can suggest coding, draft code descriptions, help draft CMOCs, and find passages by meaning, and nothing is applied until you accept it.
Review suggestions in a single list. Click a quotation to see it in its source, then accept or dismiss it. Accept all shown and Dismiss all shown clear the list in one go.
Check the computer and model
Oriel checks your hardware, downloads a helper program and model, and offers a speed test on a fictional task. Model size, memory, and graphics hardware affect speed and quality.
Review coding in context
Choose sources and existing codes, leave out interviewers or facilitators, and follow progress part by part. Each suggestion shows its passage, code, rationale, and confidence.
Keep an AI run distinguishable
You can choose to save a run as a separate AI coder instead, so you can compare it with your coding and remove it as a whole.
Record what assistance was used
Inspect methods details for the model, prompt, and approach. The model is unloaded when Oriel closes, so it isn’t left running.
Everything in this workflow 4 more
- Proposed new codes and drafted code descriptions (Experimental)
- Drafted or revised CMOCs, covered on the realist page
- Continue in background while a task runs, with progress in the top bar
- Meaning search, prepared in the background on your computer
Honestly, the bus pass. Without that I couldn’t.
Barriers › Cost of travel High confidence
Travel costs are named as the condition for attending.
Knowing someone would be there who knew my name.
Peer support Medium confidence
Recognition by others is described as a reason to return.
The room was on the second floor, no lift.
Trust Low confidence
Possible link to confidence in the venue.
3 suggestions to review
AI review Accept or dismiss each suggestion beside its source. 
AI coder Keep a run as a separate coder that you can compare or remove.
The hardware trade-off: keeping AI processing local needs powerful hardware for practical performance, particularly for larger models. Current support is Apple silicon Macs with macOS 13.3 or later, or Windows PCs with a graphics processor and an up-to-date driver. Local AI is not available on Linux yet. Manual coding and analysis remain fully available without AI.
Workflow 05
Move from a question to the passages behind it.
Organise cases and attributes, then search, count, compare, and chart, always one click from the passages behind the numbers.
Click any matrix cell, network link, or chart point to read its passages. Save a query once and re-run it as the coding grows.
Cases, classifications, and sets
Represent participants, organisations, or settings as cases, give them typed attributes in an editable sheet, and group items into reusable sets.
Find words and coding
Search text exactly or by word stem with keyword in context, explore word frequencies, and combine codes, cases, and attributes with AND, OR, NOT, NEAR, and PRECEDING.
Compare in a coding matrix
Cross codes with cases, attribute values, or studies in a heatmap with totals, inspect each cell, and export the table.
Summarise sources rapidly New
Summarise each source under headings you set in a template, such as what helped, what got in the way, and suggested changes, and keep the supporting quotations alongside. You can compare summaries side by side in a summary matrix, show one reviewer’s summaries or the agreed values, and develop a finding from any summary. This works with or without line-by-line coding.
Everything in this workflow 6 more
- Text search for a remark you half remember, by similar wording or by meaning
- Filters that narrow any query to chosen cases or kinds of source
- A framework matrix of your own written summaries
- Code co-occurrence as a table or network, and hierarchies as a treemap or sunburst
- Saturation charts with published stopping rules
- Data coverage across groups and time points, with the gaps left visible
| Code | Learners | Tutors | Volunteers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost of travel | |||
| Peer support | |||
| Trust |
Click a cell to read its passages.
| Source | What helped | What got in the way |
|---|---|---|
| Amira | ||
| Ben | ||
| Chloe |
Click a cell to summarise that source under its heading.
Matrix Follow a pattern back to the evidence. 
Network See which codes travel together.
Workflow 06
Findings that carry their evidence.
Think in memos and a research journal, then write findings whose quotations, cases, and negative cases stay attached all the way to export.
Add the last passage you selected to a finding in one click, and see how its spread across cases changes straight away.
Think in linked notes
Write memos linked to sources, codes, or other items, and keep a dated research journal with tags, links, and search.
Build sections and findings
Organise your findings into sections, mark each one Draft or Settled, and link it to the research questions it answers. Evidence can support, contradict, refine, or inform a finding.
Quotes straight into Word New
Export a quotes file, then use the free Oriel Quotes for Word add-in to insert coded passages as quotes with pseudonymised participant labels. You can add a participant table and refresh the quotes when your analysis changes. The add-in only reads the file you choose.
Check against a reporting checklist New
Choose COREQ or SRQR for a qualitative study, ENTREQ or eMERGe for an evidence synthesis, RAMESES II or RAMESES for realist work, or StaRI for an implementation study. Note where your project addresses each item. You decide what has been addressed, and Oriel doesn’t give a score.
Everything in this workflow 5 more
- The spread of evidence across cases and voices, with prompts for patterns to revisit
- Negative cases, each marked or explained, with a record of your searches
- Alternative explanations, each recorded with what you decided and why
- Findings exported to Word, PDF, or Markdown, with evidence tables
- Reports of coded passages, codebooks, queries, matrices, and models, and references as RIS
Practical barriers can prevent people from taking part.
Spread across cases
- Amira
- Ben
- Chloe
- Dev
- Eve
Possible negative case “I’d come even if I had to walk.” · Dev
COREQ where your report addresses each item
- 10SamplingNot yet answered
- 22Data saturationNot yet answered
- 29Quotations presentedNot yet answered
- 31Clarity of major themesNot yet answered
Findings Write findings with their evidence attached. 
Reporting checklist Note where your work addresses each item.
Workflow 07
Collaborate through the storage you already use.
Share a project through a folder in OneDrive, Teams or SharePoint, Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, or a network drive. There is no Oriel server to run and no new account to approve.
Each person works on their own local copy at full speed, online or offline. Oriel sends your changes after a short pause in your work, at most about a minute later, and checks for colleagues’ changes every few seconds while the project is open.
- OneDrive
- Teams & SharePoint
- Dropbox
- Google Drive
- iCloud Drive
- Network drive
- 1Click Collaborate and choose an empty folder in your cloud or network drive
- 2Share that folder with named colleagues through your provider
- 3Colleagues choose Join a shared project and save their own copy
Works with the storage you have
Any folder your computer syncs will work, including OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, or a network drive. Oriel doesn’t upload anything itself. Your provider copies the files and controls who can open them.
No live project file in the cloud
Your working copy stays outside the shared folder, and Oriel won’t keep it inside. The folder holds only small change files that aren’t rewritten, so a sync client can’t corrupt an open database.
Everyone’s work stays identifiable
Each copy codes under its own coder name, and Undo only undoes your own changes. Concurrent coding of the same passage keeps both coders’ references and attribution.
Compare coders
Use blind coding and coder groups, compare percentage agreement and Cohen’s kappa, and open each disagreement in its source. A separate AI coder can be compared in the same way.
Everything in this workflow 7 more
- Teams and SharePoint channels, added through the OneDrive app
- Sharing from the start of a project or later, with new members joining from a snapshot
- Working offline, with your changes exchanged when you reconnect
- Help keeping OneDrive, Dropbox, and iCloud folders downloaded
- Short messages to everyone on a shared project, with links to codes, sources, and passages
- Edits made at the same time, with both kept or a choice offered
- An advanced private coding service for teams that run their own
You
Early impressions
Travel keeps coming up.
Sam
Early impressions
Travel keeps coming up.
Sam saved a different title while you were typing.
Shared folder Connect a project through a folder your team already uses. 
Messages Tell collaborators what changed, with links to your work.
Who can see what: a shared folder carries the whole project, including original recordings, transcripts, and deleted text kept in the history. Oriel doesn’t add encryption of its own and can’t remove a person, so use a provider your institution and ethics approval allow, share with named people rather than by public link, and remove access at the provider when someone leaves. Cross-platform shared-folder collaboration has been tested through iCloud Drive and local network folders. OneDrive, Dropbox, other providers, and individual failure scenarios aren’t confirmed yet. Independent security review and some private-service work remain outstanding.
Workflow 08
Recover easily. Exchange openly.
A complete history, automatic backups, and routes into and out of other software, so your work doesn’t get stuck.
Undo your own changes step by step, and restore a backup in a few clicks. Backups store each source file once, so they stay small.
History and recovery
Undo and redo, item history, checkpoints, earlier versions, and restoring an item as it was. Unsaved text is recovered after a crash.
Automatic backups
By default, Oriel backs up every 10 minutes while you work, keeping the newest 10 plus one a day for a week, in a folder it looks after.
Exchange through REFI-QDA
Import and export REFI-QDA projects and codebooks. Formats organise projects differently, so some information is lost, and export back to NVivo is not fully supported.
Export or import part of a project New
Send or bring in only the interviews from one site, one branch of codes, or one person’s coding. Untick the kinds of content you don’t want, choose sources, codes, and coders, and check the counts. Oriel keeps the file consistent, so nothing refers to something you left out, and a report lists what was left out.
Everything in this workflow 3 more
- Projects kept in a cloud folder and saved back as one whole file
- Themes, text sizes, reduced motion, your own shortcuts, and settings profiles
- An optional update check that sends only the version number
History Inspect earlier versions and restore what you need. 
Partial export Choose exactly which items to export.
NVivo attribute values, memo text, and saved searches do not transfer on import. REFI-QDA import does not keep coding authorship or dates, and saved queries, programme theories, evidence links, and findings are not exported. Local project and backup files are not encrypted or password-protected by Oriel.
No features match. Try a shorter word.
See the workspace in action.
Try the previews on this page with fictional material, or download Oriel and try it on your own project.