diff --git a/astro.config.mjs b/astro.config.mjs
index 9d965b9..cc8aa33 100644
--- a/astro.config.mjs
+++ b/astro.config.mjs
@@ -132,9 +132,10 @@ export default defineConfig({
           },
           {
             // On-device ML model weights + runtime (Whisper from Hugging Face, ORT
-            // wasm from jsDelivr). CacheFirst so they load from our cache on refresh
-            // instead of re-downloading. Immutable, versioned by URL.
-            urlPattern: /^https:\/\/([^/]*\.)?(huggingface\.co|hf\.co)\/.*|^https:\/\/cdn\.jsdelivr\.net\/.*/i,
+            // wasm from jsDelivr, PaddleOCR models from GitHub raw/LFS). CacheFirst so
+            // they load from our cache on refresh instead of re-downloading. Immutable,
+            // versioned by URL.
+            urlPattern: /^https:\/\/([^/]*\.)?(huggingface\.co|hf\.co)\/.*|^https:\/\/cdn\.jsdelivr\.net\/.*|^https:\/\/(raw|media)\.githubusercontent\.com\/.*/i,
             handler: 'CacheFirst',
             options: {
               cacheName: 'ml-models-cache',
diff --git a/src/islands/media/VoiceToText.tsx b/src/islands/media/VoiceToText.tsx
index cfb933c..0228507 100644
--- a/src/islands/media/VoiceToText.tsx
+++ b/src/islands/media/VoiceToText.tsx
@@ -67,6 +67,7 @@ export default function VoiceToText() {
   const [modelProgress, setModelProgress] = useState<number | null>(null);
   const [transcribing, setTranscribing] = useState(false);
   const [elapsed, setElapsed] = useState(0);
+  const [modelCached, setModelCached] = useState(false);
   const [segments, setSegments] = useState<TranscriptSegment[] | null>(null);
   const [editedText, setEditedText] = useState('');
   const [tab, setTab] = useState<Tab>('text');
@@ -145,6 +146,20 @@ export default function VoiceToText() {
     }
   };
 
+  // Is the selected model already in the browser cache? (Definitive — the bar
+  // shows even on a cache read, so this tells the user whether it's a real download.)
+  const refreshModelCached = async () => {
+    try {
+      const cache = await caches.open('transformers-cache');
+      const keys = await cache.keys();
+      setModelCached(keys.some(r => r.url.includes(`${model}/resolve`)));
+    } catch { setModelCached(false); }
+  };
+  useEffect(() => {
+    void refreshModelCached();
+    // eslint-disable-next-line react-hooks/exhaustive-deps
+  }, [model]);
+
   const transcribe = async () => {
     if (!audioBlob) return;
     audioRef.current?.pause(); // don't leave the preview playing while inference blocks the thread
@@ -163,6 +178,7 @@ export default function VoiceToText() {
         r => setModelProgress(r),
       );
       setModelProgress(null); // model ready (or cached) — now inference (indeterminate)
+      void refreshModelCached(); // it's cached now
       setSegments(segs);
       setEditedText(segmentsToText(segs));
       setTab('text');
@@ -268,7 +284,7 @@ export default function VoiceToText() {
       </div>
 
       {modelProgress !== null && (
-        <ProgressBar percent={modelProgress * 100} label="Downloading model (first time only)" />
+        <ProgressBar percent={modelProgress * 100} label={modelCached ? 'Loading model from cache…' : 'Downloading model (first time only)…'} />
       )}
       {busy && modelProgress === null && (
         <p className="text-sm text-muted-foreground">