How to transcribe audio
How to transcribe audio for free: pick the recording, choose its language, and download the text when it's ready.
The short answer to how to transcribe audio is the box below: drop the recording in, tap Transcribe it, and the text opens on a page of its own when it's ready. There you can copy it, or download it as plain text or as a Word file to edit.
Step by step
- Find the recording on your phone or computer. MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, OGG, FLAC, Opus and OGA files all work, voice memos included.
- Drop the file on Drop an audio file here, or tap the box and choose it.
- Check the file name in the message that appears, then tap Transcribe it. Cancel lets you pick a different file.
- If the next page says "Working on your transcript", keep it open. It moves to the transcript by itself when it's ready.
- Read the text under Paragraphs, or tap Timestamps to see when each line was said.
- Tap Copy to paste the words somewhere else, or Download Plain text to save them as a file.
- For the text in another language, tap Translate, choose the language under Translate into, and tap Translate again.
A subtitle file dropped here is converted instead.
- File
- Format
- Cues
- Size
Read as — change it
The preview below re-renders as soon as you change this.
This format stores times as frame numbers, so it has no meaning without a rate. We don't guess one.
Nothing has changed yet.
No cues to show yet.
Clear audio beats long audio
A clear recording gives cleaner text than a long, noisy one. One voice close to the microphone in a quiet room is the best case, while talk over music, wind or a crowd comes out with gaps. If you only need one part of a long recording, cut it out with the audio cutter first and transcribe that part.
Choosing the spoken language
There's no language to set: the box detects the spoken language for you. When the whole recording is in one language, that language's own page can be a better fit, because it expects that language, so a short clip isn't mistaken for a neighbouring one. Spanish transcription is one of them, and the rest are listed under transcription by language. Keep to this box for a recording that switches between languages.
Subtitles instead of plain text
The transcript page offers more than plain text. Under Subtitles, SRT and WebVTT give a file with a start and end time on every line, which video editors and players read. Under Documents, Word (DOCX) opens in Word or Google Docs for editing, and PDF is ready to print or share. Tap one, then the download button on the page that opens, such as Download SRT.
Already online? Paste the link
A recording that's on YouTube or in a podcast doesn't need downloading first. Paste its link into YouTube transcript or podcast transcript instead, and the transcript opens the same way. To record something new and get its text, use record and transcribe.
Questions
Is it free to transcribe audio here?
Yes. There's no account to make and nothing to install, on a phone or a computer.
Can I transcribe a voice memo from my phone?
Yes. Voice memos are M4A files, which the box takes. On an iPhone, save the memo to Files first (in Voice Memos, choose Share, then Save to Files), then tap the box and pick it. Voice memo to text has more on recordings from phones.
Can I edit the transcript?
Yes, once it's downloaded. Save it as Word (DOCX) or plain text and edit it in any word processor or text editor. The transcript page itself is for reading, copying and downloading.
Does it tell speakers apart?
No. You get the words in the order they were said, without speaker names.