Speech to Text
Transcribe live microphone speech to text right in your browser — pick a language, toggle continuous listening and interim results, then copy or download the transcript.
Input
Speak into your microphone. Most browsers send your audio to a server (e.g. Google, in Chrome) to transcribe it — see the Privacy note below.
Transcript
Guides
Turn spoken words into written text, live, using your browser's built-in speech recognizer. Pick a language, click Start listening, and speak — your words appear in the transcript as you go, ready to copy or download when you're done.
How do I use it?
- Choose the language you'll be speaking from the Language dropdown.
- Toggle Continuous mode on to keep listening across pauses (off stops after your first sentence), and Show interim results on to see words appear as you speak, before they're finalized.
- Click Start listening and allow microphone access when your browser asks.
- Speak naturally. Finalized text appears in the transcript box; text still being recognized shows underneath in italics until it settles.
- Click Stop listening when you're done, then Copy or Download the transcript — or Clear to start over.
Is my voice data sent anywhere?
Partly, and it depends on your browser. This tool itself never uploads anything — everything you see happens in the page. But the underlying SpeechRecognition API isn't guaranteed to run on-device: in Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers, your microphone audio is streamed to Google's servers to be transcribed, then the text comes back. Safari's implementation is closer to on-device. Either way, no audio or transcript is ever sent to iotools.cloud's servers — but if audio privacy matters for what you're dictating, keep in mind a third party's servers may process it. This is why the tool is labeled "third-party" rather than "private" data handling.
Which browsers support this?
Chrome, Edge and Safari all support the Web Speech API well. Firefox currently ships no implementation of SpeechRecognition or webkitSpeechRecognition — if you're on Firefox, this tool will show a "not supported" notice instead of the transcriber. Switch to Chrome, Edge or Safari to use it.
Why does listening sometimes restart on its own?
With continuous mode on, some browsers (Chrome in particular) periodically end a long-running recognition session in the background and hand control back. The tool detects this and restarts listening automatically so your session doesn't silently drop — you won't need to click Start again mid-sentence.
Can I use this to caption a video call or transcribe a meeting?
You can, as long as the audio reaches your microphone (either you're speaking directly, or your system routes call audio into a virtual input device the browser can pick up). There's no way to feed in a pre-recorded audio file — this tool is built specifically for live microphone input, not file transcription.
What can I do with the transcript once I have it?
Paste it into the Word Counter to check its length, reading time or keyword density — handy before turning a rough transcript into a script or article. If you also want to capture the video of what you were transcribing (not just the audio), the Camera Recorder records webcam video and microphone audio together, entirely in your browser.