Live Transcribe

Real-time browser transcription. Speak, watch the transcript appear, copy it, and save.

The Live Transcribe modal opens from the dashboard’s Live Transcription card, the Record Audio card, or the topbar’s + Transcribe Audio dropdown (entries Live Transcription and Record Audio). Your browser handles both the live transcript and the audio recording, no setup needed.

What this modal looks like

A 700 px popup (850 px on lg+ screens) split into two panels.

Panel	What you see
Left	The language selector, the audio player (appears after you stop), and the Start recording / Stop transcribing button.
Right	The live transcript area as you speak, plus a Copy icon.

The header carries the title Live Transcribe. A small X in the upper end-edge corner closes the modal.

Using the modal

1. Open the modal

   Click Live Transcription or Record Audio on the dashboard’s Start Transcribing grid, or open + Transcribe Audio in the topbar and pick one of those entries.

2. Pick a language

   Choose the language you’ll be speaking in from the dropdown. Switching the language mid-session restarts recognition in the new language.

3. Start recording

   Click the purple Start recording button. Your browser asks for microphone permission the first time. If you deny it, the modal shows the toast Microphone access denied or unavailable.

   Two things start in parallel: the audio is recorded so you can play it back, and the engine streams final transcript chunks into the right panel as you speak.

4. Speak

   The right panel placeholder reads Start speaking to see transcription… As soon as the engine is confident a phrase is final, it gets appended to the transcript with a space.

5. Copy as you go (optional)

   Click the small Copy icon at the corner of the transcript area to put the current text on your clipboard. The icon flips to a green check for 2 seconds. If clipboard access fails, the modal toasts Failed to copy to clipboard.

6. Stop transcribing

   Click Stop transcribing. Both the recognition stream and the audio recording stop. A small audio player appears on the start-edge panel so you can review what was captured.

7. Close to save

   Closing the modal saves the session whenever there’s transcript text:

   • A new file is created in your library with the name Live Transcription HH:MM (your local start time).
   • The audio duration is computed from when you started to when you stopped, formatted M:SS.
   • You’re routed to the Transcript Editor for that file.

   If the transcript is empty, the modal closes without saving.

Button states

What’s happening	Button label
Idle (before you click)	Start recording
Recording	Stop transcribing

Browser support

Live transcription depends on a feature your browser provides. If your browser doesn’t support it, you can still record the audio and have it transcribed afterwards by uploading the saved recording.

Browser	Live transcript	Audio recording
Chrome, Edge, Brave (desktop and Android)	Yes	Yes
Safari (desktop and iOS)	Yes	Yes
Firefox	No	Yes

Languages

Same 16 languages as Upload Audio: English, Arabic, French, Spanish, German, Turkish, Urdu, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, plus Auto Detect (which falls back to English for live mode). Each language is sent to the engine with its regional variant (Arabic uses Saudi, English uses US, French uses France, and so on).

Live recognition shows you only final chunks once the engine is confident, not partial guesses that change as you speak. If you want a polished pass with partials and speaker diarization, upload the saved recording through Upload Audio afterwards.

What ends up in your library

When you close the modal with a non-empty transcript, the saved file shows up in Your Files with:

Field	Value
Name	Live Transcription HH:MM (your local start time)
Source	Live recording
Duration	Computed from start to stop, formatted M:SS
Language	Whatever you picked in the dropdown
Speaker labels	Off (live mode doesn’t separate speakers)
Subtitles	Off
Status	Completed (no background processing)

Common questions

Live Transcription doesn't work in my browser.

You’re probably on Firefox, which doesn’t expose the live transcription feature today. Use Chrome, Edge, Brave, or Safari for live mode. Or use Upload Audio instead, that works in every browser.

Microphone access denied or unavailable. How do I fix it?

Click the lock icon next to the URL in your browser, find the microphone permission, and switch it to Allow. Reload the page and try again. On Chrome and Edge you can also visit chrome://settings/content/microphone to manage permissions per site.

The transcript doesn't show partials, only finished sentences.

That’s intentional. Live mode only shows phrases the engine is confident about, so you don’t see text changing as you speak. For partials, record first and then upload through Upload Audio.

Can Live Transcribe handle two speakers?

Live mode treats your audio as a single channel and doesn’t separate speakers. If you have multiple speakers, record the call and run it through Upload Audio with Detect Speakers Automatically turned on.

The accuracy in Live mode feels lower than the upload flow.

Live mode uses what your browser provides, which varies in quality from browser to browser. The upload flow uses the Faheem engine and is the right choice for accuracy, especially for Arabic and dialects.

I forgot to copy my transcript and closed the modal.

You didn’t lose it. Closing the modal with non-empty text saves the file automatically. Look in Your Files in the sidebar for Live Transcription HH:MM, click it to open the Transcript Editor where you can copy or export.

My audio is still in the modal but the transcript area is empty.

The transcription engine couldn’t pick out any speech (too quiet, too noisy, or a language mismatch). Open the audio playback to verify your mic was recording, then try again, or upload the saved recording via Upload Audio which handles harder cases.

Can I switch language while recording?

Yes. Pick a different language from the dropdown and recognition restarts in the new one immediately. The audio recording continues uninterrupted, so the audio file you save covers the whole session.

For production-grade Arabic-first transcription with the lowest latency, the Faheem voice engine handles real-time streaming. That’s what powers the Voice Conversations live captions and is rolling out to the Live Transcribe modal in a future release.