Does it handle dialects or only Modern Standard Arabic?

Both are attempted, but accuracy is much higher for Modern Standard. Dialect audio — especially Maghrebi — needs manual correction.

Is the text right-to-left?

Yes, the output is proper Arabic script and pastes correctly into documents that support right-to-left text.

Are short vowels (tashkeel) included?

No. The transcript uses standard unvocalised writing, which is how Arabic is normally written outside of religious and teaching texts.

Can I export Arabic subtitles for a video?

Yes. Besides plain text, the tool offers subtitle exports with timestamps, in right-to-left Arabic script. Check that your video player or editor supports Arabic subtitle rendering, since not all of them handle the script well.

What happens with speech that mixes Arabic and English?

The model follows the language selected, so Arabic is handled well and short English words usually come through, but long English passages inside an Arabic recording may be transcribed inconsistently. Review those parts.

Transcribe Arabic Audio to Text — Free, Private, In-Browser

Turn Arabic audio or video into text in your browser. 100% free, no per-minute limit, no account — the recording never leaves your device.

Model

Spoken

Output

Timestamps [0:05]

⬇️ One-time download: 104 MB (Accurate model 73 MB + 31 MB audio engine, shared with the video tools) — only the first time: it stays saved in your browser, so next time it starts right away. (Translating or switching model needs its own file; a browser can clear this cache if storage runs very low.) Processing takes about 4-8 min per 10 minutes of audio on a typical laptop.

What exactly is downloaded — and is it safe?

• The speech model is OpenAI's Whisper, open source, converted to run in browsers. The audio engine is FFmpeg, the open-source tool behind most video software.
• They come from Hugging Face and unpkg — public repositories used by researchers and developers worldwide, not from us.
• They are not programs. Nothing is installed, no permission is asked, and your browser keeps them in its own cache exactly like it keeps a website's images.
• They can't read your files or touch anything outside this page. Remove them any time by clearing this site's data in your browser.
• Your audio never goes the other way: this site has no server receiving files.

Drop your video or audio here or click to choose

transcribed on your device by OpenAI's Whisper — your recording is not uploaded

ℹ️ Use a recording on your device that you own or have permission to process. This tool cannot fetch YouTube or social video links. Start with a short clip. Larger models can improve accuracy but require more memory and download data. Processing time varies by device, model and recording length. Always review the result.

Arabic has a written standard and a dozen spoken realities, and that shapes what transcription can do. News bulletins, lectures, Friday sermons, audiobooks and scripted presentations in Modern Standard Arabic come out well, in proper right-to-left script with punctuation. A recording of two friends talking in Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf or Maghrebi dialect comes out with many more errors, and Maghrebi speech is the hardest of all. This page opens with Arabic preselected, so the model does not mistake the recording for Persian or Urdu, which share the script.

Transcription runs on OpenAI's Whisper inside your browser. In the default Private mode the audio engine and the model are downloaded once, cached when possible, and the recording itself is never uploaded, which is the right standard for interviews, legal matters and family voice messages. Three model sizes are offered; for dialect audio, Best is worth the extra download and processing time, and even then expect to correct the output rather than publish it as is. The transcript is unvocalised, the normal way Arabic is written, and can be copied or downloaded as TXT, with subtitle formats available for video.

Clear audio helps more than anything: one speaker at a time, a microphone close to the mouth, little background noise. The result is a draft to review, not a finished document, and names, numbers and religious quotations deserve a careful second look.

More sizes & options

Frequently asked questions

Does it handle dialects or only Modern Standard Arabic?: Both are attempted, but accuracy is much higher for Modern Standard. Dialect audio — especially Maghrebi — needs manual correction.
Is the text right-to-left?: Yes, the output is proper Arabic script and pastes correctly into documents that support right-to-left text.
Are short vowels (tashkeel) included?: No. The transcript uses standard unvocalised writing, which is how Arabic is normally written outside of religious and teaching texts.
Can I export Arabic subtitles for a video?: Yes. Besides plain text, the tool offers subtitle exports with timestamps, in right-to-left Arabic script. Check that your video player or editor supports Arabic subtitle rendering, since not all of them handle the script well.
What happens with speech that mixes Arabic and English?: The model follows the language selected, so Arabic is handled well and short English words usually come through, but long English passages inside an Arabic recording may be transcribed inconsistently. Review those parts.

Guides

Related tools

🔒 Private mode (the default): your recording never leaves your device. Instant mode is optional, you switch it on yourself, and it sends the audio to the browser's speech service.