How long does an hour-long lecture take?

Roughly 10 to 30 minutes on a typical laptop with the Accurate model, longer with Best. The page must stay open while it works, and it runs faster on machines with a modern GPU.

Will it handle my professor’s accent?

Whisper is strong with accents, and the Best model noticeably more so. Select the spoken language explicitly rather than leaving the default, as that keeps the output in the right language.

Can I get timestamps to jump back to a moment?

Yes — tick the timestamps option for inline marks like [12:30], or download the .SRT file, which pairs every sentence with its exact time.

Transcribe a Lecture to Text — Free & Private, No Sign-up

Turn a recorded lecture or class into searchable notes. 100% free, no signup, no minute limits — the recording never leaves your device.

Model

Spoken

Output

Timestamps [0:05]

🌍 The spoken language is detected automatically and the transcript comes out in that same language. Set it manually above if your audio is hard to hear, and use Output to translate into English.

⬇️ 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.

A recorded lecture is a strange asset: you have everything the professor said, and none of it is searchable. Finding the five minutes where a concept was explained means scrubbing through an hour of audio. Turning it into text fixes that — but the services built for it charge by the minute, precisely the pricing model that punishes people with the most recordings: students.

This page transcribes a lecture using OpenAI's Whisper running in your browser. There is no minute cap and no cost, so a full semester of recordings costs the same as one class: nothing. Two practical tips for classroom audio, which is usually recorded from a back row: pick the Best model, which handles distance and room echo far better, and run the file through our noise remover first if there is a fan or projector humming.

More sizes & options

Frequently asked questions

How long does an hour-long lecture take?: Roughly 10 to 30 minutes on a typical laptop with the Accurate model, longer with Best. The page must stay open while it works, and it runs faster on machines with a modern GPU.
Will it handle my professor’s accent?: Whisper is strong with accents, and the Best model noticeably more so. Select the spoken language explicitly rather than leaving the default, as that keeps the output in the right language.
Can I get timestamps to jump back to a moment?: Yes — tick the timestamps option for inline marks like [12:30], or download the .SRT file, which pairs every sentence with its exact time.

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.