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Textify

Audio to Text — Free, Private, In Your Browser

Model

Drop an audio file here, paste, or click to browse

.mp3,.m4a,.aac,.wav,.ogg,.opus,.flac

Processed on your device — nothing is uploaded. Verify in your network tab.

This tool turns spoken audio into text without sending your recording anywhere. When you drop a file in, a speech recognition model — the same family as OpenAI's Whisper — downloads to your browser once and does all the work on your own machine. Nothing is uploaded, there's no account, and you can watch it happen: open your browser's network tab and you'll see the audio never leaves the page.

That in-browser design is the whole point. Most free transcription sites stream your audio to a server, which means a stranger's infrastructure holds a copy of whatever you recorded — an interview, a therapy session, a confidential call. Here the audio stays on your device from start to finish, so the privacy claim isn't a promise you have to trust, it's how the software is built.

You get real transcription features, not a stripped-down demo: automatic language detection across roughly 100 languages, word-level timestamps, and export to plain text, SRT, or VTT. It handles common formats — MP3, M4A, WAV, and more — and works on the audio track inside video files too.

How it works

  1. 01

    Drop your audio file in

    Drag an MP3, M4A, WAV, or other audio file onto the page, or click to browse for it. The file is read directly by your browser and never uploaded to a server — you can confirm this in the network tab.

  2. 02

    Pick a model and start

    Choose a speed-versus-accuracy tier (a fast ~40MB model or a larger, more accurate one). The model downloads once, caches for next time, and transcribes on your device. Language is detected automatically, or you can set it.

  3. 03

    Review timestamps and export

    Read the transcript with its timestamps, make any edits, then download it as TXT for a clean script or SRT/VTT for subtitles. Everything stays local, so nothing is stored or sent when you save.

How in-browser transcription works

When you load this page, no model is downloaded yet — the page stays light. The moment you pick a file and start, the tool fetches a speech recognition model and runs it inside a background worker in your browser, using your device's GPU through WebGPU where it's available and falling back to a CPU (WASM) path on browsers that need it, such as Safari.

The audio is decoded to raw samples, split into manageable chunks for long recordings, and passed through the model to produce text with timing. All of that computation happens on your hardware. The first run of a given model includes a one-time download; after that the model is cached, so repeat transcriptions start almost immediately even offline.

Choosing a model: speed vs. accuracy

There's a genuine trade-off between how fast a transcript comes back and how accurate it is, so the tool offers tiers instead of guessing for you:

  • Fast (~40MB): downloads in seconds, runs well on phones and modest laptops, and is fine for clear speech and quick drafts.
  • Balanced: a bigger download with noticeably better handling of accents, crosstalk, and background noise — a good default for interviews and meetings.
  • Quality (~530MB, opt-in): the most accurate tier, worth the larger one-time download when transcript quality matters more than speed. It's opt-in precisely because half a gigabyte isn't something to download silently.

Because everything runs locally, a faster machine simply finishes sooner — there's no queue and no per-minute limit.

Languages, timestamps, and subtitle export

The model supports around 100 languages and detects the spoken language automatically, so you can drop in audio in French, Hindi, Spanish, or Arabic without changing a setting. If detection ever guesses wrong on a short or noisy clip, you can set the language by hand.

Every transcript comes with timestamps, which is what makes the subtitle exports useful. Save as SRT or VTT and you get properly timed caption cues ready for a video editor, YouTube, or a player. Save as TXT when you just want the words — an interview transcript, meeting notes, or a searchable copy of a lecture. The subtitle formats and plain text all come from the same timed result, so you can export more than one without re-running anything.

What this tool is good for

It's built for the everyday jobs people actually need done: turning interviews and podcasts into searchable text, drafting meeting minutes from a recording, captioning a video, transcribing voice notes, or making an archive of old audio readable and quotable.

It is not a live dictation tool — you transcribe files you already have, not a microphone in real time. And because the model runs on your device, extremely long recordings will take longer on a slower machine and use more memory. For most files that's a non-issue; for multi-hour audio, a laptop handles it more comfortably than a phone.

Frequently asked questions

Is this audio to text converter really free?
Yes. In-browser transcription is unlimited and free, with no sign-up and no watermark on your text. Because the work runs on your own device instead of our servers, there's no per-minute cost for us to pass on to you. You can transcribe as many files as you like, and export to TXT, SRT, or VTT at no charge.
Does my audio get uploaded to a server?
No. Your audio is read and transcribed entirely inside your browser, and the file never leaves your device. The only thing downloaded is the speech recognition model itself, one time. You can verify all of this by opening your browser's developer tools and watching the network tab while you transcribe — the audio simply isn't sent anywhere.
What audio formats can I transcribe?
Common formats including MP3, M4A (AAC), WAV, and others are supported, and the tool can also pull the audio track out of video files. Format and bitrate rarely matter for speech recognition — a compressed voice memo transcribes about as well as an uncompressed studio file, because speech sits in a frequency range that survives compression well.
How accurate is the transcription?
Accuracy depends on the model tier you pick and the audio itself. Clear speech with one speaker transcribes very well; heavy accents, crosstalk, and background noise are harder. The larger, opt-in quality model handles difficult audio noticeably better than the fast tier. For any important transcript, plan to skim and lightly correct the result.
What languages are supported?
The model covers roughly 100 languages and detects the spoken language automatically, so you usually don't set anything. It transcribes in the original language rather than translating. If automatic detection misreads a short or noisy clip, you can choose the language manually before you start to steer it correctly.
Can I get timestamps or subtitles?
Yes. Every transcript includes timestamps, and you can export directly to SRT or VTT subtitle files with correctly timed cues, or to plain TXT when you only want the words. All three come from the same timed result, so you can save the transcript once as text and again as subtitles without transcribing the file a second time.
Does it work offline?
After the first run, largely yes. The speech model is cached in your browser, so once it has downloaded you can transcribe later even without a connection. The very first transcription with a given model needs to be online to fetch that model, but subsequent runs reuse the cached copy and don't re-download it.
Is there a limit on file length?
There's no fixed limit we impose — long recordings are split into chunks and processed in sequence. The practical limit is your device: very long or high-resolution audio takes more time and memory, so a laptop handles multi-hour files more comfortably than a phone. For most interviews and meetings, length is not a concern.

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