Free speech to text online
Speech to text means two different jobs and most tools only do one. Dictation turns your voice into text as you speak. Transcription turns a recording you already have into text afterwards. Hilite does the second, in the browser, with speaker labels and timestamps, in 99+ languages, and every line stays linked to the audio so the few words it gets wrong take one click to fix.
Upload or record, then read the text back.
Speech into text, in the browser
- 1
Decide which job you need
If you want to type by talking, that is dictation, and your operating system already has it built in for free. If you have a recording and want the words out of it, that is transcription, and that is this.
- 2
Upload or record
Drag in a file in any common format, or record straight into the browser. Long recordings go in whole and do not need splitting.
- 3
Read and correct
Click any line to hear that moment. Names, jargon and acronyms are where every speech engine slips, and checking one takes a second rather than a hunt through a waveform.
- 4
Export or keep going
Download the text, or stay in Hilite and edit the recording by editing the transcript, pull content out of it, or publish.
Keep working inside the Hilite editor
Your uploaded files open directly in a focused editor view. Arrange your clips, preview the timeline, adjust transitions, and export when the track sounds perfectly right.
- Review the transcript in context
- Keep timestamps with the words
- Copy, export, or keep editing
Input formats
Output formats
Built for every kind of audio
Whatever you are making, this tool helps you get to a cleaner, more useful result, then hand off to Hilite to enhance and polish.
- Dictation and transcription are not the sameOne is live and one is after the fact. Searching for speech to text gets you a mix of both, which is why so many people end up with a tool that cannot do what they came for.
- Online means no installA browser tool works on a locked-down work laptop, a Chromebook, a borrowed machine or a library computer. That is the main reason to want an online one rather than a desktop app.
- The words are the beginningA transcript that connects back to the recording can be edited, clipped, captioned and published. One that arrives as loose text is a document you have to retype into something else.
Made for podcasters and their teams
Trim the dead air off the top and tail, and every recording is ready to edit, enhance, and publish.
FAQ
Common questions
If you do not see your question here, the support team replies within one business day.
- Not quite. Speech to text covers both live dictation, where you talk and text appears, and transcription, where a recording is converted afterwards. Windows, macOS, iOS and Android all include free dictation. Transcription of an existing file is the part that needs a tool.
- Yes. It runs in the browser, so it works on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chromebooks, including machines where you cannot install software.
- On clear speech from a decent microphone, well above ninety percent. Background noise, people talking over each other and strong accents all reduce it. Names and technical terms are the usual misses, and those are quick to correct when the transcript is linked to the audio.
- More than 99, and Hilite can detect the language for you. Recordings that move between languages go through the same engine.
- Your audio is processed to produce your transcript and is not published anywhere by default. If a recording is confidential enough that it should not leave your machine at all, run an on-device model such as Whisper locally instead of using any browser tool.
Turn speech into text you can use
Upload a recording and get accurate text with speaker labels and timestamps. Free to start, nothing to install.