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Show HN: Record voice memo, receive transcription in email

by Void_ on 10/20/22, 1:49 PM with 47 comments

• by Void_ on 10/20/22, 1:51 PM

  This an iOS wrapper for OpenAI Whisper library.

  You can use the lock screen widget to start recording - allowing you to quickly capture what's on your mind.

  This comment was the inspiration behind this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32928118

  Pricing is currently somewhat high, until I figure out how much it costs to run Whisper on cloud GPUs. I'll adjust the pricing accordingly, and perhaps switch to per-minute model.

• by trafnar on 10/20/22, 5:09 PM

  I like that this is so focused on quickly initiating the recording, then just emailing the transcript, rather than trying to keep me in the app. That's exactly how I'd like this type of app to function.

• by djbusby on 10/20/22, 7:29 PM

  On Android one can just use the Microphone input from the keyboard. Just tap and instant transcript, in whatever you like (I use a web-based knowledge thing).

  Tap Icon on home screen, tap new, tap Microphone, talk for a few minutes, press save.

  Why am app for a built in feature?

• by happyllama on 10/20/22, 4:07 PM

  This seems great! I’m excited to try it out. It reminds me of Voiceliner which I’ve been using for a while now. Voiceliner does on device transcription & allows for creating hierarchy to notes / ideas with export functions too

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29726787

• by topicseed on 10/20/22, 5:04 PM

  https://recorder.google.com/ is pretty amazing to me and is accessible from mobile and web. Not sure if it's Pixel-specific or not.

• by xenonite on 10/20/22, 4:18 PM

  Let me mention Just Press Record, which performs the transcription on iOS and macOS with Apple’s speech recognition, which is on-device for several languages.

  https://apps.apple.com/app/id1033342465

• by pwinnski on 10/20/22, 2:37 PM

  I'm trying to resist a "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." response, but iOS already does voice-to-text, so it's hard to see what value-add this offers. I think the comment which inspired you was from an Android user? Or at least not an iOS16 user, where the voice-dictation is much improved.

  Single-click launch from the lock screen? That's neat, I don't think I can get there with bare iOS.

  No real-time feedback as I speak, so that seems like a point to iOS.

  The email is a nice touch, but the trade-off is that you have a copy of all of my recordings now.

  Finally, it could be that OpenAI Whisper does a much better job than iOS. I have no idea!

• by jcbages on 10/20/22, 7:07 PM

  It looks so cool! I'd love to have the transcript send to places other than email. I'm thinking of either a chat app like WhatsApp and Telegram or a productivity app like Notion to keep a more organized journal.

• by sriram_malhar on 10/20/22, 4:25 PM

  Very nice indeed. Thanks for sharing.

  You mention that you use whisper on the cloud. I was wondering what you think of on-device decoding using the base.en model and tflite.

  Something along the lines of:

  https://colab.research.google.com/github/usefulsensors/opena...

• by mtVessel on 10/20/22, 5:18 PM

  It'd be nice if you linked to a privacy policy on that page. The policy linked to on the app store page isn't very specific, either.

• by simonebrunozzi on 10/27/22, 8:15 PM

  Good stuff, but not for me. I need a MacOS app that uses my M1 (soon M2) and does this thing without any extra cost.

• by mellosouls on 10/20/22, 4:06 PM

  This looks cool but I think we need a tech equivalent of "...IN MICE" warning for Apple-only products on this site.

  btw there are cross-platform apps which have some similar functionality, eg voiceliner

  https://a9.io/voiceliner/

• by rmateu on 10/22/22, 8:01 PM

  Subscribed to monthly while I figure out if it fits on my workflow.

  Anecdotally, it provides higher accuracy in a more relaxed style of narration than Just Press Record or native dictation.

  Either way, thanks for sharing. Hoping the side app is working out.

• by markozivanovic on 10/20/22, 5:47 PM

  Great job! I love that you only need to press the record and stop on the phone and the rest is done automagically in the background.

  I wonder if there's a thing for Android that's as accurate as Whisper!?

• by mighty_donkey on 10/20/22, 2:56 PM

  Is there a limit on how much I can record? Is this just for quick notes or could i record a 30mins meeting? Thanks and congrats on the launch.

• by swah on 10/20/22, 2:57 PM

  I do something similar with a Telegram bot... but the quality is only good enough to let me know if I should listen to that audio again.

• by sattoshi on 10/20/22, 2:48 PM

  What are the “in-app purchases”?

• by mritchie712 on 10/20/22, 2:50 PM

  perfect. signed up.

  nice job!