Live transcription and captions

Every microphone or app recording opens the Live Transcription page, so you can read along while you record. Live transcription itself is free. Some live models, live speaker identification and live translation are Pro.

Open the live page

Start a microphone recording or an app recording. The live page opens as soon as recording starts. If you leave it, click the Recording or Recording App card again to come back. Without a recording running, the page shows No Live Session.

The header shows whether you are recording audio only or video and audio, and whether the microphone is included.

Live models

Pick the live model from the model menu in the toolbar, and the spoken language from the language menu next to it. Models you haven’t downloaded are greyed out. Choosing one takes you to the settings page to download it.

• Parakeet EOU 160ms: English, lowest delay. Free.
• Parakeet EOU 320ms and Parakeet EOU 1280ms: English, trading a little more delay for throughput. Pro.
• Nemotron Streaming 560ms: multilingual, with punctuation. Pro.
• Scribe v2 Realtime: ElevenLabs’ online model. Pro, and needs Enable ElevenLabs and an API key in Settings › ElevenLabs Online. Audio is sent to ElevenLabs.

Download the Parakeet and Nemotron models in Settings › Parakeet Model. See choosing a model.

The live transcript is a draft. When you stop, TranscribeX transcribes the whole recording again with your default model (if Auto Transcribe after recording is on).

Toolbar controls

While recording, the buttons at the top of the transcript are:

• Caption Settings: font, colors, speakers and caption language (below).
• Translate captions: turns live translation on or off (Pro).
• Show Live Caption: opens the floating caption window.
• Pause / Resume: pauses the recording.
• Stop: ends and saves the recording.

Right-click the transcript for Increase Text Size, Decrease Text Size, Copy Transcript and Clear All. After you stop, Open job takes you to the saved recording.

Notes and AI Chat

Click Show Panel in the window toolbar to open the side panel. It has two tabs:

• Notes: type your own notes during the meeting. They are saved with the recording, and they are added under OTHER NOTES at the end of the AI summary when it is exported or emailed.
• AI Chat: ask questions about what has been said so far, for example “What did I miss?”. Sending a message is Pro and uses your AI service. See chat.

Caption Settings

• Speakers: Enable Diarization (Pro) and Suppress Speaker Echo, which mutes the other participants’ voices that leak back into your mic through speakers. It applies to the current recording right away.
• Caption Language: Live Translation, the Target language, and whether to Show Both, Only Original or Only Translation.
• Font: style and size of the transcript text.
• Original Color and Translation Color: text colors.

Floating Live Caption window

The Live Caption window shows large captions that float above your other windows, for example on top of a Zoom call. Open it with Show Live Caption on the live page, or from the TranscribeX menu bar icon while a recording is running.

• Drag the window to move it, and resize it from the edges. The text size adapts to the window.
• Move the pointer over the window to show its controls: Caption Settings, translation, Pause / Resume, Stop and Close Live Caption.
• Its Caption Settings also has Transparency: turn on Translucent and set the amount with the slider (45% by default).

Live speaker identification (Pro)

With Settings › Live › Diarize Live Transcription on (the default for Pro), supported live models show speaker changes and put names on voices you have saved as voice profiles. To create profiles, open a finished transcription, run diarization, rename the speakers and choose Save as Voice Profiles in the Speakers panel. In app recordings with the mic on, your mic track is labelled You. The full recording gets proper speaker diarization after you stop.

Live translation (Pro)

Live translation uses Apple Translate on your Mac. It needs:

• macOS 15 or later.
• A target language downloaded in Settings › Translation under Apple Language Packages. Only downloaded languages appear in the Target menu.
• A live transcription language that Apple Translate supports.

Then click Translate captions in the toolbar, or turn on Live Translation in Caption Settings and pick the target. If the button is greyed out, hover over it to see which requirement is missing. For translating finished transcripts with DeepL or AI, see languages and translation.