How to Get Live Transcription in Your Browser
By Eman Khoubian, Founder & CEO · Updated
Free live captions are for following along, and most are gone when the call ends. Chrome and Windows store nothing, and Zoom no longer saves captions after a meeting. If you need the words afterwards, use a live transcribe website that records while it transcribes. In WhisperAI, that's Record Live: the text appears as people speak, and the audio is saved as you go.
Live transcribe for PC, Mac and phone: what the free tools keep
Live Transcribe itself is Google's app for Android phones. On a computer, the free options are the captions built into Chrome, Windows and the Mac.
Here's what each one captions, and what's left once the conversation is over:
| Tool | What it captions | What's kept afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Live TranscribeAndroid phones | Speech in the room, through the mic | Up to 3 days, then deleted. You can export it before then. |
| Chrome Live CaptionChrome on Windows, Mac, Linux and ChromeOS | Video, calls and other audio playing in Chrome | Nothing. Captions are never stored. |
| Windows Live CaptionsWindows 11, version 22H2 and later | Any audio on the PC. The mic is off by default. | Nothing. Captions aren't stored on the PC or in the cloud. |
| iPhone Live CaptionsiPhone 11 or later | Calls, and speech in the room through the mic | You can copy the captions. Call captions can last up to an hour after the call. |
| Mac Live CaptionsMacs with Apple silicon | Computer audio or the mic | Apple doesn't mention a way to save them. |
| Zoom captionsZoom meetings | The meeting | Not after the meeting. During it, you can scroll back 3 minutes. |
| Teams captionsTeams meetings | The meeting | Nothing. Teams doesn't save captions. |
Zoom, Teams and Google Meet can also make a meeting transcript, separate from the captions. That one is saved, but to the host's or organizer's account, and only if their settings and plan allow it. Zoom's are off until a host or admin turns them on, and Google puts Meet's in the organizer's Drive on certain Workspace editions. If you didn't set up the call, what you get afterwards is up to whoever did.
How to use a live transcribe website
Here's the whole setup in WhisperAI:
- Open WhisperAI in Chrome or Edge and choose Record Live on the dashboard, next to Upload File.
- Under What are you recording? pick Meeting, Interview, Self note or Lecture, then set the spoken language.
- Choose the Audio source: Microphone + tab audio, Microphone only, or Tab audio only. Meetings and interviews start on Microphone + tab audio.
- Press Start Recording. If you picked tab audio, your browser asks which tab to share. Pick it, then select Share tab audio.
Words appear in the Live Transcript panel as people speak. In meetings and interviews, each turn gets a speaker label (Speaker A, Speaker B) and the time it was said, and a word can still change as the transcription settles. You can pause, bookmark a moment you'll want to find later, and press Stop when you're done.
Live recording works on every plan, within the plan's minutes. It uses the same minutes as an uploaded file, so a 45-minute meeting uses 45.
Live call transcription for Zoom, Meet and Teams
For a call, you want two things in the recording: your voice from the microphone and everyone else from the call. Where the call runs decides how you get both.
- The meeting is in a browser tab. In Chrome or Edge, choose Microphone + tab audio, share the meeting's tab and select Share tab audio. This works on Windows, Mac, Linux and ChromeOS.
- The meeting is in the Zoom or Teams desktop app. On Windows and ChromeOS, share your Entire Screen and select Also share system audio. On a Mac or Linux, browsers only capture sound from a tab, so join the meeting from your browser instead.
- You're on Safari or Firefox. They record the microphone only, so switch browsers for calls.
No bot joins the call, and nobody gets an invite. WhisperAI records what your browser can hear, so the transcript is yours, whatever the host has set for captions and transcripts. If you want answers during the call and a recap after it, the meeting assistant page has more.
What happens to live audio transcription when you press Stop
The live text is a fast draft, written while people are still mid-sentence. The saved audio is what matters.
Once you stop, we join the saved audio into one recording and transcribe the whole thing again, the same way we transcribe an uploaded file. That second pass is the transcript you keep, with every line timestamped and, for meetings and interviews, speakers separated.
The live text is a draft. Your final transcript is made from the saved audio.
From there it's an ordinary transcript. Export it as TXT, DOCX or PDF, or as SRT or VTT captions (the timestamps guide explains which to pick). On Business Pro, Enterprise and the Developer API plan, you also get a recap with the decisions and action items.
Live transcription in other languages
18 languages get the full live view with speaker labels: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Vietnamese, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese. You can choose up to six spoken languages for one recording, or leave it on Auto-detect and the live text follows people as they switch between those 18.
Recording in a language outside those 18? Many more, Korean and Polish among them, still get live text, without speaker labels. If a language has none, your recording is still saved and transcribed afterwards. Uploads cover 98 languages; the supported languages page lists them.
If you need to read along in another language, turn on Live translation in Session Settings. Every line then appears in a second language as people speak.
Questions about live transcription
- Is there a Live Transcribe for iPhone?
- Not from Google. Google's Live Transcribe is an Android app, and the iPhone app called Live Transcribe is a separate one from Mighty Fine Apps. iPhone 11 and later also have Apple's Live Captions built in. If you want to keep the words, open WhisperAI in Safari and use Record Live with the microphone.
- Is live transcription free?
- Yes. The live captions built into Chrome, Windows, iPhone and Mac come with your browser, phone or computer. WhisperAI has a free plan with 5 minutes a month and no card. Premium is $14.99 a month for 120 minutes, and Business Pro is $24.99 a month for unlimited minutes.
- How long can one live recording be?
- Up to 12 hours on Business Pro and Enterprise. On the other plans, a recording can run as long as the minutes you have left.
- What if my internet drops while I'm recording?
- The browser holds on to the audio and sends it when the connection comes back. If it stays down for more than 5 minutes, WhisperAI saves what had arrived as an interrupted recording. Closing the tab works the same way: the audio already received is saved.