Live Transcribe & Notification

Research at Google

About this app

Live Transcribe & Sound Notifications makes everyday conversations and surrounding sounds more accessible among people who are deaf and hard of hearing, using just your Android phone.

On most devices, you can open Live Transcribe & Sound Notifications with these steps:
1. Open your device's Settings app
2. Tap Accessibility
3. Depending on which feature you'd like to use, tap Live Transcribe or Sound Notifications

You can also use the accessibility button, gesture, or Quick Settings to start Live Transcribe or Sound Notifications (https://g.co/a11y/shortcutsFAQ).

Real-time transcriptions
• Get transcriptions in real-time in over 120 languages and dialects. Add custom words that you use frequently, like names or household items.
• Set your phone to vibrate when someone says your name.
• Type responses in your conversation.
• Use external microphones found in wired headsets, Bluetooth headsets, and USB mics for better audio reception.
• On foldable phones, show transcriptions and typed responses on the outside screen so it's easier to communicate with others.
• Choose to save transcriptions for 3 days. Saved transcriptions will stay on your device for 3 days so you can copy and paste them elsewhere. By default, transcriptions are not saved.

Sound Notifications
• Get notified about important sounds around you, like when a smoke alarm beeps or baby cries.
• Add custom sounds to get notified when your appliances beep.
• Review sounds from the past 12 hours to check what was happening around you.

Requirements:
• Android 12 and up

Live Transcribe & Sound Notifications was made in collaboration with Gallaudet University, the premier Deaf and hard of hearing university in the US.

Help & feedback
• To provide feedback and get product updates, join the Accessible Google Group at https://g.co/a11y/forum
• For help using Live Transcribe & Sound Notifications, connect with us at https://g.co/disabilitysupport

Permissions notice
Microphone: Live Transcribe and Sound Notifications needs microphone access to transcribe the speech and sounds around you. The audio is not stored after transcriptions or recognized sounds are processed.
Notifications: Sound Notifications features require notifications access in order to notify you of sounds.
Nearby devices: Live Transcribe needs access to nearby devices to connect with your Bluetooth microphones.

Ratings and reviews

Update seems to have made it worse. I've had this app for a while and used it for the first time recently for programmes that don't have subtitles. I found it 80% accurate on transcription so decided to update it as it had been months since I initially got it. Sadly the changes are awful. The text moves on my phone so fast reforming sentences I can't read it (I have it set to the smallest text size). It's even worse with the accuracy probably around 50-60% now and misses a lot of dialogue.

Completely and utterly worthless for Cantonese. It can't even detect a single word of Cantonese spoken by native speakers with no background noise whatsoever, and unhelpfully tries to insist you're listening to Vietnamese or Mandarin (a language that's not even correctly named in the app). Try again when you've learned how to Asia, Google, because right now you're worse than useless.

takes forever (sandlot voice). finally got the job done for one conversation but only after hours. you have to ensure the phone and computer screen dont time out and even then I could only get one text conversation to save as a pdf. you have to pay for anything more than 6 text messages.