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

I'm using to translate classes on Domestika. Currently I'm taking a class with German language. The translation is good - there is a delay, but I expected that as it's catching voice as text then reading that text to me via ear phones. It's a lot of pausing and playing, but I'm sure I'll get used to that. The app seems to start talking when there's a pause in the speech it's capturing, so there is a rhythm.

I am cautiously rating 5 stars as this application seems to work well at transcribing and also translating live audio including on-device with the notable exception of neither transcribing nor translating TTS Text-To-Speech while another application, such as Gemini (another multilingual polyglot beast) is reading auto-generated text output. This function is entirely separate from the Recorder App (which is trash).

The voice to text on Android has only gone downhill in the last 3 to 4 years. It used to transcribe everything with good accuracy but now it decides regularly to add random punctuation where it doesn't belong and the punctuation makes no sense from a grammatical standpoint creating run-on sentences like it is its primary function. What have you done to your functionality?

What’s new

• New visual line breaks to improve transcript readability.
• Touch feedback for interactive elements like text size sliders, pinch-to-zoom gestures, low-volume TTS controls, and transcript scrolling.