MP3 to text: transcribe an MP3 file on your computer

You have an MP3 and you want the words in it as text. A podcast episode you downloaded, a lecture from a voice recorder, an interview a phone app shared as MP3. TrueScribe turns the file into a transcript on your own Windows or Linux computer. There is no upload and no account, and the free version has no time or file limit.

This guide covers where MP3 files come from, how to transcribe MP3 to text in TrueScribe, what the free version includes and what Pro adds.

Where the MP3 comes from

MP3 is the format most audio ends up in once it leaves the device that recorded it. Handheld voice recorders and dictation machines save MP3 or offer it as an option. Recorder apps on a phone usually hand you an MP3 when you share a recording. Podcast apps download episodes as MP3. However the file reached your computer, TrueScribe reads it as it is. You do not convert it first.

TrueScribe accepts MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, FLAC, OGG and Opus audio, and MP4, MKV, MOV, WebM, AVI, WMV, FLV and M4V video.

How it works in TrueScribe

1. Open TrueScribe and drop the MP3 anywhere in the window, or select Transcribe Files on the home screen and pick the file.
2. TrueScribe detects the spoken language. If you know it, you can select it instead.
3. Wait for the transcript. It appears in the library next to the recording.

TrueScribe transcribes with Whisper on your computer. It suggests a model that suits your hardware and downloads it once, on first use. After that it reuses the model offline, so the next MP3 needs no connection. AMD, Intel and NVIDIA graphics cards speed up transcription with no CUDA toolkit to install, and a machine without a graphics card transcribes on the CPU. A long recording takes longer on a slower computer, but the file never leaves it.

Open the transcript and play the MP3 back against the waveform. Correct the text where it differs, with undo and redo if you change your mind. Enter names and jargon that Whisper mishears into the custom vocabulary once, and TrueScribe steers every new transcript toward the right spelling. A replacement rule fixes a term it always gets wrong.

What you get

• Unlimited MP3 transcription (Free). Every available transcription model, with no time or file limit.
• Editing, playback and search (Free). Correct the text against the audio, and search the text of every transcript in the library later.
• AI Research (Free). Ask questions about the transcript with a local model, or with a cloud provider you configure.
• Export as TXT, SRT and WebVTT (Free). Under Content, Segments keeps the timestamps and Complete exports continuous prose. The preview shows the file before you save it.
• Custom vocabulary and replacements (Free). Names and jargon spelled right from the next transcript on.
• Speaker detection and naming (Pro). Label who said what in an interview or a panel recorded as MP3.
• Local translation (Pro). Translate the transcript into 25 languages on your computer and keep the original.
• Batch transcription and watch folders (Pro). Queue many MP3 files at once, or point TrueScribe at the folder your recorder drops files into.
• More export formats (Pro). DOCX, PDF, Markdown, JSON and CSV.

Limits

TrueScribe transcribes the MP3. It does not edit the audio, so there is no trimming, no noise reduction and no conversion to another format. A recording with heavy background noise or people talking over each other produces more errors, and Whisper makes mistakes with names and numbers, so read the transcript against the audio before you rely on it. Speaker names need Pro. The first transcription needs a connection to download the model. TrueScribe runs on Windows and Linux, not on macOS.

Related guides

• Transcribe M4A to text on your own computer covers the format phones and Zoom save instead of MP3.
• WAV to text covers the uncompressed export from a recorder or a DAW, the file an MP3 usually started as.
• Coming from an online converter? See how TrueScribe compares with Happy Scribe, a browser-based service with monthly minutes.

Download TrueScribe and drop in your first MP3, or see what Pro includes.