#google-recorder — Public Fediverse posts

A lesson in AI transcription: The “play” button in Google Recorder is there for a reason

A little over two months after I canceled my Evernote subscription instead of eating a 92 percent subscription-rate increase, I’m still figuring out how to handle two tasks that app had handled well. One is scanning business cards, a chore I have set aside because I can still see part of my desktop at home; the other is transcribing recordings of interviews.

For the shortest conversations, typing in real-time on my phone or laptop suffices. The same goes for interviews with people so practiced at talking to journalists that they habitually speak at a measured pace and in concise sentences.

But in many other cases, it’s easier to record the conversation and transcribe it later–and over the last several years, machine learning and AI have helped software get good at that. I had used Otter for a while before Evernote added its own implementation and then dramatically improved it; dropping that subscription in favor of Obsidian, which doesn’t seem to offer a comparable tool, required finding a replacement that would ideally come without its own fees.

Google’s free Live Transcribe is built into Android’s accessibility software and so was my first choice. But I soon got grumpy with its iffy word recognition, clunky controls, and limited export options.

My next stop was another Google app, this one reserved for Pixel phones like my own Pixel 9 Pro: Google Recorder.

The single biggest advantage of that free app is that its AI transcription works offline and on-device. That keeps it usable in settings with problematic bandwidth and keeps my recordings private instead of requiring a cloud upload for transcriptions. Recorder also offers multiple export options via its Share menu: saving a .txt transcript file to my phone or other destinations, creating a new Google Docs file, or dumping the transcript into Google’s NotebookLM AI tool.

But after two months of leaning on this app, I have to report that its accuracy also falls a little short of what Evernote did and what I’ve seen from briefly trying such competing apps as Read AI. Recorder often takes a few words to recognize a change in speakers, it sometimes split sentences when it shouldn’t, it can miss brief interjections, and it incorrectly capitalizes enough nouns to make me wonder if it was trained on German source texts.

Whatever the faults, those are usually easy problems to fix. I will open that transcript in whatever editing app I prefer, tap the “play” button on the recording on my phone or its cloud backup, then type in whatever Google’s AI missed. This usually requires only one pass, and since I’d want to listen to a recording of another AI transcript before going with its output anyway, it doesn’t feel like time seriously wasted.

None of this seems seamless. But when you’re trying to turn somebody else’s speech into quotable copy, nothing is–as I was reminded of recently when I opened notes I had hurriedly typed from a meeting that I was sure would be quick enough not to require recording, then wished I had a rewind button on that decision.

pixel recorder with transcripts for pixel watch / wearos / android wear / Galaxy watch

draft - can we get pixel recorder for wearos with the AI transcription and wifi backup - *not phone backup*. Wifi backup directly to Google account is better. I don't want audio recorder files floating around my phone. That's why I prefer pixel recorder. It's like Google photos backup for audio and audio transcripts

#pixelrecorder
#audiotranscript
#googlerecorder
#pixelwatch
#galaxywatch
#voicerecorder
#wearOS
#transcript
#transcription
#google
#applewatch
#audiotranscription
#livetranscribe
#wearos4
#wearos5
#galaxywatch6
#galaxywatch7
#galaxywatchultra
#pixelwatch2
#pixelwatch3
#watchos11
#watchos12
#applewatch
#applewatchseriesX
#applewatchultra

pixel recorder with transcripts for pixel watch / wearos / android wear / Galaxy watch

draft - can we get pixel recorder for wearos with the AI transcription and wifi backup - *not phone backup*. Wifi backup directly to Google account is better. I don't want audio recorder files floating around my phone. That's why I prefer pixel recorder. It's like Google photos backup for audio and audio transcripts

#pixelrecorder
#audiotranscript
#googlerecorder
#pixelwatch
#galaxywatch
#voicerecorder
#wearOS
#transcript
#transcription
#google
#applewatch
#audiotranscription
#livetranscribe
#wearos4
#wearos5
#galaxywatch6
#galaxywatch7
#galaxywatchultra
#pixelwatch2
#pixelwatch3
#watchos11
#watchos12
#applewatch
#applewatchseriesX
#applewatchultra

pixel recorder with transcripts for pixel watch / wearos / android wear / Galaxy watch

draft - can we get pixel recorder for wearos with the AI transcription and wifi backup - *not phone backup*. Wifi backup directly to Google account is better. I don't want audio recorder files floating around my phone. That's why I prefer pixel recorder. It's like Google photos backup for audio and audio transcripts

#pixelrecorder
#audiotranscript
#googlerecorder
#pixelwatch
#galaxywatch
#voicerecorder
#wearOS
#transcript
#transcription
#google
#applewatch
#audiotranscription
#livetranscribe
#wearos4
#wearos5
#galaxywatch6
#galaxywatch7
#galaxywatchultra
#pixelwatch2
#pixelwatch3
#watchos11
#watchos12
#applewatch
#applewatchseriesX
#applewatchultra

#GWB - Google Rekorder: Neue Web-App für Pixel-Nutzer ist da; soll Zugriff auf alle gesicherten Audioaufnahmen geben - https://www.googlewatchblog.de/2021/02/google-rekorder-neue-web/ #GooglePlayAktion #googlerecorder #pixel4 #pixel5