How to convert audio to text
Three steps. Download SnailText for Mac or Windows, open it and drop in your audio file, and read the transcript a moment later. No upload, no sign-up, no minutes to buy — the speech model runs on your own machine, so it is free with no minute meter.
It reads the common formats with no conversion step: MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, OGG, Opus, and FLAC. Give it one file, or a folder full, and get text back either way.
Get a transcript from an audio file
Whatever the recording — a call, a voice memo, a podcast episode, an interview, a meeting — if it is an audio file on your disk, SnailText turns it into an editable transcript. It is the fast way to get a transcript from audio without uploading it anywhere.
Transcribe a single recording, or point it at a folder and get a transcript from every file in one run. Export each on its own, or all into one document.
AI audio transcription, offline
The transcription uses on-device AI speech models — OpenAI Whisper, and NVIDIA Parakeet on Pro. It is AI audio transcription that runs offline: the recording never leaves your computer, and there is no cloud account or API key involved. It runs on your CPU, so you do not need a graphics card — a GPU just makes it faster.
On Pro, an optional AI post-processing pass can go further — fixing errors, adjusting the writing style, or translating the transcript — still on your own machine. That step needs a GPU with 6 GB of VRAM or more; plain transcription does not.
Transcribe MP3, M4A, WAV and more to text
SnailText transcribes MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, OGG, Opus, and FLAC out of the box. Output is your choice of plain text (.txt), Markdown (.md), or JSON.
It gives you a clean written transcript. It does not label who spoke (no speaker diarization) in batch, so it is best for getting the words out rather than a formatted multi-speaker record. Working from video files? Or transcribe a whole folder at once.