Transcribe WMA for old recordings, Windows audio, and voice notes

What is a WMA file?

WMA (Windows Media Audio) is Microsoft's audio format, widely used on older Windows PCs, voice recorders, and dictaphones. It is less common on modern devices, which is exactly why so many current transcription tools no longer accept it, leaving people with WMA archives stuck.

How to convert WMA to text

SnailText turns a WMA into text locally, in four steps:

1. Open the Transcribe files screen in SnailText.
2. Drop in your WMA file, or a whole folder of them.
3. Pick your output: plain text, Markdown, JSON, or SRT / VTT subtitles.
4. Run it. The transcript is saved next to your files or wherever you choose.

The Whisper speech model transcribes on your own machine, so the audio never leaves your computer and there is no per-minute charge. WMA is a audio format, so SnailText uses a codec pack it downloads once inside the app. After that one-time download it works offline, and transcription runs fully on your machine.

You have WMA recordings from an old Windows machine, a voice recorder, or a dictaphone, and you want transcripts. SnailText reads WMA and transcribes it locally, so there is no need to convert the files first or upload them to a service that may not support the format.

Free WMA to text converter, no upload

Most "wma to text online" tools upload your file to a server and cap you at a few minutes unless you pay. SnailText is the opposite: it transcribes WMA on your device, so nothing is uploaded, there is no length limit beyond your own memory, and the free tier has no per-minute meter. That makes it a fit for anything sensitive, recordings with names, client audio, or private notes, where sending the file to a web service is the thing you want to avoid.