How accurate is browser speech-to-text?+
Accuracy depends on your microphone quality, accent, and background noise. Chrome's Web Speech API uses Google's speech recognition engine and is quite accurate for clear speech. Specialised tools like Whisper or Deepgram offer higher accuracy for noisy environments.
Which browsers support the Web Speech API?+
Chrome and Edge support it natively. Firefox and Safari have limited or no support. For cross-browser speech recognition, use a cloud API (Google Speech-to-Text, AWS Transcribe, or OpenAI Whisper).
Is my audio recorded or sent to a server?+
This tool uses the browser's built-in Web Speech API. In Chrome, audio is processed by Google's servers as part of Chrome's speech recognition service. The transcribed text is returned to the page. No audio is stored by Searchlight.
Can I transcribe a pre-recorded audio file?+
The Web Speech API only supports live microphone input. For pre-recorded audio transcription, use a file-based service like OpenAI Whisper, Otter.ai, or Google's Cloud Speech API which accept audio file uploads.