Privacy & trust
The short version: your audio and your transcript stay on your computer. Here is the whole story, in plain language.
What is captured
Only what you explicitly choose, in one of three modes — and the mode picker on the front page is the only thing that decides which.
This computer's audio: when you click Record, your browser shows its own picker and you choose one tab (or window, or screen). Live Transcribe receives that source's audio — and a tiny throwaway video signal the browser insists on sending along, which is shrunk to a single pixel and never shown, saved, or used.
Microphone: the microphone is captured only after you pick that mode and your browser asks you and you allow it — never in the other mode, never on page load. By default your device's own automatic gain and noise reduction are left on, so quiet and distant voices are picked up — all of it processing that runs on your device like everything else. A visible “raw signal” toggle turns both off for close-up recording in a quiet room. Echo cancellation is always off (it is phone-call processing that smears room recordings). One honest limit: on a phone, a phone call takes the microphone over, so no app — this one included — can transcribe a phone's own calls. Microphone mode is for rooms you are in, or a second device beside a speakerphone.
Audio file: a recording already on your device, read only when you pick it in the file dialog. It is decoded and transcribed on your machine like everything else, and the file itself is never copied anywhere.
What the app works out about a recording
After a recording, the app shows “Key excerpts” and “By the numbers”. Both are computed on your machine and both are mechanical: the excerpts are sentences quoted word for word from your own transcript, chosen by counting which sentences share the most vocabulary with the rest — and the numbers (words per minute, questions asked, sentences with numbers) are counted, with each line pointing at the exact moment it came from. Nothing here is written by an AI, nothing is a judgment, and none of it is a summary. The optional “tidy the transcript” switch only ever removes filler words and stuttered repeats — it never adds or rewords anything, and switching it off shows the exact words again.
Where the transcription comes from
The speech-recognition engine is a piece of software that runs inside your browser, on your computer's own processor. The first time you record, it is downloaded once from this site — the dialog that asks first always shows the exact size, which depends on the quality level you pick — and kept in your browser's storage, so later visits skip the download. Every file is checked against a known fingerprint before it is used. No audio is ever sent anywhere to be transcribed — the transcription happens entirely on your machine, which is the whole point of the download.
What is stored on your computer
- The engine files, in your browser's storage, so they download only once.
- Transcript checkpoints, saved in your browser as the words are recognized — this is what lets a transcript survive a crashed tab or a dead laptop battery.
- The audio recording, kept temporarily in your browser's storage during a session so you can choose “Save Audio” afterwards. It becomes a file of yours only if you save it.
Everything above lives in your browser's storage for this site, on your disk, under your control. By default nothing is stored on a server — this site's server hands out the app and the engine files and keeps none of your text. Two features can change that, both off unless switched on deliberately, and both described in full below: the Server recorder and the Transcript bridge.
What is sent over the network
By default, nothing of yours. The page and the engine files come down from this site; no audio, no transcript, no analytics, and no telemetry go up, and the browser's own security policy for this site blocks talking to any other server. If you are technical, you can verify this yourself: open your browser's developer tools on the Network tab during a recording and watch nothing leave. The nuances below are the complete list of exceptions, and the last one is the only thing here that can send your words anywhere.
One nuance, stated fully: the “My calls” page can show upcoming earnings dates from a public calendar feed. That feed is fetched by this site's server from a data provider (Alpha Vantage), at most once a day, and the request is identical no matter who visits or what calls anyone follows — so the provider learns nothing about you, and your browser still talks only to this site. Your calls list itself lives in your browser's storage and never leaves your device.
A second, narrower nuance: a call's Prep button (and the official-transcript viewer behind it) asks this site's server for that one company's earnings history or a past call's published transcript. Those lookups are symbol-specific — the data provider sees which ticker the server asked about (though not who asked, or anything else). They happen only when you click, are cached on the server for a day, and nothing about your recordings or transcripts rides along. If that trade is not worth it to you, don't click Prep — nothing else uses these lookups.
The third nuance is the Server recorder, and it is the one feature where this site's server touches audio at all. When its owner has switched it on, you can hand the server a direct media link (a replay's playlist, say) and it downloads that stream to its own disk — only the link you gave it, nothing from your device. The recording stays on the server until you delete it; transcription still happens entirely in your browser when you click Transcribe. The access token you paste is a capability key for that server, kept in this browser's storage — it is not a password to anything else. If the section isn't visible, the feature is off and this paragraph describes nothing.
The fourth nuance is the Transcript bridge, and it is the only feature that sends what was said off this device. Switched on, each paragraph is copied to this site's server as it is committed, so a long call survives the tab closing and can be read while it is still running. Said plainly, because it is the one claim on this page that a feature can reverse: with the bridge on, your transcript text is stored on the server — not the audio, which never leaves your browser, but the words. It is off until you switch it on yourself, in the Transcript bridge section on the front page: that section takes an access token of the bridge's own, and turns the bridge off again in one click. The Server recorder's token does not turn it on, and neither does anything else. Turning it on during a session also sends what that session has already committed — the words so far, not just the words to come — and timestamped notes you type travel with the transcript while it is on (one honest difference: a note that failed to send is not re-sent when the session ends, the way the words are). While the bridge is on, that section says so and shows what is still waiting to be sent, so you are never guessing; an armed bridge always shows its section, even when the server cannot be reached. Switching it off stops anything further leaving; what was already sent stays on the server (there is no delete control for it in this app yet, so removing the server's copy is the server owner's act). If the section is not on the page at all, no bridge token is stored here and this server offered nowhere to put transcripts — nothing leaves; and if it is there but you have not switched it on, this paragraph still describes nothing and the Network tab check above shows nothing leaving.
How to wipe everything
Because everything is in your browser's storage, your browser's own controls remove it all: click the padlock/tune icon next to the address, open Site settings, and choose Delete data (in Chrome: Settings → Privacy → Site settings → View permissions and data stored across sites → this site → Delete). That removes the cached engine, all transcript checkpoints, and any unsaved audio. Files you saved with the Save buttons are ordinary files of yours — delete them like any other file. One carve-out, stated plainly: what already left for the server is not in your browser's storage, so this does not touch it — a Server recorder recording stays until you delete it in its section, and anything the Transcript bridge sent stays on the server until it is removed there.
What does not exist yet
Honesty about the edges: there is no sharing feature, no account, and no cloud sync. If any of that is ever added, it will be a visible choice — not a quiet change to where your words go. (Microphone mode arrived exactly that way: as a visible choice on the front page, never a default.)