Ada Dictation

Transcribe and edit privately, with unlimited minutes

2 followers

Transcribe and edit privately, with unlimited minutes

2 followers

Ada Dictation automatically transcribes spoken audio into text, entirely offline. Import or record for live transcripts. Multiple languages supported. Use synced timestamps to edit the audio. Tap on text to jump to the audio.

Launch tags:iOS•iPad•Productivity

Launch Team

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Promoted

I’ve been searching for an on-device transcription app and this looks like exactly what I need, but I’m confused about the pricing. It says on your website (and you’ve said here) that there’s a free trial with a $20 yearly sub to unlock the full version. That sounds fair, and I’m all for subscription apps because obviously developers need to eat too. But in the app store the app is listed as costing 7.99 euros, with no trial and no subscription in app purchase. Is this a recent change in pricing, or is there something funky going on with the app store?

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7yr ago

Ada Dictation, for Mac

Maker

@clixiaamelia It is a recent change. I've decided to unlink the costs of the Mac app and the iOS app, as well as simplify development, so the cost is now a one-time download.

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7yr ago

Ada Dictation, for Mac

Maker

I'm really excited to launch Dictation by Blueshift. My first career was as a journalist, and transcription was always unwanted grunt work. No automated transcription is perfect though, so I made the editing features in the app, like syncing words to timestamps and keeping the timestamps synced as the editing goes. I'm also happy to report that the transcript happens offline. I'm using an iOS 13-only speech recognition framework from Apple that now allows the transcript to happen on device. You can try it on airplane mode! So there are these things together that make it unique as a transcription app, even aside from the offline mode: You can transcribe live, or import files and you can edit with timestamps. I've seen those features separately in different apps, but not altogether. The quality is on par with Siri. It works best when the microphone is about half an arm's length away, a natural phone holding position, for instance. It also works best when recording a person directly, instead of from a speaker. As for pricing, I'm aiming for it to be enough to support major features, improvements and upkeep each year. There is a lot of room to grow! And it's still at least a fifth the cost of other automated transcription competitors. (I say at least because the minutes are unlimited, so the more it's used, the more bang you get for your buck.) Let me know what you think! Edit: We've modified the business plan, and the app is now a pay to download, no in-app purchases, no subscriptions model. This simplifies development on multiple fronts, makes us even more competitive at the new cost, and we're also unlinking the cost of the iOS app from the Mac app we just released!

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7yr ago

@waller_matthew This is a great idea! What's on the roadmap for your product?

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7yr ago

Ada Dictation, for Mac

Maker

@_derek_mei I have plenty of active plans for where to go next. Having speaker labels would be extremely valuable, although a challenging engineering task to do on the device. AI punctuation. Improved accuracy. A watch app! A Mac app! There is a lot of room to grow. What would you like to see though?

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7yr ago

Great app, nice design, good work. I understand model behind subscribe at the beginning with free trial, but I dislike need to do that to even open the app.

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7yr ago

Ada Dictation, for Mac

Maker

@maciej_sieminski Thank you! We just recently launched a new version of the app where we provide an always-free record-five-minutes-at-a-time version of the app to test out the quality (or just enjoy the app, if that meets the needs), and a pro-level that can be accessed either through an annual subscription (still with a free trial), or through a one-time, lifetime purchase.

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7yr ago

@waller_matthew that’s what I’m talking about! Great!

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7yr ago

No available in France @waller_matthew ? What's the difference between this and Steno?

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7yr ago

Ada Dictation, for Mac

Maker

@ben_duagim Hi Ben. At the moment we do not have support for French. We're using a new library available in iOS 13 and French is not yet supported. As you noted, it is supported in Steno. The difference between Steno and Dictation is that Steno uses Google's Cloud Speech API, whereas Dictation uses all on-device transcription, which lets us bring the cost way down. Steno requires a pay per minute because Google charges per minute. With Dictation, the minutes are unlimited. The tradeoff is that not as many languages are available (yet), and Google Cloud Speech seems to do a better job at recognizing more distant audio. Steno is also a more mature app, with additional features like auto uploading to different service like Dropbox, Google Drive and iCloud Drive. Those features may also come to Dictation in the future if it's something that users find wanting.

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7yr ago

Any plans for an Android version?

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7yr ago

Ada Dictation, for Mac

Maker

@james_laslavic1 I would love to have one. Android is a little tougher because I would need to make the machine learning model from scratch for each language, whereas it's a ready-built framework for iOS. It took Google a team of engineers to run their model only on the Pixel line of phones and only in English. However, if Google opens up its work to Android developers in general, or if the current app brings in enough to enable creating those models, then I would love to move forward with that.

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7yr ago

The Prompt Craftsman

Great concept! Looking forward to check it out as it is not released in Australia yet.

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7yr ago

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