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Show HN: Voiceliner – Capture structured braindumps on the go
- throwoutway 5y agoThis looks pretty awesome! Is there a way to export them? I’d like to push them into Trello or another tool
- mvkel 5y agoKeeping it all local is brill. There’s def “signup fatigue” with apps like this. This is perfect.
- QuibbleQuota 5y agoSuper cool! I’ve been slowly getting over the self consciousness of using Siri in public. Maybe I’ll start with around the house first…
- QuibbleQuota 5y agoI love really niche but really useful gems like this! Could anyone recommend any others?
- maxkrieger 5y agoHey HN! A few months ago, all I wanted was a voice memos where I could hold-to-record. Holding and releasing lets me “burst” quick chains of thoughts together. It’s especially useful when walking with friends, to capture stray references and ideas. After testing the initial burst interaction, I realized I wanted to transcribe them, and relate notes together into a hierarchy. Other features came naturally, like geotagging each note and swiping during recording to change the “temperature” (importance) of a note. The app is open source and written in Flutter.
- abathur 5y agoCool concept. Looking forward to trying it out. I've thought about taking voice notes before, though I've imagined that as more of a private hands-free thing. I'm curious what your experience of using it in public or with others around (the walks with friends, but also family or colleagues?) is like? (I sometimes go on a walk while I talk myself through a problem; I've noticed I almost always stop speaking while someone else is in earshot. I suspect I'd also be inclined to avoid taking voice notes with others around.)
- maxkrieger 5y agoIt’s certainly awkward! I’m personally willing to stomach it because it’s kinda cool to “invent a new social primitive”, as dorky as it appears. There’s a very real tradeoff between mere awkwardness and fumbling with a text entry/forgetting the thing altogether. I also recently rolled out a “create text note” escape hatch in the menu.
- ijidak 5y agoInstalled. Been need something like this for a while! Love the initial setup wizard. Great way to teach the user, clarifying what various permissions are for.
- copperx 5y agoFantastic! I love that it is all local.
- imperialdrive 5y agoThe audio goes out.
- mh- 5y agoOnly on Android.
- pchangr 5y agoAmazing! I’ve been looking for a way to put down my thoughts for a while, tried carrying a pocket notebook.. the notes app.. zen journal .. but writing is so much friction .. I used voice notes for a while but couldn’t search them for later so it was difficult.. I hope this is the one ^^
- jcun4128 5y agoWhat do you use for the transcription part? Paid library or something open? More curious on accuracy.
- mellonaut 5y agoAccording to the source its azure. https://github.com/maxkrieger/voiceliner/blob/main/lib/repositories/azure_speech_recognizer.dart https://github.com/maxkrieger/voiceliner/blob/main/lib/repos...
- maxkrieger 5y agoon iOS, it's on-device. on Android, Azure - so far I haven't hit the free limit of 5hr/mo. Might start charging Android users if we hit the free limit.
- underdeserver 5y agoAndroid has on-device transcription for some devices (e.g. Pixel 5 and above). Maybe you could use that instead of charging?
- maxkrieger 5y agoEDIT: If you feel strongly about this and think it's possible please send in PRs. Thanks! Unfortunately you then lose ability to play back the original audio https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2319735/voice-recognition-on-android-with-recorded-sound-clip https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2319735/voice-recognitio.... This is a major usability tradeoff IMO, though I'm willing to be swayed to add an option. I suspect Google's limiting this because they don't want devices "freeloading" their cloud transcription service, since most phones can't do it on-device.
- petargyurov 5y agoThe link you posted is a 7 year old question; is the information still relevant? Surely copying the original audio is enough of a workaround? Not a mobile dev so could be wrong.
- hangtwenty 5y agoCongrats on launching! I've wanted exactly-this for years. I've sketched a few versions but it stayed on the back-burner for me, partly because friends/etc didn't see the appeal. I'm really excited to try it out.
- loginx 5y agoI think this is exactly what I've been looking for. I like going for walks and listening to audiobooks and podcasts, and I've been using Google's recorder as a way to "highlight" my findings, but it doesn't let me add to existing recordings so I can't collate sessions together. I'll be trying this on as a replacement.
- cycomanic 5y agoGreat idea! I've been trying for a while to find the best way to take notes when on the go, just installed to test it.
- scrollaway 5y agoSuper clean setup on iOS! Can’t wait to try it out, the concept is lovely. I use notion a TON but it’s not great for the most immediate time sensitive notes. Do you think you could integrate google calendar / reminders in some way? A lot of the kind of notes I would record on this kind of app have some form of either deadline, or are only relevant after a certain date or time. For example, “check in on this thread Monday morning”. I use google calendar reminders for this right now as they stack up but it’s not a great solution.
- maxkrieger 5y agoI'm less bullish on specific deadlines for these kinds of notes. I'm planning to do a weekly summary notification - "you made X notes last week, Y of them were high-priority" https://github.com/maxkrieger/voiceliner/issues/20 https://github.com/maxkrieger/voiceliner/issues/20
- scrollaway 5y agoI’ll give you some examples of some legitimate notes/reminders I’d take: - check this thing that opens tomorrow at 6pm - talk to the lawyers about x before friday - Fill in my PLF some time tomorrow so it’s ready for my trip Etc.
- cooperaustinj 5y agoReminders would be a useful addition to this for me, too.
- stewbrew 5y agocool. but on Android, wouldn't Gboard speech input, which also works offline, suffice for the speech input and transcription part?
- wielebny 5y agoIs it possible to change transcription language on iOS?
- maxkrieger 5y agoIt follows system settings, but I'm going to add app-specific localization soon! https://github.com/maxkrieger/voiceliner/issues/17 https://github.com/maxkrieger/voiceliner/issues/17
- andersonrkton 5y agoThis is perfect! Any chance to be able to select the target language for translation? Portuguese - Brazil for example :)
- maxkrieger 5y agoComing soon! https://github.com/maxkrieger/voiceliner/issues/17 https://github.com/maxkrieger/voiceliner/issues/17
- andersonrkton 5y agoSuggestion: a play button for the hole outline folder you are in… for example: I want to listen to everything outlined in that folder while running
- maxkrieger 5y agoUpvote here :) https://github.com/maxkrieger/voiceliner/issues/6 https://github.com/maxkrieger/voiceliner/issues/6
- cbreynoldson 5y agoLove it! Can't wait to see how this evolves over time.
- ccvannorman 5y agoIf this had automagical sorting / hierarchy of my recordings based on key words, or allowed me to "shuffle" my entire collection of recordings according to a few pre-set algorithms, this would be interesting. Example: I spend 5 weeks recording 200 sound bites about real estate development in PR. I do no organization. I click a button in the app marked "Organize by opportunity". It sorts my recordings into 4 folders with 2-3 nested with titles like "The Tulum project" and "Evan's group". I don't particularly need transcription because I don't want to do any of the work implementing the feature I just described ... As it is, it looks neat but I'll stick with iOS built-in recorder.
- mynameisvlad 5y agoHow would any non-domain specific tool (ie a voice recorder app for real estate or even real estate in PR" even know what "opportunity" means. It could do a loose keyword match but unless you used the words "Tulum" or "Evan" how would it know to link notes together without context on who Evan is?
- webmaven 5y ago> How would any non-domain specific tool (ie a voice recorder app for real estate or even real estate in PR" even know what "opportunity" means. > It could do a loose keyword match but unless you used the words "Tulum" or "Evan" how would it know to link notes together without context on who Evan is? Does it need to know? Fairly vanilla NLP can provide the data to categorize (or index) by identified parts of speech, such as verbs, proper nouns, etc. If you have a large enough pile of notes, categorizing or subcategorizing by combinations would be useful. There are pitfalls, such as lacking sufficient context for disambiguating between identically named people (eg. your sister Mary vs. Mary from work), but that doesn't negate the utility of such a feature. Further refinements for association and disambiguation would be highly contingent, but that very contingency can be modeled with Bayesian classification (or more advanced attentional mechanisms) that learns when to apply them. For example, a bit of sentiment analysis could help associate Mary (that you're often mad at) with the words 'project' and 'report', but Mary (that you like) with 'barbecue' and 'holiday' for clustering purposes. These supplementary techniques necessarily operate on 'small data', and the real challenge is finding natural UI flows and affordances to suggest them to the user when appropriate and solicit feedback without overwhelming.
- endymi0n 5y agoWas looking for something like this just today. Does it support hands-free operation (or while we're at it, does someone else know something that does)? This is currently my main criterion. I want something that captures my thoughts while hiking without seeing or touching the screen. Currently dabbling with Siri shortcuts, but they're pretty buggy and lacking. So if Voiceliner could either support the Shortcuts API and/or switch into a mode that's press-to-record / or start-stop, but somehow works on the connected Airpods only, that would be awesome. Bonus points for re-reading the transcription to me and very light editing on top (like document switching). Is there something like that?
- meesterdude 5y agoit's open source - and i can't imagine activating via play/pause would be overly difficult to implement, if it does not already do so.
- twobitshifter 5y agoHave you tried using voice control?
- nefitty 5y agoIf anyone is curious of a workflow that might work on ios: Settings > Accessibility > Back Tap. You can then assign a Shortcut to run when you tap the back of your phone. The taps are finicky for me, maybe because of my phone case. I might try them out again and see if it's worth ditching my case.
- meesterdude 5y agoWell done! Love that you can create outlines from voice recordings - super cool.
- mongol 5y agoIf this would support a bluetooth PTT microphone, it would be perfect. Then I could leave the phone in my pocket and have tangible, physical buttons to record with. I don't like messing with a touchscreen when out and about.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoFYI bluetooth microphones almost all degrade to some horrifically terrible codec that makes voice recognition much less reliable. I don't understand why in 2021 Bluetooth degrades to "worse than a 1970's land line" in quality as soon as something tries to use the microphone.
- thomas536 5y agoWhat's your favorite PTT mic? I'm always on the lookout for great device recommendations!
- mongol 5y agoI don't have one. But I think I would buy the Aina PTT Voice Responder if I bought one. https://shop.ainaptt.com/ptt-devices/21-ptt-voice-responder.html https://shop.ainaptt.com/ptt-devices/21-ptt-voice-responder....
- alias_neo 5y agoI have used a few of these for testing at work (I'm a developer). They're pretty solid devices, well built, audio quality is _subjectively_ pretty good and they have headset ports.
- dmd 5y agoI had high hopes for the MYLE, which I saw at CES 2016, but it never ended up getting built. https://web.archive.org/web/20161231051940/http://getmyle.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161231051940/http://getmyle.co...
- boardwaalk 5y agoI wonder if this could integrate with Siri (or Assistant), e.g. 'Tell Voiceliner <your note>'. Be better than fiddling with your phone, at least. Looks like there's an issue: https://github.com/maxkrieger/voiceliner/issues/35 https://github.com/maxkrieger/voiceliner/issues/35
- worewood 5y agoIs there a way to just type instead of speaking?
- maxkrieger 5y agoYup, check the menu in the corner or long-press anywhere in the empty space.
- afandian 5y agoThis looks really cool. I'v been looking for something like this for a while. Is there an APK download? I don't use the google store and the github page didn't seem to have an obvious link?
- wanderingmind 5y agoYou can use Aurora store to download and install almost any play store app.
- afandian 5y agoYes but it seems a bit perverse to do this for an Open Source project.
- ChuckMcM 5y agoOkay, this is super cool. When I started taking walks I found I was thinking through a lot of things but didn't have a way to remember all the things. So I started using the voice transcription notepad (so nice that people these days are less hostile to someone walking down the street mumbling about things :-)). In my case I was stuck taking the document and then re-editing/moving it over to Evernote manually which I didn't always want to do. This looks like it will replace my workflow with a single tool. That is super awesome. One feature request would be 'activate by airpod tap' so I wouldn't even have to hold my phone, just tap my airpods to make a note.
- nefitty 5y agoDid the transcription work well? I always found myself taking more time editing the text later than the time I saved with dictation.
- ChuckMcM 5y agoGenerally 90+% accurate on the transcriptions. I recognize however that speaking English with a mid-range male voice with a northern California accent is kind of like cheating.
- glenstein 5y agoThank you, I was just thinking today that I needed a tool exactly like this. My go-to brain dumping tool is simple note but it's too much separation between an ephemeral thought and the process of recording it. Especially clever because I think all the tools to do this have existed for basically as long as Android has existed, but this is a very good application of those tools.
- ridaj 5y agoCurious what API limitations are preventing you from doing the transcription device-local on Android?
- lazyresearcher 5y agoYou could integrate vosk for local on-device private transcription. https://github.com/alphacep/vosk-api https://github.com/alphacep/vosk-api
- maxkrieger 5y agothanks, this is a great idea. Curious how it stacks up against other libraries.
- robmsmt 5y agoi did a quick comparison with regards to word error rate... https://robmsmt.github.io/2021/09/04/benchmarking-asr-first-test/ https://robmsmt.github.io/2021/09/04/benchmarking-asr-first-... For my particular dataset it worked quite well. It was the best offline ASR that I tried.
- Cyphase 5y agoHow have I not heard about this before now? I hope it's as good as it looks!
- ashishb 5y agoI built a similar product for myself sometimes back - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.ashishb.voicenotes https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.ashishb.vo... (Android only)
- daguar 5y agoI've wanted this for a while – thanks so much!
- karmanyaahm 5y agoThis sounds great to take quick but organized notes for my use case - researching and prototyping, but when the notes need to be converted into a more formal 'report' later.
- gibolt 5y agoThis is the first instant download I have done from HN. Can't wait to try it out later. Great job!
- DarylZero 5y agoIs there a direct .apk download?
- pjs_ 5y agoThis is brilliant - simple, novel, local, open source. Love it. I had a dream at the beginning of the pandemic that people who spend all day in Zoom calls might be able to spend all day hiking as well. I tried quite hard to make it work a couple of times - big USB battery in the backpack - but LTE signal was never good enough up in the hills here.
- realty_geek 5y agoCrikey - my Xmas present has just arrived!! I have never gone from seeing something on hn and having it installed and loved so quickly! Thank you, thank you, thank you. And open sourcing it too - can't love you more ;)
- jrm4 5y agoInteresting. I've mostly achieved this with BlitzMail (basically, one button to an open textbox that emails to yourself.) But I might check this out as well.
- iansinnott 5y agoOh this is great. Just tried it out. A couple feature wishes: - Sync the audio + text somewhere (although maybe this can be done with SyncThing already?) - Add a widget / app action to support one-tap voice notes from the home screen
- rendall 5y agoAwesome!!! I have had it in the back of my mind for years to do something like this. I am so glad that you have stepped up. Very, very much needed. Now I just need to figure out how best to bulk transcribe the hours and years of audio recording...
- vonunov 5y agoI tried to do this for my rambling half-hour in-car voice "notes" using AWS S3 -> Lambda -> Transcribe. I got the flow working but the transcript is literally unplayable and I'm not sure how to get it to a usable quality. I have vague plans to experiment with IBM Watson but it's way back-burnered.
- Kraftwurm 5y agoGreat app! And this comes from a guy who has _very_ few apps installed on his phone! Would it be difficult to have it recognize a different language? (german)
- leobg 5y agoLove that first item on your first App Store screenshot: “Re-watch the mother of all demos”.