Docs and FAQ · Live Transcript

At a glance

What it is: Live Transcript for Mac, by Polytopic Systems: a menu bar app that turns whatever your Mac plays, and your microphone if you want, into live captions at the notch or in a floating panel.
Who it’s for: Anyone who wants to read what their Mac is playing as it’s spoken: calls and meetings, videos, podcasts and lectures, in one language or several.
Requirements: A Mac with Apple silicon running macOS 26 or later.
Runs on your Mac: Transcription (Apple Speech or Whisper), History and its search, and live translation. With Apple Intelligence, History’s titles, summaries, topics and answers come from Apple’s on-device model.
Leaves your Mac: Audio, never. Transcript text only when you ask a cloud AI provider you picked about a session, and only to that provider.
What it doesn’t do: It doesn’t transcribe in the cloud, ask for an account, or need a virtual audio driver such as BlackHole: it captures your Mac’s sound with macOS’s own Core Audio taps.

Getting started

Live Transcript runs on Macs with Apple silicon and macOS 26 or later. It lives in the menu bar. Download it from the home page; what’s new in each version is in the changelog.

You can also install Live Transcript with Homebrew, from the Polytopic Systems tap (github.com/polytopic-systems/homebrew-tap): brew install --cask polytopic-systems/tap/live-transcript. It installs the same notarized disk image as the download button, and the app keeps updating itself as usual.

Start listening from the menu bar. The first time, macOS asks for permission to record system audio, and for the microphone if you turn it on. Your Mac’s sound is labelled Them; your microphone is You.

Live Transcript captures your Mac’s sound with macOS’s own Core Audio taps: there’s no virtual audio device (such as BlackHole) to install, and the sound keeps playing normally.

Captions at the notch, or in a panel

While someone is speaking, captions drop down from the notch with a level meter and a red dot showing it’s listening. Words appear lighter while they’re still being recognised and settle as they’re confirmed.

The floating glass panel shows the running transcript in a window you can move anywhere and pin above other windows.

Sharing the notch with other apps

If another app is already using the notch, Live Transcript notices and makes room: a slim listening line shows under the notch and captions open in a panel just below it, adjusting as that app launches, quits or pops up. It recognises popular ones such as Bartender, Boring Notch, NotchNook and Alcove, and AI coding-agent islands such as Vibe Island, and makes room for any other app that puts a panel on the notch. It also keeps clear of menu bar managers that drop a bar under the menu bar, such as Ice.

Hovering still opens Live Transcript; hold Option while hovering to leave the notch to the other app. In Settings, choose whether it makes room automatically, always or never, and switch it off for a particular app.

It never moves or hides other apps’ menu bar items, and needs no extra permissions to share the notch. Settings also let you choose where the listening indicator sits when nothing is being said (beside the notch or under it), and whether captions may cover the menu bar beside the notch or keep clear of it.

Speech engines

Choose between Apple Speech and Whisper in three sizes (Low, Medium and High). Larger Whisper models are generally more accurate and use more power; each downloads the first time you pick it (Low 145 MB, Medium 216 MB, High 632 MB). Apple Speech uses the speech models built into macOS, which may download a language’s model the first time you use it.

You can switch the engine, or the language, while you’re listening: from Settings, the menu bar menu or the notch (hover over it and click the engine’s name). The engine you were using keeps captioning until the new one is ready, which can take a moment if it has to download first, and then the new one takes over. The session carries on, and lines already written stay as they are.

Not sure which to use? The engine wizard asks you to read a passage aloud once, runs every engine on that same recording, and shows how each one did with your voice, side by side.

More than one language

Set Language to Auto-detect. With a Whisper engine, the language of each phrase is worked out on its own; Whisper High is designed to handle accents and mixed languages best. With Apple Speech, list the languages to choose between: it starts with the first and switches when speech stops making sense in it.

History and export

Every session is saved to History on your Mac. Sessions show as cards grouped by day (Today, Yesterday, then the weekday or date), each with an automatic title, a one-line summary, the app that was playing, its length and time, and topics. Select one to read its transcript, replay any line when audio was recorded, add it to Apple Notes, copy, export or delete it, or open Summary & Questions.

Searching

Type in Ask your history… at the top. Results narrow as you type into Best matches and Less certain. Each shows the passage that matched, with the words highlighted, and why: the words found, a similar meaning, the kind of listening, the app or the date. Opening a result jumps to that moment and highlights it; when audio was recorded, Play This Moment replays it.

Plain language works: dates (yesterday, last week, in September), apps (in FaceTime), kinds of listening (audiobook, video, meeting) and filler such as “when I was listening to…”. “A and B” looks for both, so “the audiobook and the video about cars” brings back each. The Apps and Date menus and the filter chips (common topics and kinds, and Has audio) narrow things further.

Ask a question and a short answer appears above the results, marked “Generated on this Mac”, with numbered links to the moments it used. If your history doesn’t contain the answer, it says so. Keyword searches don’t get an answer.

When translation was on, translated lines can show under each line, and either language finds them. Sessions remember which apps were playing, by name only, with no window titles or web addresses.

All on your Mac

Search, its index, and the titles, summaries, topics and answers never use the network or the AI provider chosen in Settings. With Apple Intelligence, they come from Apple’s on-device model. Without it, search still works on words and meaning, cards show the opening words, and questions don’t get a written answer. The separate Summary & Questions panel is the part that uses the provider you chose in Settings › AI, which may be a cloud service.

Keyboard: Command-F goes to the search field, the arrow keys move through results, Return opens one and Escape clears the search. A status line under the list shows indexing progress; indexing waits while you’re listening.

Export

Export any session as Markdown, plain text, or SRT or VTT subtitles, or send it to Apple Notes with the audio of the whole conversation attached as one file, with every speaker lined up in time.

To keep the audio on its own, choose Export › Audio… in History and save the same file anywhere. Sessions recorded with earlier versions work too. Record Audio can be turned on and off while you’re listening, from Settings or the menu bar menu; a stretch with it off is kept as silence, so lines still play back at the right moment.

AI summaries, questions and translation

In a session’s Summary & Questions panel, ask for a summary (a short summary, key points and action items) or ask it a question. You choose the AI in Settings › AI:

Apple on-device model: nothing to set up, and nothing leaves your Mac.
Claude, through the installed claude tool: uses the Claude Code sign-in already on your Mac.
Claude, with an Anthropic API key: your key, kept in your keychain.
OpenRouter: sign in once in your browser to use many models.
Custom server: anything that speaks the OpenAI protocol (Ollama, LM Studio, OpenAI…). Enter the server address, a model name and, if the server needs one, an API key, which is sent as a Bearer token.

Only transcript text you ask about is sent, and only to the provider you picked; with Ollama or LM Studio running on your Mac, it stays on your Mac. Audio is never sent.

Live translation shows each line in another language right under the captions as people speak.

Set it up in Settings › Language. With One language, choose a Translate to language and every line is translated into it. With Auto-detect, translation works both ways between the first two languages you list: lines in the first go into the second, and lines in any other language go into the first.

Developer mode

For the curious: in Settings › Overview, under Advanced, turn on Developer mode. The menu bar menu then has Developer Console… (⌥⌘D), a window with five tabs: a live log you can filter by level, category and text; the app’s network requests and open connections; the audio pipeline, lane by lane; stats for nerds on the process, energy, speech models, storage, permissions, the notch and the license; and the current state. Everything stays on your Mac, and the console samples only while it’s open.

The Network tab shows that transcription itself makes no network calls. Transcript text appears in the log only if you turn on “transcript text” in the console, and only in memory. Copy diagnostics report (⇧⌘D) copies a summary that’s safe to paste into a bug report: no transcript text, no keys, no personal paths.

Your license

Edition	Macs at once	Versions covered	Price (USD)
Personal, this version	3	This version, plus the next if it arrives within a year	$10
Business, this version	10	This version, plus the next if it arrives within a year	$25
Personal, lifetime updates	3	Every version	$50
Business, lifetime updates	10	Every version	$75

How versions work

You buy a version, and it’s yours to keep with every update to it. A version lasts at least a year; a new version comes when a new macOS brings features that warrant one. If the next version arrives within a year of your purchase, your license covers it too. Lifetime covers every version. An older version keeps working with your key whatever comes later.

Activating a Mac

Enter your key in the app. Keys look like LT-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX; capitals and dashes are optional, and an O or an I typed by mistake is read as 0 or 1. Activating needs an internet connection; activating the same Mac again never uses a second install.

Working offline

Your license is verified on your Mac. The app checks in with the license service now and then when it’s online, and keeps working through long stretches without a connection.

Moving to another Mac

Deactivate the old Mac from the app, or unregister it on the account page (useful when the old Mac is gone). The install is free immediately; activate the new Mac with the same key.

Lost your key?

Keys are stored only as hashes, so nobody can look yours up. If you added a recovery email on the account page, use Lost your key? there and we’ll email you a replacement key. The old key stops working; your activated Macs stay activated.

Never added a recovery email? It may still be recoverable: contact Tech on Tires, LLC through the contact page at on.tires with the date you bought it and your payment receipt (its receipt or order number). Never send card numbers or other payment details. Adding a recovery email now is the quickest way to avoid this.

FAQ

Is anything I say or hear uploaded?

Not for transcription: that happens on your Mac. Transcript text leaves your Mac only if you ask a cloud AI provider (Claude, OpenRouter, or a server elsewhere) about a session.

Does it work on Intel Macs or older macOS versions?

No. It needs a Mac with Apple silicon running macOS 26 or later.

What does the account page show?

Your plan, how many installs are in use, and each Mac by model name with when it was activated and last seen. You can unregister any of them there.

I unregistered a Mac by mistake.

Enter the key in the app on that Mac again. If an install is free, it activates straight away.

How much does it cost? When is it out?

Personal is $10 for this version or $50 with lifetime updates; Business is $25 or $75. It’s out: download it from the home page and use it free for 14 days; after that it needs a license. Licenses are bought in the Plans section of the home page.

Can I see what the license service stores?

Yes, all of it is listed on the privacy page.

Guides

Step-by-step answers to the questions people ask most, one question to a page.