this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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Are there currently usable FOSS tools for speech to text conversion (transcription) available under GNU/Linux? Purpose is transcribing stuff like downloaded podcasts. I don't need or want any kind of GUI tool. Just a CLI program that takes an audio file and converts it to text. I know there are various proprietary systems that do this, such as youtube transcription. One of my questions is whether the free stuff that's out there is anywhere near as good. I'm not too concerned about the input format (I can convert with ffmpeg), or about CPU time within reason (I don't mind letting my server spend all night crunching a 1 hour audio). I'd prefer to not require a GPU but if that helps a lot, I can get hold one of one as needed.

Question is about speech to text (STT). I'm not asking about the opposite, text-to-speech (TTS). For some reason people often confuse the two of these.

Thanks!

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[–] solrize@lemmy.ml 1 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Thanks, that's interesting and I might try it, though it's an Android app. I was hoping for a Linux CLI tool that I could run on a server.

Added: the phone app says it wants microphone and video permissions, which is a bit annoying. I don't care at all about live transcribing. I only want to convert files. It also wants network permissions and special protocols, which seems weird. I can understand if it wants to download models, but I wonder what else it wants the network for.