How to Transcribe Podcasts on Mac
Podcast transcription has many uses: creating show notes, making episodes accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences, repurposing content into articles, or simply making episodes searchable. Professional transcription services charge per minute and take hours to days. Here is how to transcribe any podcast on your Mac, in real time, without uploading anything to the cloud.
Step-by-Step Guide
Open the podcast in your preferred player
Use Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or any podcast app or website. You can also play an MP3 file directly in a media player. The key is that the audio plays through your Mac's audio output.
Enable system audio capture
Open Glasscribe and select "System Audio" as your input source. This routes whatever audio is playing on your Mac into the transcription engine. There is no need to install a virtual audio driver or configure complex audio routing.
Set the transcription language
Choose the language that matches the podcast. For multilingual podcasts where speakers switch between languages, select the primary language spoken. The speech engine handles occasional code-switching reasonably well.
Play the podcast and begin transcribing
Start the transcription session, then play the podcast episode. Text appears in real time as each speaker talks. For long episodes, you can pause playback and transcription together, then resume when ready. The floating overlay window lets you read along while doing other work.
Review and clean up the transcript
After the episode finishes, review the transcript in session history. Correct any misrecognized words (proper nouns and technical terms are common trouble spots). Export as .txt for show notes or as .srt for timestamped reference.
Repurpose your transcript
Use the clean transcript as a foundation for blog posts, social media quotes, or newsletter content. The timestamped .srt export makes it easy to find and reference specific moments in the episode.
Pro Tips
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I transcribe a podcast episode faster than real time?
The transcription runs in real time with the audio playback. To speed things up, you can increase the playback speed in your podcast player (1.5x or 2x) — the speech engine typically handles faster playback well, though accuracy may decrease at very high speeds.
Does podcast transcription work offline?
If the podcast episode is already downloaded to your Mac, yes — the entire workflow is offline. The speech-to-text processing is 100% on-device. You only need an internet connection if you are streaming the podcast.
How well does it handle multiple speakers?
The transcription captures all speech accurately but does not automatically label who is speaking. For a two-person conversation, the speech of both host and guest will appear in sequence. You will need to add speaker identification during your review.