A messaging app that transcribes your voice messages and lets you search them
I keep having the same problem over and over when searching for some old conversation in my whatsapp/telegram app: they can't search through my old audios.
That's why I am working on a messaging app that transcribes all the user's voice messages! In addition, users can read the transcription of any new received voice message instead of having to listen to it, which for me is a lifesaver feature because sometimes I simply don't have the time to listen to the whole message.
I'm also planning to add the ability to send messages to yourself (similarly to telegram or slack) for those users who love to have a way of saving quick notes.
What do you think about it? Is that a problem you also have? Personally, I'm sending more and more voice messages every day, and you?
I also think it's very valuable feature to have, if i were you i would start small by building not another messaging app, but looking for a way to integrate with existing apps.
Personally I'm very against audio messages and shame everyone sending them to me (except rare cases) but I will be glad to have such a feature :)
Yeah... I thought about that. The problem is that most of the existing apps are quite rigid in terms of adding external features like this. I wonder why they haven't implemented it yet :thinking:
Hi Brice,
I think it's a neat idea. :-)
A while back I was looking for an audio transcript / note app and opened a topic for it, see: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/looking-for-an-app-that-records-and-converts-voice-memos-7b928a47f0
Might be good to get some inspiration from.
I have Otter installed, but not frequently using it.
Aside from that I think:
Hope its of value for you,
Thanks you so much Marinus! You feedback is indeed really valuable.
Great!
I think your assumptions on Otter are correct but also doubt the market size on an app like yours for the 'consumer' market. But I might be biased on that since i'm not a frequent user of voice messages. That said, I do notice that I sometimes use it which was definitely not the case a year earlier. I also notice that i'm receiving more voice messages.
Zooming in on that last point: I generally do not like to receive voice messages. I think this is because I might spend a minute on listening to something irrelevant (especially in group chats). If that voice message would have "show transcript" option, I would probably go for that and scan the contents and either read that or decide to play the message.
It might be interesting for you to document the cases where the need for this app comes up. I personally don't have a lot of cases in which I search for messages and if I do it's usually something I have in my 1-person "notebook" group chat. Of course, this depends a lot on how you use messaging apps.
It totally does. It's a combination I guess, so a few points:
Finally - keep the agendas/reasoning of bigger messaging apps in mind. Maybe some of them have this on their (public) roadmap already, maybe not. That said, it's very difficult for people to switch to a different app, so I would 'brand' is an extra app. OR: You could make a standalone app that records audio, transcribes text and can then share this to another messaging app at the same time? (although I don't think sending a file and text at the same time is generally supported now)
Woeh, lots of text. But it's great to think with you on this. It's actually the first time I do this on Indie Hackers and I should do it much much more, love it!
Thank you very much again Marinus! A few points too:
I'm not a regular user of an assistant app at all. Quite the opposite, but: I would definitely make use of it if I could say: Hey Google, write this down and send it to.. (my notebook, a friend, twitter..)
I would focus on creating a simple app that records and transcribes and can then share both to whatever app/platform.
I would also be happy to pay for an app like that. And last but not least: I'd be happy to provide feedback and think with you during development.
Awesome! I'll let you know how it's going. Thank you again :)
This seems like a great feature for existing messaging apps. However, I think it would be incredibly difficult to get people to switch away from WhatsApp, iMessage, etc.
Also keep in mind that you'll most likely need to use a third party speech to text service which will get expensive quickly unless you are bringing in revenue.
Yup, I do agree that it's utterly difficult to compete against giants like WhatsApp. It probably wouldn't be that hard if the value added by the app was more than just being able to transcribe and search messages, don't you think?
Curious are you using people(listen) or some existing software/training ML to transcribe audio?
Oh no, I'm not using people lol The idea would be to use some offline library to transcribe the audio so it doesn't even need to be sent to a server.
Ahh good luck, I'm venturing your biggest problem will be cleaning up the audio. But I do agree about not having to have the people to do it(though it's a cool concept eg. people as an API) some companies out there exist.
I hate voice messages. I have a friend who always sends them instead of texts/WhatsApp msgs, it's so annoying! So from my perspective it would be cool to just have the text out put on those. I'm not fussed about searching, but I can see it being useful.
It's funny how some of you mention that you hate them, because according to multiple articles they are actually a trending feature haha But yeah, the good thing about this feature is that it is useful for both types of customer.