Microphone Input and 4 Language Selection via Browser Speech Recognition
This tool utilizes the Web Speech API's SpeechRecognition or webkitSpeechRecognition built into your browser to provide a function that converts audio inputted from the microphone into text.
To start speech recognition, first select the language you wish to use from the dropdown menu under "Recognition Language" in the control panel on the right side of the screen.
The selectable languages are limited to four: Japanese (ja-JP), English (en-US), Chinese (zh-CN), and Spanish (es-ES). After selecting a language, clicking the "Start Microphone Recognition" button will prompt the browser to request microphone access permissions.
Granting this will begin the audio reception. While receiving microphone input, an information message stating "Receiving microphone input...
Please speak." is displayed alongside a blue indicator icon, entering an input standby state. While speech recognition is running, the language selection dropdown menu is disabled, preventing language changes.
To switch languages, you must first click the "Stop Speech Recognition" button to release the standby state. The accuracy of speech recognition and support for each language depend directly on the browser's service and OS version you are using; the tool does not specify or guarantee a particular recognition engine or version.
There is no need to separately install a dedicated application or software, as it is designed to use the API already included in the browser.
Appending Finalized Results to the Text Area and Manual Editing
The result events returned by the browser's speech recognition function include unfinalized strings while speaking and finalized strings when the speech pauses.
In the implementation of this tool, the SpeechRecognition continuous property is set to true to request continuous recognition, and the interimResults property is set to true to enable fetching intermediate results, but only finalized results with the isFinal property evaluated as true are actually appended to the text area (voice input/minutes editor) on the screen.
A feature to preview unfinalized intermediate results (interimResults) on the screen in real-time while speaking is not implemented.
When a finalized string is acquired, if text already exists in the text area, a line break (\n) is automatically inserted, followed by the new finalized result.
Because the output destination is an HTML textarea element, users can freely modify, edit, and add characters to the appended text directly using a keyboard.
If homophone mistranslations occur due to speech recognition, or if automatic punctuation is not applied, manual correction in this editor is required.
Furthermore, it does not have an automatic speaker separation function to distinguish between multiple speakers' voices, a timestamping function to record speech timing, or guaranteed automatic punctuation.
Stopping, Clearing, Copying Recognition, and Character Counting
To end speech recognition, click the "Stop Speech Recognition" button displayed in red. When the stop process is executed, a success message stating "Speech recognition stopped." is displayed on the screen with a green check icon, and the microphone input reception ends.
The contents inputted or appended to the text area can be sent to your OS's clipboard by clicking the "Copy" button (clipboard icon) at the top, allowing you to paste them into other notepads or applications.
When you press copy, the button's icon changes to a green checkmark for just 2 seconds before reverting to the original copy icon.
The copy button is disabled if the text area is empty. Additionally, clicking the "Clear" button (trash can icon) will delete all text in the text area and simultaneously initialize the status messages.
Features for saving and downloading as a file or reading external files are not implemented. The current character count is displayed at the bottom of the text area, but this is the length in UTF-16 code units calculated using JavaScript's length property.
There is no processing to modify or round the display digits or precision; the number of code units, including line breaks and spaces, is calculated exactly in real-time and displayed as "〇〇 characters".
Verification Steps Using Short Sentences Without Sensitive Information
When using the tool for the first time, or when your device or network environment changes, we recommend a procedure to verify its operation using short sentences that do not contain sensitive information, rather than immediately starting a long transcription.
First, press the "Start Microphone Recognition" button and speak a daily greeting or short words for a few seconds. Then, pause your speech, wait a moment, and verify if the finalized result (isFinal) is correctly appended to the text area with a line break.
Because this tool lacks a speaker separation function to distinguish multiple voices, if several people speak at the same time, it will be recognized as one continuous text or treated as noise, severely dropping recognition accuracy.
By speaking in short, segmented sentences, you can better grasp the timing at which finalized results reflect in the text area and the behavioral quirks of recognition intervals for each browser.
If recognition does not work properly or if frequent mistranslations occur, please check your distance from the microphone, ambient noise conditions, and whether the language selected in the dropdown is correct.
By verifying that finalized results display correctly before trying the copy operation or manual edits (correcting typos, manually adding line breaks, etc.), you can understand the workflow and the limitations of the tool's implemented functions in advance.
Microphone Permission Denial, Unsupported Browsers, and Unexpected Disconnections
If microphone access permissions are denied in your browser settings or OS privacy settings, attempting to start recognition will catch a not-allowed error via the onerror event.
When this happens, a red warning icon appears alongside the message, "Microphone access was denied. Please check your browser's permission settings.", and the process halts.
Additionally, if neither SpeechRecognition nor webkitSpeechRecognition exists within the window object upon initial loading, the API is deemed unsupported, and the message "Your browser does not support the Speech Recognition API.
Please use Google Chrome or Safari." is displayed, preventing the operation from starting. When other network errors occur, a connection failure reason is notified as "Speech Recognition Error: [Error Details]".
Furthermore, even if continuous is set to true in the API settings, the speech recognition may trigger an onend event and terminate unexpectedly due to prolonged periods of silence, the browser's own resource limits, or changes in network conditions.
Since this tool has no automatic reconnection attempt feature, you must manually press the "Start Microphone Recognition" button again if it falls into a stopped state.
When leaving the page (upon unmounting the React component), a process is built in to automatically call the recognition's stop method to terminate it.
Possibility of External Processing and Handling of Recorded Content
Depending on the browser type and version, the browser's Web Speech API invoked by this tool for speech recognition is designed to send inputted audio to an external recognition service (such as the API provider's servers) to process the text conversion.
The fact that the transcription instruction is issued on this tool's screen is not the same as the audio data analysis itself being completed solely inside your device.
For this reason, this tool is not equipped with any functions to guarantee that no external communication occurs or that it operates entirely offline.
Therefore, we do not recommend using it to input audio containing confidential or personal information. The retention and usage policies for audio and text data on external recognition services depend entirely on the privacy policies of the browser and OS you are using.
In this tool's implementation, the recognized text is retained only in the browser's memory state (React's state) and the text area, and there is no function to send or save data to the site operator's servers or databases.
Since there is no mechanism to auto-save the text itself, closing the browser tab or reloading the page will result in the complete loss of the text area's contents.
Please manually copy any necessary records and save them in another application before closing the page.