Listen to live radio. Read what's said in real time.
Radio Live Transcript captions live radio and turns it into silent reading. Useful on the metro, in meetings, in classrooms — essential for deaf and hard-of-hearing users. Transcription runs entirely on your device: no audio leaves it, nothing is sent to the publisher.
Six features. Radio, readable.
Apple's speech recognition runs locally. No audio, no text, no metadata is sent to the publisher or to any server it owns: to play a station, your iPhone connects directly to the broadcaster's server, as a browser would.
Public service radio only, broadcast in the clear: Radio France, RTS, RTBF, VRT, Deutschlandfunk, ORF, RAI, RNE, RTP, NPO, NRK, Sveriges Radio, DR, RTÉ, NPR, KEXP, NHK World, TRT and more.
The timestamped transcript follows the broadcast on its own. Scroll up to re-read: it stops, a pill counts what you missed, and one tap brings you back to live.
In a meeting, in class, on the metro without headphones, next to someone asleep. The screen stays awake while playing — you read without touching the phone.
The language comes from the station's country. If the exact model is missing, another variant of the same language steps in — a Belgian station reads with your French — and the app tells you so.
Add any audio stream address. The app tests it before saving and asks which language is spoken — it applies to that station only.
Four representative screens.
Radio Live Transcript was designed with deaf and hard-of-hearing users in mind. Full Dynamic Type, toggleable high contrast, Reduce Motion, full screen reader support, easy-reading mode.
No audio leaves your device. Transcription is done locally, in real time. No server, no analytics, no tracker.
Real questions, real answers.
No. Transcription happens locally, using the Apple Speech engine built into iOS: no audio or text leaves your device, and nothing is sent to the publisher. To play a station, your iPhone connects directly to the broadcaster's server, which sees your IP address, as with any website. The app contains no analytics, advertising or tracking SDK.
No. The app is free and contains no in-app purchases. Transcription and every accessibility option are — and will remain — free.
Those for which iOS has a recognition model on your device: French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, the Nordic languages, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, Arabic and others. Eight languages in the catalogue have no Apple model at all — Polish, Greek, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Croatian, Ukrainian: those stations are marked “listen only” before you even open them.
The app uses a variant of the same language already on your iPhone — a French-speaking Belgian station reads with your French — and it tells you which model it used. If no variant is available, it gives you the exact path to install one in iOS settings.
No archiving: broadcasters' terms forbid it, and the text disappears when you leave the station. You can, however, copy a sentence with a long press, and share a short excerpt where the broadcaster allows it.
It is produced by AI: it contains errors, especially on compressed streams, in noise, or with under-represented accents. It is not an official source — for the exact wording of a programme, refer to the broadcaster.
No. Radio Live Transcript is not affiliated with the broadcasters: the app simply displays their public, unencrypted stream, unmodified, for accessibility purposes. Content remains the intellectual property of its broadcasters; at their request, a station is removed from the catalogue as soon as possible, through an app update.
Free, no ads, no account, no in-app purchase. Accessibility stays free — forever.
Listen to live radio. Read what's said in real time.