AI transcription for students: listen in class, read it later
Hear2Text is a transcription app for students who would rather follow the lecture than copy it down: record it, upload it, and read back what was said, with a timestamp on every line. The bit you missed is one search away. The free plan gives you 120 minutes every week, enough for a couple of lectures, and never asks for a card.
You can't listen and write at the same time
Ninety minutes of someone talking, and one pen. Whatever you write down you stop following while you write it, and whatever you follow you do not write down. By exam week, the gaps in the notebook are exactly the parts that mattered.
The explanation goes past while you write
The sentence that makes a topic click usually arrives while you are still copying the previous one. You end up with what was on the slide and without the part that wasn't.
Notes you can't read back
Handwriting produced at speaking speed turns into a private alphabet within a fortnight. Half-finished words, an arrow pointing at nothing, and a diagram that definitely meant something at the time.
No time to re-watch anything
The recording runs an hour and a half and the definition you need is somewhere inside it. Nobody carrying four courses and a deadline is scrubbing through video to find it.
Listening isn't how everyone learns
A fast talker, an unfamiliar accent, a room with terrible acoustics, a hearing aid catching every second word. When sound is the only record of a class, the class is harder than the subject is.
Read the lecture instead of sitting through it twice
Upload the recording or paste its link, and the whole class comes back as text with the time attached to each segment. Search for the word you half-heard, click the moment, hear it again. The language is detected for you, and a week later the lecture is still readable.
From lecture recording to searchable notes
- ✗Write frantically through the entire lecture
- ✗Miss the explanation while copying the slide
- ✗Can't read your own handwriting a week later
- ✗Re-watch a whole recording to find one point
- ✗Hunt for a topic with nothing to search
- Listen properly and follow the argument
- Keep the full lecture as text, 95-99% accurate
- Every lecture kept as searchable text
- Click a timestamp to hear that moment again
- Ask the assistant, or read the AI summary
Record lectures any way you like, then transcribe them
A phone on the desk, a voice memo, a recording you downloaded from the class meeting, or a link to a video of it: upload the file or paste the URL and the text comes back. Clear audio transcribes at 95-99% accuracy in 100 languages, and the free plan covers 120 minutes a week without a card. Nothing to install.
Get StartedTurn lectures into notes you can read on the bus
Ask the assistant what the lecturer said about a topic and it answers from your own transcript, pointing at the passage it came from. On the $9.99 plan, an AI summary condenses a 90-minute class into something you can read on the bus, and translation puts it into another language if that is the one you study in.
Get StartedTest yourself against what was actually said
Close the notes and ask the AI assistant about the lecture: it answers from your transcript, so you are testing yourself against what the lecturer actually said rather than against your memory of it. When an answer surprises you, the timestamp takes you back to the forty seconds that explain why.
Get StartedUse Cases
Notes from recorded lectures
Record the class, upload it on the walk home, and read the full text while the context is still fresh. The 120 free minutes a week are about two lectures, every week, without a card.
Exam preparation
Open the lecture where a topic was introduced, search that transcript for the term and read the explanation again in the lecturer's own words. Ask the assistant about the part you keep getting wrong, then jump to the timestamp and hear how it was put.
Research projects
Interviews, fieldwork audio and reading-group discussions become quotable text, each line carrying the moment it was said, so a supervisor asking where a quote came from gets an answer in seconds.
Group projects
Record the planning meeting instead of appointing a note-taker who then misses the discussion. Export the text and send it round, so what was decided and who took which task is written down rather than remembered differently by four people.
Language learning
Transcribe a lecture, podcast or news clip in the language you are learning and read along with what you just heard. Detection covers 100 languages, and the paid plan translates the transcript so you can hold both versions side by side.
Key Features
Free every week, not a trial
There is no discount to apply for, because the free tier already is one: 120 minutes every Monday, indefinitely, with no card at signup. Unlimited minutes are $9.99 a month, or $89.99 a year, which beats paying monthly once you need it for ten months or more.
Works with whatever your course posts
There is no Canvas, Blackboard or Moodle connection here. Download the file your course posted and upload it, or paste the link when the lecture is on YouTube or Vimeo. Same transcript, one step.
Course terms, as far as the audio allows
No word list to train and no glossary to maintain; recognition comes from the model itself, at 95-99% on clean audio. Unfamiliar names and notation are where errors collect, so check those against the recording.
Every line is a timestamp
Every segment carries the moment it was spoken. Finding the two minutes where the proof was explained is a search and a click, not a scrub bar and a guess.
100 languages, detected on their own
100 languages, detected automatically, so a lecture in Spanish or Turkish transcribes in its own language without you choosing one. Translating it afterwards is part of the paid plan.
Export into whatever you write in
Free transcripts come out as TXT. The paid plan adds Word, PDF, SRT and VTT, so the same lecture can land in your notes app, an essay draft or the subtitles of a video you are editing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a student discount?
How do I transcribe a recorded lecture?
How does it handle technical terminology?
Can I share transcripts with my study group?
Does it work for foreign language classes?
Is it legal to record lectures in college?
Start with this week's lectures
120 free minutes every week, no card, and no trial to run out. If you end up transcribing everything, unlimited minutes are $9.99 a month or $89.99 a year.