Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba is a Mac favorite
The go-to app for recording absolutely anything on a Mac, Audio Hijack, has been updated to add Whisper-based AI transcription for any recordings.
It’s the pro audio app used by any Mac user who needs to record any audio. And it’s been like that since Steve Jobs decided to save it against the wishes of the recording industry.
Now, with Audio Hijack 4.3, the app can simultaneously create a transcription of audio and record it using what’s called a Transcribe block. The app works as a series of building blocks representing what you want to record and what you want to do with that audio.
So, to record your microphone, for instance, you can drag an Input Device block onto the Audio Hijack canvas, then say what connected device you want recorded.
Then you might have just an Output Device, and through that, you tell Audio Hijack to route the recording to your headphones instead of your speaker.
What makes Audio Hijack so useful is that you can string together any number of blocks. So have one that records sound from Safari, then saves it as an MP3 file while playing out through the Mac’s speakers — and now while also transcribing.
To set up the transcription for the first time, users have to drag the Transcribe block out onto the canvas and then click on it. When they do, the app offers options to do with the quality of transcription and where to save transcribed text files.
Audio Hijack has added a Transcribe block that can be just dragged into any recording setup
There are two quality options: High Accuracy and Low Resources. The latter is quicker and takes up less disk space with its AI-based Large Language Module (LLM), while the former is the one to use unless time and disk space are short.
It can then take a few minutes for the LLM to download, but it’s always ready after that.
From then, users can add the Transcribe block to any canvas or any selection of audio recording settings. Once the Run button is pressed to record the audio, the transcription just happens automatically.
There’s no extra cost for the transcription, nor any limitation on the recording length or the number of recordings that can be transcribed.
Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack 4.3 costs $77 direct from the developer. It’s a free update to existing version 4 users, and version 3 owners can upgrade for $35.
