Live CC

Hearing problems? Live CC can help. How?

Live CC helps the hearing impaired by transcribing live speech to text in real-time.

Live CC is great for people with hearing problems who need help understanding what people are saying in everyday situations.

Let me tell you a story...one day my Aunt Joy—an awesome lady—wrote this on Facebook:

"Question: why can’t anyone come up with an app for your phone for the hearing impaired? Say you’re shopping and the sales associate asks you a question, you point your phone at them and it automatically shows up on your screen like a text, or, when you’re in a social situation, point your phone to the person talking and bam! conversation! Just a thought."

I thought, "Hey, I'm a programmer. I can do that!" So I made Live CC.

How do you use Live CC?

Imagine a situation where you need to understand what someone is saying, but it's hard to hear. Like talking to a barista at Starbucks. Or talking to a friend. Or at a meeting.

* Point your iPhone's built-in or third-party microphone (preferred) towards the person you're listening to.

*There are two ways to start Live CC. Through a Siri shortcut: "Hey Siri, transcribe." Or the traditional way: tap the app icon and then tap Start Listening.

*What the person is saying will start displaying in the app.

How well does Live CC work?

Live CC isn't perfect, but it usually works well enough that you can understand what people are saying.

Here's what Aunt Joy said:

"And, it works!!!!, the Patient Care Coordinator at U.W.M.C., was very impressed!!!. Love you, Todd, for coming up with this & helping your poor Aunt out"

And...

"It helps a lot, tried it with my barista this morning & she loved it. Even with the app replacing words, we can still get the gist of the conversation."


Live CC uses Apple's speech-to-text service. The service only transcribes one minute at a time. Every minute you'll notice a pause where speech isn't transcribed. In practice, you can still understand what's being said, no problem.

You may notice that the transcribed text is always changing. That's because Apple makes the best conversion it can with every new spoken word. So don't be alarmed. It's supposed to work that way.

How can you improve performance?

First, Apple's service is a cloud service, so you need an internet connection for it to work. The faster the better.

Next, point the microphone of your device towards the person speaking.

The built-in microphone isn't great. For best results consider buying an external microphone. The better the microphone the better the result.

One popular microphone is the Rode VideoMic Me. Make sure to buy the right kind for your device.

Live CC is very simple. Tap the "Start Listening" button to start the transcription process.

Read what people are saying as they speak in the window below the button. Text keeps scrolling as people talk.

The transcription process takes a few seconds to start, so tap "Start Listening" a little before you want the speech to text conversion to actually begin.

When done just tap "Stop Listening."

It's that simple. But it can be even simpler. Live CC has a Siri shortcut.

Just say, "Hey Siri, transcribe" and Live CC opens and starts transcribing. This feels magical. There's a short video at http://livecc.info explaining how to create the Siri shortcut for Live CC.

Live CC uses Apple's own speech-to-text service, the same service Siri uses. Speech transcribes fast—as long as there's a decent internet connection. Apps using other transcription services experience a lot more lag.

Unlike other apps that charge a subscription fee, once you buy Live CC there's no extra cost!

I hope Live CC can help you like it helped my Aunt Joy.