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When should you use live recording?

Use this mode when you want to watch the text appear on screen as it’s captured. It fits situations like these:
  • You want to check something you missed during a meeting, right then and there
  • You want to follow a foreign-language conversation through real-time translation
If you’re on the move, on an unstable network, or recording something long where you don’t need to watch the screen, offline recording is more reliable. Already have a recording? Use audio file upload. To show captions on a venue screen or your audience’s phones, use Conference mode.

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How to start live recording

Where you start depends on your platform.
  • Web and desktop app: On the note list screen, click [Start realtime recording]. A new note opens, ready to record.
  • Mobile app: On the new note screen, select the [Real-time] mode and tap [Start realtime recording]. Offline recording is selected by default.
Before you start, you can set the following on the note screen.
1

Enter a note title and participants

If you don’t set a title yourself, Tiro listens to the conversation and creates one that fits the topic. Add the names and emails of the people with you in the [Participants] field. This helps Tiro recognize their names more reliably, and makes it easier to invite them to the note or search by participant once recording is done. See Conversation participants for details.
Note screen before recording, showing the note title with participant and folder buttons, the Note and Transcript tabs, and a bottom bar with the microphone, the listen and write language selectors, and a red start-recording button
2

Add context

Context is a hint that helps Tiro capture speech more reliably. Tell it about the setting, proper nouns, and people’s names ahead of time in the [Context] field, and both the transcript and the summary improve noticeably.
e.g. A business meeting with [The Plato]. Capture proper nouns like product names and attendees accurately, and write the summary in a formal tone. People / companies / products: [John Doe], [Tiro]
The Context page covers how to write good context in more depth.
Context popup showing a text field with the conversation setting and proper nouns, a file upload area, and Previous Contexts and Save buttons
3

Set the languages

You can choose two languages separately.
  • [Listen In]: the language actually spoken in the conversation. This is what speech recognition listens for.
  • [Write In]: the language your transcript and summary are written in.
Tiro supports 15 languages, including Korean, English, and Japanese. If you don’t know which language will come up, or several will be mixed, choose the [Multilingual] option.
Recording controls with the conversation language dropdown open, listing Multilingual, Korean, English, Japanese, and other supported languages
Set the two languages differently and real-time translation begins. See the Using real-time translation section below.
4

Start recording

Press the start button and the red record button turns into an audio waveform as recording begins.

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What you can do while recording

  • Pause and resume: Press the waveform button to pause; press it again to keep recording.
  • Add or edit context: You can enter or change context mid-recording, and it takes effect from the next moment on. Drop in proper nouns or key terms as they come up in the conversation.
  • Check and fix the original: Open the raw text with [View script] and click any misrecognized part to fix it on the spot.
For context to shape your Note and transcript, enter it before or during recording. Context you add after recording ends takes effect the next time you regenerate the one-page document.

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Using real-time translation

Set the [Listen In] and [Write In] languages differently and real-time translation starts with no extra steps. For example, set Listen In to English and Write In to Korean, and English speech shows up translated into Korean.
  • Translated text appears almost as soon as someone speaks.
  • Once a paragraph is complete, turn on the [Translation] toggle to see each paragraph’s original text alongside its translation.
  • The mobile app works the same way. In the language selector, pick your [Listen In] and [Write In] languages.

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After you finish recording

When you end a recording, Tiro creates three things.
  • One-page document: A summary that structures the whole conversation by key topic, organized by theme rather than in plain time order.
  • Note: The chronological summary generated live as you speak.
  • Transcript: A verbatim record of the whole conversation. Filler like “um” and “uh” and small grammar slips are smoothed out while the meaning stays intact.
Need a document shaped for a specific purpose, like meeting minutes or an interview write-up? Build a custom one with templates.

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When another recording mode works better

  • Conversations that mix languages: Live recognition has to detect the language and transcribe it at the same time, in a split second, so accuracy can drop when a conversation moves between two or more languages. Offline recording or audio file upload works better here.
  • Unstable network: Live recording depends on your internet connection. Where the connection might drop, offline recording is the safer choice.

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Frequently asked questions

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Is live recording less accurate than offline recording?

No. In a typical single-language conversation, both use the same speech recognition engine, so they’re equally accurate. The real difference is stability, not accuracy. Live recording depends on your network, so if you don’t need to watch the screen as you go, offline recording is the better pick.

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How long can a single note record?

Paid plans record up to 5 hours per note. During the free trial you can record up to 2 hours, but anything past 60 minutes shows as locked and unlocks once you start a paid plan. Without a subscription, you can record up to 60 minutes per note.

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Can Tiro separate speakers?

Yes, speaker separation is available on Pro and above. During live recording, speakers aren’t split apart in real time, but when you end the recording Tiro re-analyzes the full audio automatically and tags speakers in the transcript. See Speaker diarization for how it works.

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The waveform isn’t moving while we’re talking

The waveform moves in proportion to how loud the incoming sound is. If it’s frozen, check that the right microphone input is selected. On the desktop app, to also record system audio (the sound playing from your device), the [System Sound] input in the recording controls needs to be set above 0%. See Recording system audio for details.

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How many languages does recording support?

Tiro supports 15 languages plus the [Multilingual] option: Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai, Malay, Swedish, and Hindi. You can mix and match the Listen In and Write In languages freely.
Related pages: Offline recording · Context · Recording system audio