How You Sound is a free app for recording, transcribing, organizing, and searching your audio and video. The line on the front page says it best: a library for how you sound.
What you can do with it
- Record or import audio and video. Speech is transcribed in the language it was spoken.
- Keep sessions in folders you name. Notes are markdown, transcripts are plain text, and the recording sits right beside them.
- Follow along. The transcript stays synced with playback and timestamps, and you can copy, edit, or merge it.
- Play it your way with audio speed control and silence cutting. Photos stay with the session they belong to.
- Chat with a session. Ask for a change to your notes and you see it before anything is saved.
- Search everything at once. One search covers titles, notes, chats, and transcripts.
- Ask your library from your AI apps. Claude, Cursor, and other AI apps can read it over MCP (read-only).
Three decisions behind it
Your files stay here
A library is just a folder you pick on your computer. Nothing is uploaded unless you choose to put that library in an account. Because the notes are markdown and the transcripts are plain text, you can open the folder in any other tool and everything is still readable. No export step, no lock-in.
Your key stays here
You can paste your own API key in Settings, and transcription and the assistant use it on your computer. It is not uploaded and it is not copied with the library.
An account is optional
The app is free without one. Sign in only when you want the same library on another computer or in the browser. That is what a paid plan is for.
Desktop or browser
The desktop app runs on Mac (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows, and Linux. Each download includes FFmpeg, so long video can be prepared without installing anything else. The Mac app is signed and notarized; the Windows and Linux builds are not signed yet, so expect a warning there.
The browser version is for paid accounts, since the library lives in your account. Audio and video up to about 500 MB are handled right in the browser, and up to 2 GB still works, just slower. Anything bigger, or compressing video for storage, needs the desktop app.
Ask your library from your AI apps
This is the part I find the most fun. On a paid plan you can connect Claude, Cursor, or another AI app to your library over MCP, an open standard that lets an AI app look things up. Then you can ask it about your sessions, notes, transcripts, and files. It can only read. It cannot change or delete anything, and whatever you hide from AI apps stays hidden.
It runs on the AI app you already use, so reading your library does not spend any of your AI credits.
What it costs
The app itself is free. A subscription is only for keeping your library in an account, which adds cloud storage and the MCP connection. Every plan includes a monthly allowance of AI credits, and one credit is about a minute of transcription. There are five plans, from Free up to Business; the current numbers are always on the How You Sound site.
Try it
Grab the app or open it in the browser at How You Sound. It is still growing, so feedback is welcome. Find me on X as @morazaone.