Convert M4A to text
Upload an M4A or AAC recording and get a transcript back in seconds.
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MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC · MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM · up to 2 GB
Set language, translation, or vocabulary hints below before transcribing
YouTube, Dropbox, Google Drive, or any direct MP3/MP4 link
Not applied on Gemini 3.5 Transcribe — the model can't combine vocabulary hints with word-level timestamps
.m4a accepted directly · up to 2 GB · 10 minutes free every day
How it works
Upload your file
Drag and drop your .m4a file onto the box below, or paste a link. No account needed to start.
AI transcribes it
OpenAI Whisper, Microsoft MAI-Transcribe 1.5, or Google Gemini 3.5 Transcribe converts the audio to text, detecting the language automatically.
Download the transcript
Get plain text back, plus SRT and VTT subtitle files when the recording carries timing information.
Generate more
From the finished job, request an AI summary, an action list, or a translation into any of 103 languages — applied straight to the completed transcript, no re-upload needed.
About .m4a files
M4A is a container around AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) audio, and it's the default output of two of the most common recording tools people use: the iPhone Voice Memos app and most Android voice recorder apps. If you tapped record on your phone and it just worked without you choosing a format, there's a good chance the file that came out was M4A.
AAC generally compresses more efficiently than MP3 at an equivalent bitrate, meaning an M4A file often sounds slightly cleaner than an MP3 of the same size — one reason Apple, and increasingly Android manufacturers, settled on it as a default rather than the older format. For transcription purposes this translates to marginally better accuracy on very compressed files, though at normal recording bitrates the two formats perform about the same.
Because M4A is the phone-recording default, files in this format tend to include background noise MP3s from dedicated recorders don't — room echo, wind, a phone shifting in a pocket. None of that stops transcription from working, but it's the more common source of accuracy issues on M4A files than the format itself.
Upload the file directly. Plain text comes back first, with SRT and VTT subtitle downloads available alongside it whenever the recording carries timing data.
Where these files usually come from
- iPhone Voice Memos app
- Android voice recorder apps
- Zoom cloud recordings (audio-only export)
- Screen recordings with a separate audio track
Things to know
Phone-recorded M4A files often pick up handling noise — a pocket rustle, a table bump, wind across the microphone — since the phone wasn't built as a dedicated recorder.
The AI generally filters this out during transcription, but if a section repeatedly comes back wrong, checking for a burst of handling noise at that timestamp in the original recording is the fastest way to explain it.
Simple pay-as-you-go pricing
10 minutes free every day. Beyond that, €0.02/minute with a €0.50 minimum — no subscription. Files are automatically deleted within 24 hours.
Frequently asked questions
- Is M4A the same as AAC?
- M4A is a file container that holds AAC-encoded audio (the same codec Apple and most modern Android devices use for recordings). For transcription purposes the two names refer to the same underlying audio.
- Why do iPhone Voice Memos save as M4A?
- Apple's Voice Memos app uses AAC encoding in an M4A container by default, which compresses more efficiently than older formats like MP3 at the same file size — useful for a phone app where storage matters.
- Does phone background noise hurt transcription accuracy?
- Some, especially sudden noises like handling sounds or wind gusts. Steady background noise like a quiet room or light traffic is usually handled fine by the AI model.
- Can I upload an M4A file recorded on Android?
- Yes. Most Android voice recorder apps also default to M4A or AAC, and both are accepted the same way as an iPhone recording.
- Will I get SRT or VTT subtitle files from an M4A upload?
- Yes, alongside the plain-text transcript, whenever the recording has timing information — useful if you plan to sync the audio to a video later.
Already have subtitles, not audio?
If you're trying to convert an existing SRT or VTT file rather than transcribe new audio, the browser-based subtitle tools handle that instantly, with nothing uploaded anywhere.
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