O Horatio
O Horatio
Questions, bugs and requests: support@horatio.web.app. Please say which device and system version you are on — and, on a Mac, whether it is Apple silicon or Intel.
One purchase covers all three. It follows your Apple Account rather than the machine, so unlocking Pro on any of them unlocks it on the others.
On a Mac: check the level meter in the status bar. If it never moves, the wrong microphone is selected — choose another from the microphone menu in the toolbar, which switches a running session without losing it. After fifteen silent seconds the indicator in the window turns orange and says Hearing nothing.
On an iPhone or iPad: there is no microphone to choose — the app records from whichever one iOS is using, so disconnect any headset you are not speaking into. The listening indicator turns orange when nothing has been heard for long enough to doubt the device. Check that O Horatio has microphone access in Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone.
O Horatio recovers on its own: it rebuilds the audio pipeline against whatever device the system switched to and carries on. The recording continues in a second file. This is the one failure worth knowing about in advance — AirPods in particular can stop sending audio while still showing as connected, and on a Mac the fix is to pick the built-in microphone from the toolbar menu, mid-session, without stopping.
The fair copy needs a language model, downloaded separately from the app and free of charge: Settings → Models. On a Mac, if you already run Ollama, Settings → Language model finds it and lists the models you have pulled — no second download; there is no Ollama on an iPhone or iPad, so the choice there is the downloaded model or a provider you give a key to. If you have pointed the fair copy at a remote provider, Test connection runs a real request and reports exactly what failed.
On a Mac, File → Import Audio…; on an iPhone or iPad, the Session menu → Import. Either takes an audio or video file and transcribes the whole thing as fast as the device will take it — nothing plays back, and the text arrives as it goes. Stop part way and the next import of the same file offers to carry on from where it stopped; a file already transcribed in full says so rather than adding a second copy. Files are recognised by their contents, so moving or renaming one changes nothing.
The verbatim transcript is always kept. Turn off Fair copy to see exactly what was said — hover a paragraph on a Mac, or tap and hold on an iPhone or iPad, to read the original. O Horatio rejects a fair copy that grew or shrank too much, on the grounds that a transcript containing words you never said is worse than one with filler in it.
Speaker detection sometimes invents an extra voice from a cough or a change of tone. In the knowledge graph panel you can rename any speaker, or merge a spurious one into a real one.
On an Intel Mac the GPU does less of the work. On an iPhone the problem is memory: the
largest models do not fit, and the ones that do can drift behind a fast speaker. Either way,
switch to a smaller model in Settings → Models — small q5_1 or base.
An iPad or an Apple silicon Mac keeps up with the largest model offered.
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
space | Start transcribing, or stop. On a session that already has text, the new audio joins the end of it. |
⇧⌘O | Overlay — two lines above everything, even full-screen slides. It never takes focus. |
⌘O | Open a saved session and carry on recording into it. |
⌘S / ⇧⌘S | Save · Save As |
⌘E / ⇧⌘E | Export the transcript · export the raw transcript |
⇧⌘G | Build the concept graph from what has been said so far |
⌘, | Settings — models, where the language model runs, recordings |
Not keys, but worth knowing: double-click a speaker’s name to rename them, right-click a paragraph to reassign it to someone else or to split it where a second person starts talking, and double-click any paragraph to edit its text by hand.
On a Mac: recordings and your glossary are in
~/Documents/Horatio/, where any other app can reach them.
On an iPhone or iPad: they are in the Files app, under On My iPhone (or On My iPad) → O Horatio. Copy them anywhere from there, or use the share button on a session to send one out.
On every device, Settings → Recordings shows what is there, how much space it uses, and lets you delete recordings you no longer need. Nothing is deleted automatically.