Languages · French
French speech to text on your Mac
NoteOwl turns French speech to text on your Mac. Dictate into any app, record a meeting or import a recording, and it writes French with its accents, its cedilla and its elisions, using on-device AI models that work offline after a one-time download.
Below is a real sample: a short French work call about a bookshop’s reading evening, and NoteOwl’s transcript of it, unedited. Dictation is free and unlimited; meetings and imported recordings are part of NoteOwl Pro.
French in NoteOwl
- Plan
- Dictation free and unlimited; meetings and imports in NoteOwl Pro
- Dictation and meetings
- Settings → Auto-Context → Spoken language: French or Auto-detect
- Imported recordings
- Language detected automatically
- On the sample
- 96.6% of the characters matched
- Where it runs
- On your Mac; offline after the one-time model download
A real sample
What does NoteOwl’s French transcript look like?
Here’s a sample recording, and NoteOwl’s transcript of it, unedited. On this sample NoteOwl matched 96.6% of the characters (punctuation and spacing aside).
The recording · 0:45
A short work call between Camille and Julien. NoteOwl detected the language by itself.
NoteOwl’s transcript
In English
Bon, Julien, en fait le point sur la soirée lecture de jeudi prochain. Oui, l'auteur a confirmé hier et on a déjà trente deux
In English: Right, Julien, shall we go over next Thursday’s reading evening? Yes, the author confirmed yesterday, and we already have thirty-two
inscrits, c'est plus que prévu
In English: people signed up. That’s more than we expected.
on n'a que vingt cinq chaises. Justement, je me disais qu'on pourrait pousser les tables du fond et louer une dizaine de chaises en plus
In English: We only have twenty-five chairs. Exactly, I was thinking we could push the tables at the back aside and rent about ten extra chairs.
d'accord, on fait comme ça, tu t'occupes de la location. Oui, je réserve les chaises d'ici mardi et je demande qu'on nous les livre jeudi matin, de mon
In English: Okay, let’s do that. Will you take care of the rental? Yes, I’ll book the chairs by Tuesday and ask for them to be delivered on Thursday morning. On my
côté, j'envoie un petit rappel aux inscrits la veille
In English: side, I’ll send a short reminder to everyone signed up the day before.
et pour le buffet, on garde la même formule que la dernière fois. Oui, ça avait bien marché
In English: And for the buffet, do we keep the same setup as last time? Yes, that worked well.
How does NoteOwl write French?
With accents and elisions in place. In the sample, soirée, déjà, côté, même and ça were all right, and every elided word kept its apostrophe: l’auteur, qu’on, t’occupes, j’envoie. It even caught the n’ in “on n’a que vingt cinq chaises”, which sounds the same without it.
Numbers came out as words but without their hyphens: “trente deux” and “vingt cinq”, not trente-deux and vingt-cinq. Questions got no question marks at all, and two short replies, an echoed “Trente-deux ?” and a “Parfait”, were left out.
One phrase shows the old French trap of words that sound alike: “on fait le point” came out as “en fait le point”. A single read-through catches slips like that.
How do you dictate in French on a Mac?
Tap fn in any app, speak French and tap fn again: the words type at your cursor. French is one of the languages you can pin in Settings → Auto-Context → Spoken language, so NoteOwl doesn’t have to guess.
The setting starts on your Mac’s own language. On a Mac set to English, choose French, or Auto-detect to let NoteOwl recognise the language each time. Meetings you record use the same setting; recordings you import are always detected automatically, like the sample above.
Does NoteOwl understand French from Canada?
NoteOwl lists French with two variants: France and Canada. The sample on this page is French from France, the everyday French of two colleagues running a bookshop café, and NoteOwl detected it by itself.
French is spoken by around 300 million people, in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Quebec and across West and Central Africa. At work that means the réunion and its compte rendu, client calls, interviews and lectures.
The sample doesn’t show how NoteOwl handles a Quebec, Belgian or Swiss accent, so if that is how you speak, try it on a short recording of your own first.
How do you get the best French transcripts?
Read it once for sound-alikes and punctuation, and teach NoteOwl the names it doesn’t know. In the sample the slips were exactly those: “en fait” for “on fait”, and questions without their question marks.
When you dictate, the panel offers Polish as you stop: it’s free, it tidies punctuation, and NoteOwl tells it to keep your French as French. For surnames and brand names, a Vocabulary rule in NoteOwl Pro fixes the spelling in every transcript after: type the word as NoteOwl writes it, then as it should be spelled.
Is French speech to text free in NoteOwl?
Yes, for dictation. Speaking French into any app is free and unlimited, forever, like voice notes. Meetings, imported recordings, summaries, Chat and custom vocabulary are part of NoteOwl Pro.
NoteOwl Pro is $79 once for one Mac, with a 7-day free trial in the app and no card. Everything runs on your Mac, with the same on-device AI models on both plans.
- Dictation in French, into any app
- FreeUnlimited
- ProUnlimited
- Voice notes
- FreeUnlimited
- ProUnlimited
- French meetings, with no bot joining
- FreeNo
- ProYes
- Imported French recordings
- FreeNo
- ProYes
- Summaries, action items and Chat
- FreeNo
- ProYes
- Custom vocabulary
- FreeNo
- ProYes
- Read and export your own transcripts
- FreeYes
- ProYes
| Free | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Dictation in French, into any app | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Voice notes | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| French meetings, with no bot joining | No | Yes |
| Imported French recordings | No | Yes |
| Summaries, action items and Chat | No | Yes |
| Custom vocabulary | No | Yes |
| Read and export your own transcripts | Yes | Yes |
FAQ
Questions about French transcription
Can NoteOwl transcribe French offline?
Yes. NoteOwl turns French speech into text on your Mac with on-device AI models, so after the one-time model download it works with no internet connection. Your recordings and transcripts stay on your Mac.
Does NoteOwl support Canadian French?
NoteOwl lists French with two variants, France and Canada. The sample on this page is French from France, which NoteOwl detected by itself. Accuracy varies with accent, so try a short recording of your own.
Does NoteOwl write French accents and apostrophes?
Yes. In NoteOwl’s transcript of the French sample, soirée, déjà and côté kept their accents, ça kept its cedilla, and elisions such as l’auteur and qu’on kept their apostrophes. Questions came out without question marks, though.
Is French dictation free in NoteOwl?
Yes. Dictating French into any app is free and unlimited, forever. Meetings, imported recordings, summaries, Chat and custom vocabulary are part of NoteOwl Pro, $79 once for one Mac, with a 7-day free trial in the app.
Can NoteOwl transcribe French meetings?
Yes, with NoteOwl Pro. It records your microphone and your Mac’s audio, with no bot joining the call, and transcribes the French on your Mac. Set Spoken language to French or Auto-detect before the meeting.
Related
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Dictation, meetings and recordings
- Free dictation into any appFree, unlimited speech to text in every app on your Mac: tap fn, talk, and the words type at your cursor; one tap polishes them in the right tone for that app
- Audio to textTranscription software for your Mac: drop in an audio or video file and get a speaker-labelled transcript with timestamps, unlimited, with nothing uploaded
- AI meeting notes without a botHow NoteOwl records calls from your Mac with no bot joining, and what you get when the call ends
Free tools
- French audio to textTranscribe a French recording free in your browser, with the language set to French; text, SRT, VTT or Word; nothing is stored
- French subtitle generatorMake French subtitles from a video or recording free in your browser, with the language set to French; SRT, VTT or text; nothing is stored
- Translate subtitles to FrenchTranslate SRT or VTT subtitles into French free in your browser: every cue keeps its number and times; nothing is stored
Transcribe French on your Mac
Free to download. Runs entirely on your Mac.
macOS 26 or later · Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) · 16 GB memory minimum, 24 GB recommended
About NoteOwl
NoteOwl is private AI meeting notes and memory for the Mac. It captures meetings without a bot joining the call, labels every speaker, writes summaries and action items, and builds a memory of every conversation that you can chat with — fully offline, because the speech recognition and the AI run on the Mac itself. Dictation into any app is free; Pro is a one-time purchase.
NoteOwl pricing: what’s free and what Pro adds
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