Luxie
A voice recorder that transcribes on your device — English and Chinese, even mixed in one recording. Audio never leaves your device. Free.
Recommended: a 2024 mid-tier phone or newer (Android 14, 8 GB RAM). Minimum: Android 13 · arm64 · 6 GB RAM · all versions & release notes
What is this?
Luxie records audio — talks, sermons, lectures, meetings — and transcribes it to text entirely on your device, in English and Chinese, even mixed in the same recording. It auto-detects which language is being spoken.
Everything runs on your device; audio is never uploaded. Luxie stores your recordings on your device, as a recorder should — it just never uploads them.
Luxie (read "Luxy") / 录写 (lù xiě) means "record-write." It's the second app under the SpecEnvoy umbrella, a sibling to StarlingType.
- 🎙️ Record + transcribe — sermons, lectures, meetings; tap a line in the transcript to jump straight to that moment in the audio.
- 🗣️ English and Chinese, code-switching — auto-detected sentence by sentence, with no "switch language" button. Single-language is completely fine too.
- 🔒 On-device, never uploaded — no cloud, no account, no telemetry that sends audio.
- 🗂️ Organize — search transcripts, categories, favourites, trash, sort, multi-select, import existing audio files, and share text, audio, or both.
- 🆓 Free.
🤖 Android — phone & tablet
For your phone or tablet. Tap record, and a live waveform shows your voice as you speak.
Install
- On your phone, download the
.apkabove and tap it. - Android will ask permission to install unknown apps for your browser/Files app — allow it once, then tap Install → Open. (Normal for apps outside the Play Store; you do it once.)
- In WeChat / a chat app? Open this page in your browser first — downloads are blocked in chat apps.
- "File might be harmful" → Download anyway.
- "Install unknown apps" → Allow once.
- Play Protect "App blocked" → tap the small "Install anyway", not the big "Got it" (that cancels). ← the step most people miss.
- "App not installed" → uninstall any older Luxie first, then install again.
First-run setup
A short onboarding handles everything: grant the microphone, and download the transcription model (~153 MB, one-time, best on Wi-Fi). After that, recording and transcription are fully offline.
How to use it
- Tap record and speak — a live waveform and a "catching speech" glow react to your voice.
- Stop, name the recording, and it lands in your list.
- Open it and tap Transcribe — the text is produced on your device. Tap any line to jump to that point in the audio.
- Search, categorize, favourite, or share the text, the audio, or both.
Requirements: Minimum Android 13 · arm64 · 6 GB RAM (recommended: a 2024 mid-tier phone or newer — Android 14, 8 GB) · ~153 MB one-time model download on first run · UI in English and Simplified Chinese.
Privacy
Everything happens on your device. No cloud transcription, no telemetry that sends audio, no account to create. You can verify it: turn off the network and transcribe anyway — it still works. (The one-time model download needs the network; after that, nothing does.)
Feedback
Found a bug, or have audio where the English/Chinese mix doesn't transcribe well? Email TermsPrivacyspecenvoy+luxie_feedback [at] gmail.com. If you use Luxie regularly, even a one-line "still using it" helps decide what to build next.
Curious how the live waveform and the "catching speech" glow are built? Read Painting your voice.