Transcribe speech to text by using the command line

This page shows you how to send a speech recognition request to Speech-to-Text using the REST interface and the curl command.

Speech-to-Text enables easy integration of Google speech recognition technologies into developer applications. You can send audio data to the Speech-to-Text API, which then returns a text transcription of that audio file. For more information about the service, see Cloud STT basics.

Before you begin

Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

Set up a Google Cloud console project.

Set up a project

Click to:

• Create or select a project.
• Enable the Speech-to-Text API for that project.

You can view and manage these resources at any time in the Google Cloud console.

Install the Google Cloud CLI.

Note: If you installed the gcloud CLI previously, make sure you have the latest version by running gcloud components update.

To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

gcloud init

Set up a Google Cloud console project.

Set up a project

Click to:

• Create or select a project.
• Enable the Speech-to-Text API for that project.

You can view and manage these resources at any time in the Google Cloud console.

Install the Google Cloud CLI.

Note: If you installed the gcloud CLI previously, make sure you have the latest version by running gcloud components update.

To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

gcloud init

Make an audio transcription request

Use the following code sample to send a recognize REST request to the Speech-to-Text API.

1. Run this command to create a JSON file as input for the request. Replace /full/path/to/audio/file.wav with the path to the audio file you want to transcribe:

   echo "{
     \"config\": {
       \"auto_decoding_config\": {},
       \"language_codes\": [\"en-US\"],
       \"model\": \"long\"
     },
     \"content\": \"$(base64 -w 0 /full/path/to/audio/file.wav | sed 's/+/-/g; s/\//_/g')\"
   }" > /tmp/data.txt

2. Use curl to make a recognize request:

   curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
       -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
       -d @/tmp/data.txt \
       https://speech.googleapis.com/v2/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/recognizers/_:recognize

   Note: To pass a filename to curl, you use the -d option (for "data") and precede the filename with an @ sign.

   You should see a response similar to the following:

     {
       "results": [
         {
           "alternatives": [
             {
               "transcript": "how old is the Brooklyn Bridge",
               "confidence": 0.98267895
             }
           ]
         }
       ]
     }
   

You sent your first request to Speech-to-Text.

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used on this page, follow these steps.

1. Optional: Revoke the authentication credentials that you created, and delete the local credential file.

   gcloud auth application-default revoke

2. Optional: Revoke credentials from the gcloud CLI.

   gcloud auth revoke

Console

Caution: Deleting a project has the following effects:

• Everything in the project is deleted. If you used an existing project for the tasks in this document, when you delete it, you also delete any other work you've done in the project.
• Custom project IDs are lost. When you created this project, you might have created a custom project ID that you want to use in the future. To preserve the URLs that use the project ID, such as an appspot.com URL, delete selected resources inside the project instead of deleting the whole project.

If you plan to explore multiple architectures, tutorials, or quickstarts, reusing projects can help you avoid exceeding project quota limits.

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Manage resources page.

Go to Manage resources

In the project list, select the project that you want to delete, and then click Delete.

In the dialog, type the project ID, and then click Shut down to delete the project.

gcloud

Caution: Deleting a project has the following effects:

• Everything in the project is deleted. If you used an existing project for the tasks in this document, when you delete it, you also delete any other work you've done in the project.
• Custom project IDs are lost. When you created this project, you might have created a custom project ID that you want to use in the future. To preserve the URLs that use the project ID, such as an appspot.com URL, delete selected resources inside the project instead of deleting the whole project.

If you plan to explore multiple architectures, tutorials, or quickstarts, reusing projects can help you avoid exceeding project quota limits.

Delete a Google Cloud project:

gcloud projects delete PROJECT_ID

What's next

• Use client libraries to transcribe audio using your favorite programming language.
• Learn how to transcribe short audio files.
• Learn how to transcribe streaming audio.
• Learn how to transcribe long audio files.
• For best performance, accuracy, and other tips, see the best practices documentation.