Transcribe speech to text by using client libraries

This page shows you how to send a speech recognition request to Speech-to-Text in your favorite programming language using the Google Cloud Client Libraries.

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

Client libraries can use Application Default Credentials to easily authenticate with Google APIs and send requests to those APIs. With Application Default Credentials, you can test your application locally and deploy it without changing the underlying code. For more information, see Authenticate for using client libraries.

1. If you're using a local shell, then create local authentication credentials for your user account:

   gcloud auth application-default login

   You don't need to do this if you're using Cloud Shell.

   If an authentication error is returned, and you are using an external identity provider (IdP), confirm that you have signed in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

Also ensure you have installed the client library.

Make an audio transcription request

Use the following code to send a Recognize request to the Speech-to-Text API.

Java

// Imports the Google Cloud client library
import com.google.api.gax.longrunning.OperationFuture;
import com.google.cloud.speech.v2.AutoDetectDecodingConfig;
import com.google.cloud.speech.v2.CreateRecognizerRequest;
import com.google.cloud.speech.v2.OperationMetadata;
import com.google.cloud.speech.v2.RecognitionConfig;
import com.google.cloud.speech.v2.RecognizeRequest;
import com.google.cloud.speech.v2.RecognizeResponse;
import com.google.cloud.speech.v2.Recognizer;
import com.google.cloud.speech.v2.SpeechClient;
import com.google.cloud.speech.v2.SpeechRecognitionAlternative;
import com.google.cloud.speech.v2.SpeechRecognitionResult;
import com.google.protobuf.ByteString;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException;

public class QuickstartSampleV2 {

  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, ExecutionException,
      InterruptedException {
    String projectId = "my-project-id";
    String filePath = "path/to/audioFile.raw";
    String recognizerId = "my-recognizer-id";
    quickstartSampleV2(projectId, filePath, recognizerId);
  }

  public static void quickstartSampleV2(String projectId, String filePath, String recognizerId)
      throws IOException, ExecutionException, InterruptedException {

    // Initialize client that will be used to send requests. This client only needs to be created
    // once, and can be reused for multiple requests. After completing all of your requests, call
    // the "close" method on the client to safely clean up any remaining background resources.
    try (SpeechClient speechClient = SpeechClient.create()) {
      Path path = Paths.get(filePath);
      byte[] data = Files.readAllBytes(path);
      ByteString audioBytes = ByteString.copyFrom(data);

      String parent = String.format("projects/%s/locations/global", projectId);

      // First, create a recognizer
      Recognizer recognizer = Recognizer.newBuilder()
          .setModel("latest_long")
          .addLanguageCodes("en-US")
          .build();

      CreateRecognizerRequest createRecognizerRequest = CreateRecognizerRequest.newBuilder()
          .setParent(parent)
          .setRecognizerId(recognizerId)
          .setRecognizer(recognizer)
          .build();

      OperationFuture<Recognizer, OperationMetadata> operationFuture =
          speechClient.createRecognizerAsync(createRecognizerRequest);
      recognizer = operationFuture.get();

      // Next, create the transcription request
      RecognitionConfig recognitionConfig = RecognitionConfig.newBuilder()
          .setAutoDecodingConfig(AutoDetectDecodingConfig.newBuilder().build())
          .build();

      RecognizeRequest request = RecognizeRequest.newBuilder()
          .setConfig(recognitionConfig)
          .setRecognizer(recognizer.getName())
          .setContent(audioBytes)
          .build();

      RecognizeResponse response = speechClient.recognize(request);
      List<SpeechRecognitionResult> results = response.getResultsList();

      for (SpeechRecognitionResult result : results) {
        // There can be several alternative transcripts for a given chunk of speech. Just use the
        // first (most likely) one here.
        if (result.getAlternativesCount() > 0) {
          SpeechRecognitionAlternative alternative = result.getAlternativesList().get(0);
          System.out.printf("Transcription: %s%n", alternative.getTranscript());
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Python

import os

from google.cloud.speech_v2 import SpeechClient
from google.cloud.speech_v2.types import cloud_speech

PROJECT_ID = os.getenv("GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT")


def quickstart_v2(audio_file: str) -> cloud_speech.RecognizeResponse:
    """Transcribe an audio file.
    Args:
        audio_file (str): Path to the local audio file to be transcribed.
    Returns:
        cloud_speech.RecognizeResponse: The response from the recognize request, containing
        the transcription results
    """
    # Reads a file as bytes
    with open(audio_file, "rb") as f:
        audio_content = f.read()

    # Instantiates a client
    client = SpeechClient()

    config = cloud_speech.RecognitionConfig(
        auto_decoding_config=cloud_speech.AutoDetectDecodingConfig(),
        language_codes=["en-US"],
        model="long",
    )

    request = cloud_speech.RecognizeRequest(
        recognizer=f"projects/{PROJECT_ID}/locations/global/recognizers/_",
        config=config,
        content=audio_content,
    )

    # Transcribes the audio into text
    response = client.recognize(request=request)

    for result in response.results:
        print(f"Transcript: {result.alternatives[0].transcript}")

    return response

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

• 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.