Podcast Transcripts & Chapters on Mac

Two hours of talking, made navigable.

A long episode is a wall of audio. A transcript turns it into text you can search, and chapters turn it into a list you can skip through. Feedcast makes both, and puts them where your podcast app finds them.

Transcribed on your Mac

Feedcast uses the speech framework built into macOS. Every episode gets a timed transcript, and it costs nothing.

Search inside the episode

Type the phrase you half remember. Every match lights up, and clicking a line moves the player to that second.

Chapters in three ways

Keep the ones a show ships, edit them by hand in Edit Chapters, or have them written from the transcript when an episode has none.

The transcript

Every episode Feedcast prepares is transcribed with the speech framework that ships with macOS. That is why a transcript costs nothing and counts against no quota: the work happens on your own machine, in the background, while you do something else. On Apple silicon a faster speech model downloads once, about 600 MB, and it also understands an ad read in another language.

What you get is not a wall of text but a timed list in the Transcript tab, right under the player. Each line carries the second it was spoken, the current line is marked as the episode plays, and clicking any line moves the player there. Search inside it and every match is highlighted in place, with arrows to step from one to the next, so “somewhere in the middle they talked about the iPhone grip” becomes a click. The lines of a removed ad are hidden, because they are no longer in the episode.

The transcript does not stay on the Mac. Feedcast adds it to your feed, timed to the cleaned episode, so podcast apps that show transcripts, such as Pocket Casts, show it on your phone.

Feedcast searching the transcript of an Upgrade episode for iPhone, with the matches highlighted in yellow and the current line marked — 95 matches for “iPhone” in a two hour Upgrade episode, with the line that is playing marked.

Chapters a show already has

When a podcast ships chapters, Feedcast keeps them as they are, including the artwork some shows attach to each one. They are not rewritten, not renamed, and not replaced by anything Feedcast could generate. They move only when a sponsor read is cut out from underneath them, by exactly the length of the cut, and a chapter the ad had split in two becomes one again.

Edit Chapters is the editor for the rest: retitle a chapter, move a mark to where the segment really starts, add one the show forgot, or give a chapter its own image from the gallery. The player at the top is the same one as in the main window, with the waveform as the scrubber, so you can find the spot by ear.

Edit Chapters in Feedcast with the chapter list of an Accidental Tech Podcast episode, each chapter with its own image, and the image gallery on the right — Edit Chapters, with the images the show gave its chapters and the gallery on the right.

Chapters an episode never had

Plenty of shows ship none at all. For those, Feedcast reads the finished transcript and writes a chapter list: where the conversation turns, what the new subject is, and the second it starts. You get titles that describe the episode rather than “Part 2”, the first one says it was generated by Feedcast, and Transcript & AI Chapters lets you check them against the text, side by side.

This step leaves your Mac. The transcript text, never the audio, goes to Feedcast’s server, where a language model returns the list. The same pass marks the sponsor reads, which is how sponsor removal works on shows without chapters. Generated chapters are a Premium feature with a monthly allowance of about 175 hours of media, and the Mac App Store version includes them on your first five episodes. Episodes that already have chapters are left alone, unless you ask Feedcast to replace chapters that mark ads with a clean set.

Transcript and AI Chapters in Feedcast with a transcript search on the left and twelve generated chapters on the right, four of them sponsor reads — Twelve chapters written from the transcript of a Search Engine episode. The four sponsor reads among them are the ones that come out.

They travel with the episode

Chapters are written into the file itself, not kept in a Feedcast database, so they arrive intact in Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro and anything else that reads chapter marks. Skip to the interview from your phone, on a walk, in an app Feedcast has never heard of.

See how the sponsor removal that reshapes those chapters works, or how the finished episode reaches your phone through a private podcast feed.

Transcript and chapter FAQ

Do I get a transcript for every episode?

Yes, and at no cost. Transcription runs on your Mac using the speech framework built into macOS, so it is part of the free app rather than something metered. On Apple silicon a faster speech model downloads once, about 600 MB, the first time an episode is transcribed.

Can I read the transcript on my phone?

In podcast apps that show transcripts, such as Pocket Casts, yes. Feedcast adds the transcript to your feed, timed to the cleaned episode.

Can I search across all my transcripts at once?

Not yet. Transcript search runs inside the episode you have open. Search All Episodes covers titles, descriptions and shows across everything, which is usually how you find the episode to search in.

What happens to chapters the show already made?

They are kept as they are, artwork included. They only move when a sponsor read is cut out from under them, by exactly the length of the cut, and a chapter that was split by an ad becomes one chapter again.

Where do generated chapters come from?

From the transcript. The text, never the audio, goes to Feedcast’s server, where a language model returns titles and timestamps. It is a Premium feature with a monthly allowance of about 175 hours of media, and the Mac App Store version includes it on your first five episodes.

Will the chapters show up on my phone?

Yes. They are written into the episode file itself, so Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro and anything else that reads chapter marks will show them.