Support

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Common questions

Does PlayScript transcribe the audio for me?

No, and that is deliberate. PlayScript is a tool for transcribing by hand: it gives you a player you can drive from the keyboard while you type, so you never break your rhythm to reach for the mouse. There is no speech recognition and nothing is sent anywhere to be processed.

The audio keeps stopping while I type.

That is deliberate, and it is the heart of how PlayScript works. The moment you start typing, playback pauses exactly where it is; once you stop, it picks up from the same spot on its own. You never reach for a pause key while your hands are on the words.

How long it waits before resuming is yours to set — Settings (the gear button on iPad), "Resume after you stop typing", anywhere from half a second to five. Pause with Escape (or ⌘Return on iPad) instead and it stays paused for as long as you like, however still the keyboard goes.

I want to try it before I have a recording to hand.

There is a short sample interview you can use: sample-interview.m4a — 97 seconds of spoken English, generated on a Mac, nobody's actual voice. Open it the same way you would open your own file.

Which audio formats can I open?

MP3, M4A and AAC, WAV, AIFF, FLAC, ALAC and CAF. If a file refuses to open, it is usually a video container with an audio track rather than an audio file; extracting the audio first will do it.

It says the audio file is missing.

On a Mac, PlayScript never copies your recordings, it remembers where they are. If you move, rename or delete the file, or it lives on a drive that is not plugged in, the project opens with your text intact and asks you to point it at the file again. Your transcript is never lost to a missing recording.

On iPad this does not happen: the recording is copied into the app when you open it, so it stays available however the original is moved, renamed or removed from iCloud.

Where are my projects stored?

Inside the app's own storage — on a Mac, its folder in your Library; on iPad, the app's private container, together with the copied recordings. There is one file per project, in plain JSON, so it stays readable even without PlayScript. Transcripts you export with ⌘E go wherever you choose in the save dialog.

I changed the language and nothing happened.

The interface language applies on the next launch. Quit PlayScript and open it again — on iPad, swipe it away in the app switcher first.

Can I get the timestamps out?

Yes. Exporting with ⌘E offers plain text or Markdown, each with the option to keep or strip the [hh:mm:ss] markers, depending on whether you want a clean reading copy or something you can navigate.

What does it need to run?

On a Mac, macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, running natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel. On iPad, iPadOS 17 or later. It is one App Store listing, so getting it once gives you both.

The iPad version expects a hardware keyboard: the app is driven by keys rather than by reaching for controls, and that is what makes it faster than a player and a text editor side by side. On the on-screen keyboard it works, but it is not what it was built for.

Reporting a problem

If the app quits unexpectedly on a Mac, macOS offers to send a report to Apple — and separately keeps a copy you can find in Console under Crash Reports. On iPad, crash reports are under Settings › Privacy & Security › Analytics & Improvements › Analytics Data, in entries starting with PlayScript. Attaching that to an email helps enormously, but a plain description of what you were doing is already useful.