gladia-cli

Audio to text, from your terminal. gladia transcribes any audio file or URL with the Gladia speech-to-text API — 100+ languages, speaker diarization, and code switching, in one command.

It is built for terminals, shell scripts, and pipelines:

• One command — gladia transcribe <file-or-url> and you have a transcript
• 100+ languages — auto-detected, constrained to a shortlist, or switched per utterance
• Speaker diarization — who spoke when, with --diarize
• Pipe-friendly output — text, json, json-full, srt, or vtt to stdout
• Files or URLs — transcribe a local recording or a remote link, no download step
• Zero config — one API key, no project setup, works in CI

Start here: Install · Quick start · Commands · Language · Diarization

Install

# macOS & Linux
curl -fsSL https://github.com/gladiaio/gladia-cli/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sh

# Windows (PowerShell)
powershell -c "irm https://github.com/gladiaio/gladia-cli/releases/latest/download/install.ps1 | iex"

Other platforms and binaries: GitHub releases. Build from source with make build (→ ./gladia).

The installer offers to set up shell tab completion when run interactively. To skip the prompt (e.g. in CI), set GLADIA_NO_COMPLETION_PROMPT=1. See Shell completion to configure it manually.

Quick start

gladia auth set your_key                    # get one at app.gladia.io/account

gladia transcribe meeting.wav               # transcript to stdout
gladia transcribe podcast.mp3 -o srt        # subtitles instead
gladia transcribe call.wav --diarize        # label who spoke when
gladia languages                            # list supported language codes

Setup once: get an API key at app.gladia.io/account, then provide it any of these ways (checked in order):

export GLADIA_API_KEY=your_key   # 1. environment
gladia auth set your_key         # 2. saved to ~/.gladia (mode 0600)
gladia transcribe … --gladia-key your_key   # 3. per-command flag

Everyday examples

# Transcribe a local file or a remote URL — no download step
gladia transcribe meeting.wav
gladia transcribe https://example.com/audio.mp3 -o json

# Narrow language detection to a shortlist
gladia transcribe podcast.mp3 --language en,fr,de

# Mixed-language audio: re-detect on every utterance
gladia transcribe mixed.mp3 --code-switching --language en,fr

# Who spoke when, as subtitles
gladia transcribe call.wav --diarize -o srt

# Pick a model
gladia transcribe podcast.mp3 --model solaria-3 --language en

# Machine-readable output straight into a pipeline
gladia transcribe interview.mp3 -o json | jq '.transcription'

Commands

Command	Description
transcribe <source>	Transcribe an audio file or URL
auth set <key>	Save API key to ~/.gladia
languages	List supported ISO 639-1 codes
completion <shell>	Generate shell tab completion (bash, zsh, fish, powershell)

Flags (transcribe)

Flag	Default	Description
-o, --output	text	Output: text, json, json-full, srt, vtt
--language	—	Expected language(s), comma-separated (en or en,fr,de); narrows detection, does not enable code switching
--cs, --code-switching	off	Re-detect language on each utterance (mixed-language audio; solaria-1 only)
--diarize	off	Identify speakers in the transcript
--model	—	STT model: solaria-1 or solaria-3. Solaria-3 accepts at most one --language (en, fr, de, es, or it) and does not support code switching.
-v, --verbose	off	Show progress while polling

Global flag (any command): --gladia-key — API key if not in the environment or ~/.gladia.

Language

Goal	What to run
Auto-detect	transcribe <source>
Constrain detection	--language en,fr,de (no code switching)
Code switching	--cs or --code-switching (+ optional --language hints)

• --language limits which language(s) Gladia considers (en,fr,de is a hint list, not per-utterance switching).
• --cs / --code-switching turns on per-utterance language detection. Add --language to restrict which languages may appear. Not available with solaria-3.

gladia languages   # list valid codes

Diarization

Use --diarize when you need who spoke when. Off by default.

• Works with any output format; most useful with -o text, srt, or vtt.
• Speaker labels are included in the output (e.g. Speaker 0: …).

gladia transcribe meeting.wav --diarize
gladia transcribe panel.mp3 --diarize -o srt

Shell completion

When you install via install.sh or install.ps1, the script asks whether to configure tab completion for your shell. You can also set it up manually — gladia completion --help lists every shell.

bash

Requires the bash-completion package (on macOS: brew install bash-completion@2).

# current session
source <(gladia completion bash)

# persistent (user directory)
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions
gladia completion bash > ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/gladia

zsh

mkdir -p ~/.zsh/completions
gladia completion zsh > ~/.zsh/completions/_gladia

# add to ~/.zshrc if not already present:
# fpath=(~/.zsh/completions $fpath)
# autoload -U compinit; compinit

fish

mkdir -p ~/.config/fish/completions
gladia completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/gladia.fish

PowerShell

gladia completion powershell | Out-File -Append -Encoding utf8 $PROFILE

Restart your shell after installing completions.

Develop

make build && make test && make dist

License

MIT © Gladia