Pinch Desktop - Voice translation for real-time conversations
Attend meetings in any language, on any platform.
Hey everyone! We just launched our Mac app designed to make every meeting as natural as it would be in your native language. The app transcribes and translates all audio you hear, and allows you to decide when to translate your voice as speech into the meeting.
It's invisible to others (like Granola), and works everywhere without any meeting bots. Try it at startpinch.com!
Here’s a live demo, without cuts:
https://youtu.be/ltM2p-SosLc
Our story
When we first launched Pinch, we shipped a video conferencing solution with a human-like AI interpreter that was an active participant in your call. Our users hold the spacebar down while speaking to the translator, and when they release the spacebar the translator speaks out to the entire room.
That design was intentional - it puts the task of context selection on the user and prevents people from interrupting each other (only one person can press spacebar at a time). It also comes with heavy tradeoffs, such as longer meeting lengths and friction with first-time users.
Why we're excited about the desktop app:
- No vendor lock-in, invisible to others, and works everywhere - just select Pinch Microphone.
- Fast transcription+translation means you can understand what's going on in real-time and interrupt where necessary.
- After you start speaking, the others will hear your translated audio as fast as we can generate it, without interrupting your flow.
The last few months, our focus has been on building a translation model and UX that would support fast and accurate cross-lingual meetings, and we’re incredibly excited to open the public beta today.
Join the MacOS beta at startpinch.com
