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Private Transcription Mode: What It Does and Skips
Author: Hushscript Published: Last reviewed:
Private mode runs speech recognition only: no transcript is saved to your account, no post-processing Insights run afterward, and the result comes back as a password-protected archive instead of a dashboard entry. Most of what Hushscript does is already built to leave as little of your audio behind as possible: extract the audio in your browser, delete it the moment the transcript is ready, encrypt whatever text remains. Private mode takes that a step further and skips the “text remains” part entirely.
What private mode actually does
Turn it on before you start a job and set an archive password first. That password lives only in your browser: Hushscript never receives it, never stores it, and cannot recover it if you lose it. From there, the job runs speech recognition only: nothing is written to your account and no post-processing runs on the result. What comes back is a short-lived encrypted result that your browser immediately packages into a password-protected .husharchive, built on your device using the password you set.
Everything else about the job stays normal. Saved dictionaries, prompt presets, one-off keyterms, speaker detection, multichannel audio, merged uploads: all of it still applies in private mode, at the same per-minute rate as any other job. You’re choosing a different outcome for the result, not switching to a stripped-down product.
What you give up
Three options go away, and none of them belong to the recognition itself. Post-processing Insights don’t run, because Insights are generated from a saved transcript and private mode doesn’t keep one. Translation is unavailable. So is medical mode, which means a recording that needs clinical vocabulary belongs in a normal job instead. Everything the speech engine does on its own still happens, which is why the transcript that comes back reads the same as any other.
The other thing you give up is the safety net. A normal transcript sits in your account under a retention rule you chose, so you can come back to it next month and it will still be there, and deleting it later through its own flow returns a deletion receipt recording what was removed and when. Private mode has nothing to delete in that sense, because nothing was ever saved: a private result has no such window. It expires if you don’t download and acknowledge it, and the archive password lives only in your browser. Lose the password and the archive is unrecoverable, by us as much as by anyone else. That is the trade working as intended, but it is a real one, and it is worth making on purpose.
Private mode vs. normal mode
Normal mode is the right default for almost everything, and it isn’t the careless option: the video never leaves your device, the uploaded audio is deleted the moment the transcript is ready, and what remains is encrypted at rest under a retention rule you pick, from keep-until-I-delete to automatic removal after 7, 30, 90, or 365 days. What normal mode does is accumulate. Every job adds a transcript you can search, edit, re-export in any of 21 formats, and generate Insights from later. That library is the product for most people, and for most recordings it is exactly what you want.
Private mode earns its place for the file that shouldn’t join that library at all: a single sensitive call, a source interview, a one-off recording where the safest number of copies is the smallest possible number. Reach for it deliberately, for the specific job that needs it, rather than as a default setting for everything you upload.
| Normal mode | Private mode | |
|---|---|---|
| Saved to your account | Yes, as a searchable transcript | No |
| Retention | Your choice: keep until deleted, or auto-delete after 7, 30, 90, or 365 days | Expires if not downloaded and acknowledged |
| Post-processing Insights | Available | Not available |
| Translation and medical mode | Available | Not available |
| Result | Transcript in your dashboard, exportable in 21 formats | Password-protected .husharchive |
| If access is lost | Deletion receipt available for anything you remove yourself | Unrecoverable by anyone, including Hushscript |
A worked example
A journalist records a 40-minute phone call with a source who agreed to background only, not direct quotes. Uploading it normally would leave a transcript sitting in the account indefinitely, encrypted but present, reachable by any future request for it. Instead, before uploading, they turn on private mode and set an archive password only they know. The call transcribes as speech-recognition-only, and what comes back is a password-protected .husharchive: no copy in the dashboard, nothing for a later request to find because there’s nothing there to find. They open the archive locally when they need to check a quote against their notes, and it stays on their own drive from that point on. If they later want a summary of the call, that’s the trade they already made. Private mode doesn’t produce one, because there’s no saved transcript left to summarize.
Setting it up
Private mode draws from the same balance as any other transcription, at the same rate; it isn’t a paid upgrade. New accounts get 30 free minutes unlocked by card verification (temporary $1 hold, released immediately, never charged), then pay as you go, and those same minutes cover private jobs exactly like normal ones. The full detail on the encryption and deletion architecture underneath both modes (browser-side extraction, deletion on completion, EU/US data residency) is on the private transcription page; the audio to text page covers the everyday, normal-mode version of the same upload flow.
Private mode is the deliberate version of a habit Hushscript follows on every job by default. For how little survives even outside private mode, see why we delete your audio after every transcription.
Independent sources and standards
Hushscript consulted these independent, non-competing references. They explain research, standards, or platform behavior and do not endorse Hushscript.
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