Live captions, both ways
Heard puts live captions of the other person on your screen and your replies on theirs. It was made for the two screens of iPhone Duo, and it works on any iPhone.
Hi there, what can I get you?
Oat or whole milk?
Oat please, thank you!
On iPhone Duo
Open the Duo and hold it like a book. You read their words on the inside. They read yours on the outside. Nobody has to pass the phone back and forth.
Inside, facing you
Whatever the other person says shows up as they say it, newest line largest. Speech recognition runs on the iPhone itself, so it keeps working with no signal.
The back camera finds the speaker's face and shows a steady close-up next to the captions, so you can lip-read along and catch what the captions miss. It is a live view only. Nothing is recorded.
Outside, facing them
The first thing they see is a calm note: "I'm deaf. Speak normally, I'll read your words here." You can change it to whatever fits you.
Type a reply or tap a quick phrase and it fills their screen. Heard can say it out loud too. A small strip shows them their own words as you read them, so they know you've got it.
On iPhone Duo, Apple only lets apps use the outer screen while a camera is running. So we put the camera to work: that's Lip view. Frames are looked at in memory and thrown away. If you'd rather not use it, switch Lip view off and turn the phone around to show your reply, the same way it works on every other iPhone.
On any iPhone
Captions sit at the top, your reply sits below. When you're ready, tap Show them and your reply fills the whole screen so you can turn it toward the other person.
Captions start right away. The yellow dot means it's listening.
Six everyday phrases are ready to go, like "Could you say that again?"
Your reply goes full screen and big. Turn the phone around. Done.
Privacy
Conversations at a pharmacy or a doctor's desk are private. Heard was built so they stay that way.
Speech recognition and translation use Apple's on-device frameworks. Your words never leave the phone, which is also why Heard works offline.
Microphone audio and camera frames are processed in memory and thrown away a moment later. Heard never writes them to storage.
You won't make an account. Heard has no analytics or tracking inside it and never talks to a server of ours. We don't run one.
With Heard Plus you can tap Save to keep a conversation. It stays on your phone until you delete or export it.
The full policy is short and plain. Read it here.
Pricing
Everything you need for a conversation is free and stays free. Heard Plus is for people who use it every day.
Free forever
$12.99 once
One purchase, yours to keep. No subscription. Restore it any time on a new iPhone.
Heard is coming soon to the App Store. If someone you love keeps a pen ready for the shop counter, send them this page.