History and the archive

LymeScribe keeps every transcript it makes. The main window shows you the last day or two so it stays a desk rather than a filing cabinet; the History window is the filing cabinet, and it's where every delete, export, and cleanup control lives.

Last updated 2026-08-31

Two views, one set of transcripts

This is the one idea that makes the rest obvious: there is a single history, and two windows that look at it. Nothing is copied, moved, or duplicated between them. Delete something in the archive and it disappears from the main list too, because it was always the same item.

The main window list

Roughly today and yesterday — recent work, newest first.
A job that's still running is simply the newest row, and it finishes in place — no separate progress window to watch.
Copy a transcript, open it, keep working.
No destructive actions. Nothing here deletes anything.

The History window

Everything you've ever transcribed, as far back as your retention setting allows.
Bulk selection across many items.
Delete, Clear History, Export, reveal the file on disk.
The audio-retention controls.
No live jobs — this window is about what's already done.

The split is deliberate. The desk is for the work in front of you, and it should never grow into an unscrollable log. The archive is for finding a thing from three weeks ago, and for anything irreversible — so a mis-click while you're mid-dictation can't delete a month of transcripts.

Opening the archive

Under the main list there's a link summarizing what's stored — an item count and how much disk it's using. Click it to open the History window. On Windows and Linux you'll also find it in the app menu; on the Mac it opens as its own window alongside the main one.

The disk figure is computed in the background, so on a cold launch it may take a moment to appear. That's normal — the link works either way.

Searching

Both windows have search, and they're independent — a filter you type on the desk doesn't follow you into the archive, and vice versa. Search matches transcript text, so you can find a meeting by something that was said in it rather than by remembering the filename.

On the desk, search is a toolbar button next to the Settings gear. In the archive it's part of the window. Since the desk only holds a day or two, searching there answers "where did that just go?" while searching the archive answers "what did we decide in March?"

What you can do in the archive

Action	What it does
Select	Pick one item, or many at once, to act on as a group.
Delete	Removes that transcript (and its kept audio) permanently.
Clear History…	Empties the archive. Confirmed first, and not reversible.
Delete All Audio…	Hosting only. Drops every retained audio file while keeping the transcripts.
Export…	Saves a transcript to a file — see the formats below.
Reveal in Finder / Explorer	Opens the folder holding the stored files, so you can back them up or move them yourself.
Speaker names	Name or re-name the speakers on a transcript that has speaker labels.

Deletes are real deletes. There's no trash to fish something back out of, and nothing was ever uploaded anywhere that could hold a copy for you. If you might want it later, export it first.

Export formats

Which formats are offered depends on what the transcript actually contains, because LymeScribe won't offer an export it can't honestly produce:

Plain text — running prose, no labels, no timings. Always available.
Speaker-labelled text — one line per turn, each prefixed with the speaker's name. Offered when the transcript has speaker labels.
Subtitles (SRT) — segments with their timings, for video work. Offered when the transcript carries the timing information.

A dictation snippet has no speakers and no segment timings, so it exports as plain text and nothing else. A meeting run through file transcription with speaker labels offers all three.

Keeping (and not keeping) audio

Two separate questions, answered separately.

How long do transcripts stick around? History retention is a setting — Forever, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, or 1 year, with 1 month as the default. Older items are cleaned up when the app starts. If you want a permanent record, set it to Forever and take your own backups from the revealed folder.

Is the original audio kept? Separately, LymeScribe can keep a playable copy of the audio next to the transcript, so you can listen back to a passage that reads oddly. That's a local-disk decision and it's on by default. Kept audio is what the archive's disk figure is mostly measuring, and Delete All Audio… is the way to reclaim it in one go without losing a single transcript.

There's a third, sharper distinction if you send work to someone else's LymeScribe server: asking that server to retain your uploads is its own setting, and it is never implied by your local preference. Wanting a playback copy on your own drive is not the same as telling another machine to keep your recordings — so LymeScribe never treats one as the other. Both controls live in Settings, and the archive links straight to them.

Nothing here involves a cloud. Transcripts and audio live in a folder on your computer. Retention is about your disk, not about a server somewhere expiring your data.

Where the files actually are

Use Reveal in Finder (or Explorer, or your Linux file manager) from the archive rather than hunting for the path. That opens the exact folder LymeScribe is using on this machine, which is also the right place to point a backup tool at. On Linux, revealing with the file pre-selected is best-effort — some file managers just open the folder.

Doing something with a transcript

The archive is also the launch point for the AI actions — summarizing a transcript, turning a meeting into minutes, or translating it. That's the next chapter.