Importing what you already have

Not every meeting starts with Oris. A Voice Memo, a Zoom export, a transcript a colleague pasted into Slack: each of those can go through the same pipeline a live recording does, and land as the same kind of note. Which import you want depends on what you have — raw audio, or text somebody has already transcribed.

An audio file

Sometimes the recording already exists — a Voice Memo you dictated on your phone, a Zoom or Teams recording someone shared, an .mp3/.wav/.m4a from another tool. Audio file import runs that file through the exact same transcribe → format → summarize → land-in-your-vault pipeline a live Oris recording uses, without you having to re-record it live. It’s the audio sibling of external transcript import: that one takes an already-transcribed file, this one takes raw audio and transcribes it first with the same on-device WhisperKit model.

Supported formats. The picker lists the common ones — .m4a, .mp3, .wav, .aac, .m4b, .caf, .aiff, and .flac. That list is a convenience filter rather than a hard limit, because Oris decodes audio the same way the rest of macOS does. In practice, if QuickTime Player opens the file, Oris can transcribe it. Pick “All files” in the dialog to try one that isn’t listed.

The Obsidian plugin’s Oris: Import audio file… command opens a modal: choose an audio file, optionally set a title, and pick where the note lands — inbox/, a new note at a custom path, or appended to the end of an existing note. The optional “copy the original audio into <vault>/_archive/” toggle preserves the source file so it survives even if you later delete the produced note. Import runs in the background: clicking Import closes the dialog right away and the transcription continues while you keep working. When the note lands you get a notice you can click to open it, plus a macOS banner if you have switched away from Obsidian. The transcript is summarized by whichever provider you’ve set up under Settings → Summarization, which is on-device by default (see Local (mlx)), and only one import runs at a time.

One thing to know about speaker labels. A live Oris recording captures your microphone and the system audio on two separate tracks, which is what lets it split the transcript into “me” vs. “others” (see me/others speaker labels). An imported audio file is almost always a single mixed track — everyone’s voice is already blended together — so the transcript isn’t speaker-split. The imported note carries a short callout saying so, so it’s never a surprise. (A rare export that happens to carry two separate audio tracks, like some Zoom recordings, does get the split automatically.)

A transcript someone else made

If someone else recorded the meeting — Zoom’s auto-transcript, Teams, Otter, a copy-pasted plain-text transcript, a VTT/SRT subtitle file — Oris runs it through the same format → summarize → land-in-your-vault flow that a live recording would use. Format is auto-detected; override it (vtt, srt, otter, plain, json) if the sniffer misfires (rare, but possible with copy-pasted text that happens to look JSON-ish).

The Obsidian plugin’s Oris: Import external transcript… command opens a modal: paste a transcript or pick a file, choose a format, and pick where it lands: Inbox, New note (custom path), or an existing note you choose. That last option is labelled Replace marker in existing note, but what it does today is append the import to the end of the note you picked, so expect to find it at the bottom rather than at a marker. The optional “copy original into <vault>/_archive/” toggle preserves the source file with cross-link frontmatter so it survives even if you later delete the produced note. Import runs in the background: clicking Import closes the dialog right away and the work continues while you keep working or start another recording. A status-bar pill (⬆ importing…) shows it running, and when the note lands you get a notice you can click to open it, plus a macOS banner if you have switched away from Obsidian. The transcript is summarized by whichever provider you’ve set up under Settings → Summarization, which is on-device by default (see Local (mlx)); on that default, a long transcript that needs a bigger model downloads it once. Only one import runs at a time.