Lyra Chrome Extension vs Speech To Markdown: Features, Pricing & Which Is Better (2026)
A side-by-side comparison of Lyra Chrome Extension and Speech To Markdown — features, pricing, and ideal use cases — to help you decide which AI tool fits your workflow.
Lyra Chrome Extension
Lyra
Run AI-native meetings by moving your call onto Lyra for AI-assisted research, live collaboration, and automated follow-ups.
Key features
- Pre-Meeting AI Research: Runs automated AI-driven research and context gathering before meetings to surface relevant information and prepare participants.
- AI-Native Meeting Hosting: Allows users to move their call onto Lyra so the meeting operates with built-in AI assistance rather than treating AI as an external tool.
- Live Follow-Up & Draft Creation: Generates follow-ups, draft messages, and documents during the meeting, enabling immediate capture and refinement of next steps.
- Real-Time Task Extraction: Identifies action items and converts them into assignable tasks live in the meeting to reduce manual note-taking.
- Screenshare-Free Collaboration: Enables collaborative drafting and information sharing within the meeting environment, minimizing the need to screenshare.
- Browser Integration: Installs as a Chrome extension to embed Lyra's meeting and AI features directly into users' browsing and meeting workflows.
- AI-native meeting environment: move calls onto Lyra to run meetings with integrated AI assistance
- Pre-meeting research assistance to prepare for calls
- Live generation of follow-ups, drafts, and tasks during meetings
- Chrome extension distribution via Chrome Web Store
- Real-time team collaboration features (no screenshare required)
Best for
- Pre-Meeting Preparation: Automatically gather and summarize background research and key topics for participants to review before the call.
- Live Meeting Assistance: Use the extension during a call to generate talking points, synthesize discussion, and produce polished drafts in real time.
- Instant Action Item Management: Detect and convert decisions and requests from the meeting into tasks assigned to team members without leaving the call.
- Collaborative Drafting: Co-author emails, proposals, or follow-up documents with teammates during the meeting without screensharing.
- Meeting Summaries: Produce concise post-meeting summaries and next-step lists immediately after the call to speed up execution.
- Preparing for meetings with automated research and briefing materials
- Running live meetings with AI-generated notes, follow-ups, and action items
- Collaborative drafting of documents or messages during calls
- Replacing screenshare workflows with shared AI-assisted meeting space
Speech To Markdown
xajik
Free, 100% local macOS menu-bar app that turns speech into structured markdown using whisper.cpp and any local LLM.
Key features
- 100% Local Pipeline: Runs whisper.cpp for speech-to-text and any local LLM server for structuring — no cloud calls and no API keys required.
- Global Dictation Hotkey: Press ⌘⌥] in any app to have the transcript typed straight at your cursor, works in Terminal, browser, Slack, and more.
- Agent Mode Live Structuring: A floating capsule streams your voice through the LLM into a real-time Markdown, plain text, or HTML document.
- One-Line Install: A single curl-piped script installs xcodegen, whisper-cpp, and ffmpeg via Homebrew, then builds the app from source into /Applications.
- iOS Companion: A fully offline iPhone/iPad app that uses Apple Intelligence on iOS 26+ (iPhone 15 Pro and up).
- Multiple Output Formats: Format, edit, or append the LLM output as Markdown, plain text, or HTML from a single control panel.
- Send-Now Flush: The Send (⏎) control flushes the current buffer to the LLM immediately instead of waiting for the pause/word-count threshold.
- Model Picker: Download and swap Whisper models from Settings — Base (~150 MB) is a good starting point.
Best for
- Private Meeting Notes: Dictate meeting recaps on a Mac with sensitive content that must never leave the device.
- Voice-Driven Coding Comments: Speak function docstrings or PR descriptions into your editor at the cursor via Global Dictation.
- Structured Journaling: Use Agent Mode to ramble freely and get a clean, headed Markdown document out in real time.
- Offline Field Notes on iOS: Capture voice notes on an iPhone with no signal, structured into markdown using on-device Apple Intelligence.
- Slack / Email Long-Form: Dictate long replies straight into Slack or Mail without opening a separate transcription tool.