Recording and transcription are two separate org-wide switches because they answer two different objections. Recording is about privacy, some organizations don't want a stored copy of their radio traffic at all. Transcription is about cost, speech-to-text has a per-minute price, and most orgs never search a transcript.
You choose independently.
Where the switches live
Settings → Walkie-Talkie, top card. Under the master Walkie-Talkie switch, you'll see:
The Transcribe switch is disabled, greyed out, whenever Record audio is off. There's nothing to transcribe if audio isn't saved.
Record audio
When Record audio is on:
Every transmission is saved so it can be replayed later.
Each time someone releases the talk button, PortaPro uploads the audio clip to your organization's private storage. The clip appears in the Walkie-Talkie page's history with a play button, the speaker's name, the channel, timestamp, duration, and audience count.
When Record audio is off:
Live voice only, nothing is captured or stored. Your team can talk, but there is no history to replay.
The client never even starts a recorder. Nothing is written to disk on the device, nothing is uploaded, and nothing is stored. If a clip somehow arrived at the server anyway, the server rejects it, this is a promise, not a client-side courtesy.
You'll see a green toast when you flip the switch: *Recording on, transmissions are saved* or *Recording off, live voice only*.
Transcribe speech to text
When Transcribe is on:
Each recording is transcribed so you can search what was said.
A few seconds after each clip finishes uploading, PortaPro sends the audio to ElevenLabs Scribe for transcription. The transcript appears on the history row with the audio; a search box appears at the top of the Walkie-Talkie page so you can find every time someone said "grease trap" or "site 42".
When Transcribe is off (default):
Off by default. Recordings stay playable; turning this on adds per-minute transcription cost.
Rows show "Audio only, press play to listen" instead of a transcript. The search box is hidden entirely, there's nothing to search. Recordings still play back normally; you just don't get text.
You'll see a toast: *Transcription on, clips become searchable* or *Transcription off*.
When Record audio is off, Transcribe's helper text changes to explain the dependency:
Needs recording, there is nothing to transcribe when audio is not saved.
Retention
Recording retention is a dropdown with five presets:
Audio clips and transcripts older than this are permanently deleted by a nightly sweep.
The sweep runs once a day and deletes both the audio clip and its transcript together, you can't have a transcript without the audio anymore, or vice versa. When you change retention, the change applies to the next sweep; nothing is deleted immediately.
Recording retention is disabled, greyed out, when Record audio is off, because there's nothing to retain.
Where audio and transcripts live
Clip size is capped at 25 MB per transmission; at PortaPro's voice-quality encoding, a full 60-second latched transmission is roughly 240 KB.
What history and search look like in each mode
| Record audio | Transcribe | History page shows |
|---|---|---|
| On | On | Rows with speaker, channel, transcript, play button; search box active |
| On | Off | Rows with speaker, channel, "Audio only, press play to listen", play button; no search box |
| Off | *(disabled)* | The whole history is empty, nothing was ever saved |
Cost picture, in plain English
For the specifics of what to expect, see Admin, Privacy, and Billing.