Quickstart: Using the gcloud tool

This page shows you how to send a speech recognition request to Speech-to-Text using the gcloud tool from the command line.

Speech-to-Text enables easy integration of Google speech recognition technologies into developer applications. You can send audio data to the Speech-to-Text API, which then returns a text transcription of that audio file. For more information about the service, see Speech-to-Text basics.

Before you begin

Sign in to your Google Account.
If you don't already have one, sign up for a new account.
Set up a Cloud Console project.
Set up a project
Click to:
- Create or select a project.
- Enable the Speech-to-Text API for that project.
- Create a service account.
- Download a private key as JSON.
You can view and manage these resources at any time in the Cloud Console.

Set the environment variable GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS to the path of the JSON file that contains your service account key. This variable only applies to your current shell session, so if you open a new session, set the variable again.
Example: Linux or macOS

Replace [PATH] with the path of the JSON file that contains your service account key.
```
export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="[PATH]"
```
For example:
```
export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="/home/user/Downloads/service-account-file.json"
```
Example: Windows

Replace [PATH] with the path of the JSON file that contains your service account key.

With PowerShell:
```
$env:GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="[PATH]"
```
For example:
```
$env:GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="C:\Users\username\Downloads\my-key.json"
```
With command prompt:
```
set GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=[PATH]
```
Install and initialize the Cloud SDK.

Make an audio transcription request

Now you can use Speech-to-Text to transcribe an audio file to text. Use the following code sample to send a recognize request to the Speech-to-Text API.

Open the command line shell and run the following command.

gcloud ml speech recognize gs://cloud-samples-tests/speech/brooklyn.flac \
    --language-code=en-US

This command requests that Speech-to-Text transcribe the audio contained in a FLAC hosted at a publicly accessible location.

If the request is successful, the server returns a response in JSON format:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "alternatives": [
        {
          "confidence": 0.9840146,
          "transcript": "how old is the Brooklyn Bridge"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Congratulations! You've sent your first request to Speech-to-Text.

If you receive an error or an empty response from Speech-to-Text, take a look at the troubleshooting and error mitigation steps.

What's next

Practice transcribing short audio files.
Learn how to batch long audio files for speech recognition.
Learn how to transcribe streaming audio like from a microphone.
Get started with the Speech-to-Text in your language of choice by using a Speech-to-Text client library.
Work through the sample applications.
For best performance, accuracy, and other tips, see the best practices documentation.