Glossary Buddy

Overview

Glossary Buddy is a standalone HTML file that runs entirely in your browser. There is no installation, no account, and no server. The app has three main modes:

Centralized in the top right you'll find ⚙️ Settings for your OpenAI key, default model, prompt, and domain context. The same key powers every AI feature (translation, extraction, classification, explain, help bot).

Install as App

You can install Glossary Buddy as a desktop or mobile app. It gets its own window, its own taskbar or dock icon, and no browser chrome.

Desktop (Chrome / Edge)

1. Open Glossary Buddy in Chrome or Edge.
2. Look for the install icon at the right side of the address bar, or use the ⋮ menu and click Install Glossary Buddy…
3. Click Install. The app opens in its own window with a Start menu or Dock entry.

iPhone / iPad (Safari)

1. Open in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen, then Add.

Android (Chrome)

1. Open in Chrome, tap ⋮, then Add to Home screen or Install app.

Uploading a Glossary

Drag and drop a file onto the drop zone or click it to browse. The new glossary takes its name from the file name (extension removed, underscores converted to spaces). Supported formats:

Format	How it imports
Excel (.xlsx, .xls)	Two column files import directly. Files with three or more columns show a column mapping dialog.
CSV (.csv)	Imports directly. Header row is detected automatically.
Word (.docx)	The first table in the document imports as term pairs.
PDF (.pdf)	Text based PDFs with a two column layout import directly. For scanned PDFs, use the Extract tab instead.
XLIFF (.xliff, .xlf)	Source and target segments import as term pairs. Language codes from the file populate the column headers.

Language name detection

If your column headers contain language names like "English", "Spanish", or "Inglés", Glossary Buddy detects them and uses them as table column headers instead of "Source / Target".

Multiple glossaries

The glossary manager bar shows every loaded glossary as a colored button. Toggle each one active or inactive. Active glossaries merge into a single deduplicated set across all features.

• Use all activates every glossary at once.
• + From file imports a file as a brand new separate glossary.
• + Empty creates a new empty glossary you can name yourself. Useful for building a glossary from scratch in Live mode.
• ✏️ rename, ✕ delete.

Lookup Mode

Search

Type to filter in real time. Search is accent insensitive and looks across source, target, notes, and categories. Press Esc or click ✕ to clear. Press Enter on a term that isn't in the glossary to send it to the translation engine.

Display toggles (next to Aa controls)

• Source checkbox shows a small colored tag under each term with the name of the glossary it came from. Always available, off by default.
• Notes checkbox shows the term's note as a small italic line below the source term. Off by default.

Difficulty filter

After classification, an All · Easy · Medium · Hard filter bar appears above the table. The filter applies across Lookup and every Learn activity at the same time.

Row actions (hover to reveal)

📌	Pin or unpin. Pinned terms stay visible regardless of search.
🔊	Pronounce source or translation. The 🤖 glyph is stripped before playback.
✏️	Edit inline. Source, target, category, and note fields.
⎘	Duplicate the term as "{source} (copy)" and open it for editing.
⇄	Swap source and target. Useful when a file imported in the wrong direction.
🗑	Delete the term.
?	AI explanation (OpenAI key required).
🔎	Send the term to the Search panel.

Editing terms

Click ✏️ to expand an inline edit form with source, translation, category, and a notes textarea. Save or Cancel. Notes appear under the term whenever the Notes toggle is on.

Adding terms

Click ＋ Add term above the table. If you have text in the search box, the source field is pre-populated with it and focus jumps straight to the translation field. When multiple glossaries are active, a dropdown picks the destination glossary. The same picker appears in the Live mode translate popup.

Notes notepad

A rich text editor lives at the top of the right panel. It supports bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, four highlight colors, bullet lists, font size (A− / A+), and clear formatting. Notes save automatically. The 🗑 button clears them, and the ⬇ button downloads them as .txt.

Dictation

Click the 🎤 button in the notepad toolbar to dictate text instead of typing. Pick the recognition language from the small dropdown next to the button (EN, ES, FR, DE, IT, PT, PL). While listening, the saved indicator turns into a live preview of what's being heard. The button changes to ⏹ in red. Click it again to stop. Dictated text is inserted at the current cursor position, so you can mix typing and dictation. Chrome or Edge only.

Dictation and Live recording share the same browser engine, so they can't both run at once. If you press Start in Live while dictating, dictation stops automatically. If you try to dictate while Live is recording, you'll see a reminder to stop Live first.

When dictation doesn't pick up your voice

If you press 🎤 and nothing happens after about 5 seconds, the saved indicator changes to 🔇 No audio with a Why? button. Clicking it opens the Microphone troubleshooter. The same thing happens in Active Recall when dictation doesn't hear you.

The most common cause is the browser is listening to a virtual cable (VB-Cable, Voicemeeter, BlackHole, Loopback Audio, etc.) that you set up for interpreting prep. The cable carries system audio, not your voice. To dictate, the browser needs to be listening to your real microphone — your headset, your USB mic, or your laptop's built-in mic.

In the troubleshooter, click 🎙 Test your mic. You'll see a live audio level bar that moves when audio reaches the browser. If the bar stays flat while you talk, the wrong device is selected. The detected device list flags suspected virtual cables with a red virtual cable? badge so you know which ones to avoid.

To switch:

1. Click the 🔒 padlock (or 🛡 shield) icon in the browser address bar.
2. Find Microphone in the menu.
3. Pick the device with your headset's or laptop's actual name (not "CABLE Output," "Voicemeeter Out," "BlackHole," etc.).
4. Stop and restart dictation. It should pick up your voice now.

The browser remembers this choice for Glossary Buddy specifically, so once you set your real mic, it stays selected. To switch back to a virtual cable for interpreting prep with Live mode, repeat the steps and pick the cable device.

You can paste images from the clipboard directly into the notepad. Click any pasted image to select it. A small toolbar appears above the image with these options:

• ↔ Fit resizes the image to the notepad's full width.
• ½ halves the current size.
• ↺ restores the image to its original natural size.
• ✂ Crop opens a cropping window with a draggable selection rectangle. Drag the rectangle to move it, drag a corner to resize in both directions at once, or drag any of the four edge handles to trim only one side (top, bottom, left, or right). Click ✓ Apply when the selection looks right.
• 🗑 deletes the image (or press Delete with the image selected).

When an image is selected, you can also drag any of the four corner handles to resize it freely. Hold Shift while dragging to break the aspect ratio. Click anywhere outside the image, or press Esc, to deselect.

Learn Mode

Six study activities are available. All of them support a ⇄ direction toggle and a difficulty filter. Mastering a term in any activity marks it across all of them.

🃏 Flashcards

• Show / Flip mode. Show reveals the translation. Flip swaps source and target on every click.
• ← Prev / Next → hover reveal overlays on card edges. Arrow keys also work.
• Difficulty button is always visible in the card footer. Click it to classify or change the current term's difficulty without leaving the card.
• ? Explain opens an AI explanation popup (OpenAI key required).
• 🔎 sends the current term to the Search panel.
• ✓ Mastered · ★ Review two state flagging shared across all activities.

Keyboard shortcuts (Flashcards)

Space / Enter	Card action (show or flip)
→ / ←	Next / previous card
F	Switch Show / Flip mode
P	Pronounce current term
E	Open AI Explain popup
Y / N	Mark Mastered / Review

Other activities

• 🧠 Multiple choice. Four options. Correct answers auto-mark as Mastered.
• ⌨️ Active recall. Accent insensitive. ← Prev / Next → navigate without losing score.
• ⏱ Timed drill. Source shows for N seconds, then the translation appears. ⏸ Pause preserves position.
• 🔀 Matching pairs. Click a source, then the matching translation. Choose 5, 8, 10, or 12 pairs.
• ☑️ Study list. Checklist with difficulty dots and Google search links.

Difficulty Classification

Classify terms as Easy, Medium, or Hard so you can focus study on what needs work. There are two ways to classify:

• 🤖 Classify with AI. GPT-4o-mini evaluates each term using cognates, frequency, and cross-language similarity. Cost is around $0.003 per 100 terms.
• ✏️ Classify manually. A card-by-card window. Unclassified terms come first. Auto-advances on selection.

After classification, the Glossary Stats & Management panel shows easy, medium, hard, and unclassified counts (where unclassified equals total minus classified). Colored dots appear on every term in Lookup, Flashcards, and Study list. Click any dot to change the level. A difficulty filter bar appears in Lookup and in every Learn activity.

In the Flashcard footer, the difficulty button is always visible so you can classify terms on the fly while studying.

Live Mode

Chrome / Edge only

Use Live mode during interpreting assignments. It captures your microphone (or an audio source through a virtual cable) and highlights glossary terms in the transcript with their translations underneath. Numbers are boxed for quick reading.

Three column layout

The screen is divided into three columns: the left column holds Quick lookup and a running list of Glossary hits, the center column shows the live transcript and, optionally, the translation pane below it, and the right column shows Numbers spotted. Drag the dividers between columns to make any column wider or narrower. Drag the divider between the transcript and the translation pane to give one or the other more space. Use the toggle on the right side to hide the Numbers panel when you want more room for the transcript.

Controls bar

The controls bar has two parts. A pinned cluster on the left never scrolls and holds Start / Stop and the two language buttons, so they stay put and the language buttons are always next to Start. Everything else sits in a group on the right that scrolls on its own when the window is narrow.

• Start / Stop begin and end the session. While you listen, a ⏹ Stop & save button also appears, which ends the session and downloads the transcript.
• Language buttons show short codes such as EN or ES, with the active one highlighted. Hover to see the full name. If both buttons share a language, they show the full locale (for example ES-MX and ES-ES) so you can tell them apart. Set the two languages under the gear.
• 🗑 Clear resets transcript, hits, and number cards.
• ⬇ Download saves the transcript at any time without stopping the session. See Transcript download and save below.
• AI opens actions that run on the transcript. See AI actions below.
• A− / A+ set the live transcript font size.
• ⚙️ opens languages and Preferences.
• Translation, Notes, and Document toggle those panels.
• Press L from any mode to jump to Live.

Auto scroll

The transcript auto scrolls by default. To turn it off (so you can read history without the view jumping), open Preferences on the controls bar and toggle Auto scroll transcript.

Transcript download and save

Click ⬇ Download in the controls bar to save the current transcript at any point, even while you are still listening. The download does not stop the session. The file is a plain text transcript with a short header (date, duration, word count, and glossary hit count) followed by the timestamped glossary hits.

While you listen, ⏹ Stop & save ends the session and downloads the same file in one step. Use Download when you want a copy mid-session, and Stop & save when you are finished.

AI actions

Click AI in the controls bar to open a panel that runs actions on whatever has been transcribed so far. The actions use the OpenAI key and model from AI Settings, so set those first. The default actions are Summary, Action items, Decisions, Topic outline, Open questions, People & entities, Glossary terms, and Translate summary. A box below the buttons takes a one-off custom instruction.

The result appears under the buttons with three options: Copy to the clipboard, Save as a .md file, and → Notes to append it to your session notepad. For a long session, the actions use the most recent part of the transcript and tell you when they do.

Click ⚙ Manage in the panel header to edit the actions. You can rename a button, change the instruction sent to the model, reorder, delete, or add your own, and reset to the defaults. Write {otherLang} in an instruction to insert the other Live language, which is how the Translate action works. Your context from AI Settings is added to every action.

Singular and plural matching

Live mode recognizes both singular and plural forms of your glossary terms. A glossary entry for "fundraising strategy" will highlight when you say "fundraising strategies"; "árbol" will catch "árboles"; "city" will catch "cities". Acronyms are not pluralized (they stay exact match), and words shorter than four characters are skipped to avoid false positives. Toggle this off under Preferences if a particular glossary causes false matches.

A variant hit such as a plural is marked differently from an exact match, so you can tell at a glance. Exact matches have a solid underline. Variant matches have a dashed underline and a small ≈ marker before the word. Either way, the translation shown underneath is the glossary entry, so "strategies" still shows the translation you stored for "strategy".

Quick Lookup column

Search your active glossaries inline without leaving Live mode. The table supports the same row actions as Lookup mode, revealed on hover:

📌	Pin a term so it stays visible
✏️	Edit inline with source, translation, and note fields stacked vertically
⎘	Duplicate the term
🗑	Delete the term

A Notes button in the Quick Lookup header toggles inline notes under each term. Pinned terms appear in a separate 📌 Pinned section right below the lookup table.

If you type in the Quick Lookup search box and then click ＋, the source field of the add-term form is pre-populated with what you typed, and focus jumps to the translation field. A small ✕ appears inside the search box while you're typing; click it (or press Esc) to clear the field. Use the ⬇ button next to the Quick Lookup header to export the active glossary or glossaries as .xlsx with the glossary name plus today's date in the file name.

Translation panel styling

If you have the translation pane visible, open Preferences to adjust the translation font size, color, and italic style independently of the transcript styling.

Translating words from the transcript

• Double click a word for an instant Google translation in a popup.
• Click and drag to select a phrase. Selection works across multiple lines. Transcript updates pause while your mouse button is held, so the words stay stable for selection.

In the popup, ＋ Add saves to the glossary (with a picker when multiple glossaries are active), ✏️ lets you edit before saving, 🔧 opens an ASR correction, ? asks AI to explain the term in 2 to 3 sentences (uses your OpenAI key), 🔎 sends the term to the Search panel, and ✕ dismisses. Uncheck 🤖 before adding if you've verified the translation.

Quick Lookup translate

Type a term in the Quick Lookup search box and press ⇄ or Enter. The Google translation appears inline with an edit button (✏️) and ＋ Add. No new tab is opened.

ASR corrections

ASR corrections are silent replacements for the transcript, useful for proper nouns and recurring misrecognitions. Open the gear to reach Preferences, then click ＋ ASR correction. You can also select a word in the transcript first and then open it to prefill the rule, or use 🔧 in the translate popup. Export and import your corrections list as CSV (Wrong,Correct,CaseSensitive) so you can carry it across machines.

Live translation

Check Live translation in the settings row to translate the transcript as it streams. Choose Google (free) or OpenAI GPT. When OpenAI is selected, matched glossary terms are injected into the translation prompt so the renditions stay consistent with your glossary.

Notes in Live

Toggle Notes in the controls bar to move your session notepad into the Live screen. The same notes are kept whether they appear in Lookup or Live. A draggable divider appears between the transcript and the notepad. Drag it up to give the notepad more room, or down to give the transcript more space. The notepad height is remembered for next time.

Document preview

Toggle Document in the controls bar to open a small preview panel below the transcript. Use it to keep prep materials (PDFs, Word documents, or images) visible while you interpret. The panel has its own draggable divider so you can resize it.

Loading documents

Click 📂 Load or drag files onto the panel. You can pick several files at once; each one becomes its own tab in the row above the document. Click a tab to switch between them. The ✕ on each tab closes that document. The ＋ at the end of the row adds another file.

Supported formats

• PDF with page navigation (‹ ›), zoom in / out, fit-to-width, and a continuous scroll mode. Text is selectable.
• DOCX rendered as scrollable HTML. Tables and basic formatting come through; very complex layouts may simplify. Text is selectable.
• Images (PNG, JPG, GIF, WebP) with zoom and fit-to-width. Image text is not selectable (it's a picture).

PDF view modes

By default PDFs show one page at a time with ‹ and › buttons to flip pages. Click ↕ Scroll in the header to switch to continuous scroll, where all pages render in one long column you can scroll through. Click 📄 Pages to switch back. Each PDF tab remembers its own mode.

Selecting text

Select any text inside a PDF or DOCX preview and a small action bar appears just below the selection with three buttons: ⇄ Translate opens the same word popup as a transcript selection, so you can see the translation, add the term to a glossary (with picker), edit before saving, or fix an ASR rule. ? Explain opens the AI Explain window for the selection. 🔎 sends the selection to the Search panel. Press ✕ on the bar or click outside to dismiss.

Document and Notes layout

When both Notes and Document are open, you can change how they sit together. Click ⇆ Side by side in the document header to put them next to each other with a draggable vertical divider in the middle. Click again (now labeled ⇊ Stacked) to put them back one above the other. Click ⇅ Swap to swap which one is on top (or, in side-by-side, which is on the left). Your choice is remembered.

For PowerPoint files, export to PDF in PowerPoint first (File > Export > PDF, or File > Save As > PDF on Mac), then load the PDF here. Documents are kept only for the current session; reloading the page asks you to re-pick the files.

Search panel

A floating 🔎 Search button sits on the right edge of the screen the whole time you are in Live mode. Click it to open the search panel. Type a query and press Enter (or click Go). The panel shows an inline preview built from open data sources:

• Quick definition from DuckDuckGo's Instant Answer API. Good for technical, medical, and well-known terms.
• Wikipedia summary for the closest matching article, with a link to read the full page.
• Related topics when DuckDuckGo has them.

Wikipedia is searched in your active Live language first, then falls back to the other Live language if the first one has no result. For example, if you're listening in EN-US and search "guacamole" but the EN article is empty, the panel shows the ES Wikipedia summary instead. A small language code badge next to "Wikipedia" tells you which version was found. This works for any language pair Wikipedia supports.

Above the results, a Show: bar lets you toggle the Quick definition and Wikipedia previews on or off independently. Turning both off makes the panel a pure launcher — no network calls, just the search box and "Open in:" row. Your choice is remembered.

Below the search box, the Open in: row gives one-click access to the full search results in any engine in a new tab. The default set is Google, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, and Wiktionary.

Keyboard shortcut: double Enter to open

In the search box, the first Enter runs the search (same as clicking Go), and a second Enter on the same query opens the search in your checked engines (same as clicking the purple "Open N ↗↗" button). If no engines are checked, the second Enter opens Google as a sensible default. Edit the query and the first Enter resets to "Go" again.

Adding your own search sites

Click ⚙ Manage in the panel header to add any website that has a search URL. Put {q} where the query goes. Examples:

• Linguee EN-ES: https://www.linguee.com/english-spanish/search?source=auto&query={q}
• WordReference: https://www.wordreference.com/es/translation.asp?tranword={q}
• PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term={q}
• Termium Plus: https://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2alpha/alpha-eng.html?lang=eng&srchtxt={q}
• BibleHub: https://biblehub.com/search.php?q={q}

In the manage window you can rename, reorder (↑ ↓), or delete engines, and reset to defaults if you change your mind. Engines are saved with your other settings, so a backup will carry them to another device.

Chatbots and prompt presets

The search panel also includes three chatbots out of the box: ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Like all engines they open in a new tab with the query prefilled — no chatbot can be embedded inside another site because they're session-authenticated. Chatbot buttons are tinted purple in the row to distinguish them from search engines.

Each chatbot handles URL prefilling differently, and there is nothing the app can do about this since the behavior is set by the chatbot's own website:

• Perplexity auto-fills the prompt and submits it. You see results immediately.
• ChatGPT and Claude auto-fill the prompt but don't submit. Press Enter in the new tab to send. This is intentional on their side — they want you to be able to review and edit the prompt before it costs you a message.

You can add other chatbots (Gemini, Poe, You.com, your own deployed Claude, etc.) via the manage window — check the This is a chatbot box when you add them so prompt presets apply.

When you have one or more chatbots, a Prompt: row appears above the engine row with each preset as a button. The active prompt is highlighted in purple — one click sets it. So searching "thoracoscopy" with the Explain button highlighted actually sends "Explain "thoracoscopy" in 2 or 3 sentences for an interpreter." to the chatbot. Search engines (Google, Wikipedia, custom sites) ignore the prompt and search the raw query. Hover any button to see the full prompt template in a tooltip.

Sticky chatbot context

In the manage window under the Chatbot prompts tab, you'll find a Chatbot context field at the top. Anything you type there is prepended to every chatbot query, so the chatbot answers in the right register without you having to repeat the setup each time. For example:

"I am an English-Spanish conference interpreter. Use Mexican Spanish. The session is a medical conference on oncology nutrition. Reply in 2-3 sentences unless asked for more."

With that context set, clicking Claude with the Explain prompt active and the query "thoracoscopy" sends: your context, then a blank line, then "Explain 'thoracoscopy' in 2 or 3 sentences for an interpreter." A small ctx ✓ badge appears in the prompt row when context is set; click it to edit. Click + ctx to set one if none exists. Context applies only to chatbot engines; search engines ignore it.

Other chatbot behavior

Two toggles at the bottom of the manage window apply to all chatbots:

• Reuse the same tab per site (default ON). New queries replace the content of the existing tab for that site instead of opening a new one. Stops you from ending up with ten Perplexity or ChatGPT tabs after a busy session. Each site gets its own tab — they don't share — so ChatGPT and Claude can both stay open, but a second ChatGPT query replaces the first.
• Always ask chatbots for the language equivalent (default ON). Appends a line to every chatbot query asking it to provide the term in the other Live language at the bottom of its response. So if you're listening in English and search "thoracoscopy", the chatbot is also asked for the Spanish equivalent (or whatever your second Live language is). Useful for interpreting since you usually want both directions.

The seven default prompts cover common interpreter needs (Explain, Translate to either direction, Examples, Synonyms, Context). You can add, edit, reorder, or delete prompts in the manage window under the Chatbot prompts tab. To add a custom site as a chatbot (so it gets prompt wrapping), check the This is a chatbot box when you add it in the Engines tab.

Searching multiple sites at once

Each engine in the Open in: row has a checkbox. Check 2 or more, and an Open N ↗↗ button appears. Click it to open the search in every checked engine simultaneously, each in its own tab. The browser may block this the first time as a pop-up flood — if so, allow pop-ups for the site in the browser address bar and try again.

When you click an engine button (or send a query via the 🔎 button in the transcript or document), the search opens in a new browser tab. Glossary Buddy cannot position those tabs for you — browsers do not let webpages move other windows around the screen. To keep Glossary Buddy on one side and search results on the other, snap the windows yourself:

• Windows 11/10: select the window you want to dock, then press Win+Left or Win+Right to snap it to that half of the screen. Win+Z opens the Snap Layouts menu where you can choose thirds or other arrangements. Drag a window to a corner to snap to a quarter.
• macOS 14+: hover the green maximize button (top left of a window) and choose "Move & Resize" then "Left Half" / "Right Half". For thirds, install a free tool like Rectangle or Magnet from the App Store — they add keyboard shortcuts for left-third, middle-third, right-third, halves, and quarters.
• Chrome on any OS: drag a tab out of the window to make it its own window, then snap that window to one side.

Once you've snapped a tab to a specific spot, Chrome usually remembers the position for future tabs opened from the same profile, but not always. The first time, expect to do a quick manual arrangement; after that it's automatic for the session.

🔎 buttons send to the Search panel

The small 🔎 buttons in the transcript word popup and the document selection bar always send their query into the Search panel. If the panel is closed, it opens automatically. If it's minimized, it's restored. This keeps results in one consistent place rather than spawning tabs you have to chase. To still open Google or any other engine in a new tab, use the Open in: row inside the panel.

The floating Search button

The 🔎 Search button on the right edge is the permanent home for search. Click ▢ in the panel header or ✕ to close the panel back to that button, which stays out of the way during interpretation but is always one click from full search. Click it to open the panel again.

Transcription Engine

Live mode can listen with either of two engines. Pick one under ⚙️ → Preferences → Transcription engine. Your choice is remembered. Everything else works the same either way: click a word to add it, glossary terms highlight with their translations, and numbers are boxed.

	Web Speech	OpenAI GPT-Live-Transcribe
Cost	Free	About $1 per hour
Setup	None	Your own OpenAI key
Knows your glossary terms	No	Yes
Both languages at once	No	Yes
Choose which audio input to use	No	Yes

Web Speech (free, default)

Built into Chrome and Edge. Free, nothing to set up, and it listens in one language at a time, following the active language button. It always uses whatever input Windows has set as the default. If it is listening to the wrong source, change the default input in Windows sound settings.

OpenAI GPT-Live-Transcribe (your key)

More accurate on accents, specialized vocabulary, and speakers who switch between languages mid sentence. It follows both of your languages at once, so you do not need to press a language button when the speaker changes language. It can also be told to expect your glossary terms. It bills to your own OpenAI account.

Settings

• Latency trades speed against accuracy. Lower shows words sooner. Higher waits a moment longer and gets more right. High is recommended.
• Input device chooses which audio input to listen to. If you use Voicemeeter or a virtual cable, set this to the one carrying your audio rather than leaving it on the system default.
• Keyword hints tell the engine which of your terms to expect. See below.
• Assignment context is an optional sentence describing the job, such as Workers comp deposition, orthopedic injury. It helps with unclear audio in your subject area.
• Max segment rarely needs changing. Text normally appears when the speaker pauses; this only matters if nobody pauses at all.

Keyword hints

Keyword hints nudge the engine toward your terminology, which helps most with acronyms and specialized terms. They are suggestions, not rules. Sending too many similar terms can backfire, because a term may get swapped for a close neighbor from your list.

• Prioritized (recommended) sends the terms most likely to be misheard: ones you have already written an ASR correction for, then pinned terms, then terms marked difficult, then acronyms and multi-word terms. Everyday words are left out.
• All glossary terms sends them in glossary order with no ranking.
• Off sends none. Try this if a term keeps coming out as a different term from your glossary.

If something is not working

Press Test connection to check your key and connection step by step. If a session cannot start, Live mode switches to Web Speech on its own and tells you why, so you are never left with nothing. Your engine choice is not changed, so fix the cause and press Start again.

What you see	What to do
A message about a missing key	Add your OpenAI key under Settings.
Your key is not accepted	Check the key, and that your OpenAI account has credit.
Nothing appears while someone is speaking	Open Preferences and check the audio level. If it stays flat, pick a different Input device.
Words appear but are often wrong	Set Latency to High. If a term keeps turning into another glossary term, set Keyword hints to Off.
It switched to Web Speech on its own	The reason is shown on screen. Press Test connection for more detail.

Good to know

• Text appears when the speaker pauses, so it arrives a phrase at a time rather than word by word.
• Transcripts have no speaker names or timestamps on individual words.
• Choosing an input device is only available with the OpenAI engine. Web Speech does not allow it.
• To capture audio from a meeting or video, you still need a virtual cable. See System Audio Setup.

System Audio Setup (Zoom / Teams / Online Meetings)

By default, Live mode listens to your microphone. To capture audio from a Zoom or Teams call, route it through a virtual cable.

Windows setup

1. Install VB-Cable from vb-audio.com/Cable. Run as administrator and restart.
2. Install Voicemeeter Banana from vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/banana.htm. Restart again.
3. In Voicemeeter, set A1 output to your headphones and confirm that B1 is lit on the input channel.
4. In Windows Sound settings, set output to Voicemeeter Input.
5. In Zoom Audio Settings, set Speaker to Voicemeeter Input.
6. In Glossary Buddy Live mode, click Start and set mic to Voicemeeter Output (VB-Audio Voicemeeter VAIO) in Chrome's picker.

Mac setup

• BlackHole (free): existential.audio/blackhole. Set Zoom's speaker to BlackHole and select BlackHole as your mic. To hear at the same time, create a Multi-Output Device in Audio MIDI Setup.
• Loopback (paid): the easiest Mac solution.

Switching back to your regular microphone

Windows: quick switch

1. Right-click the speaker icon in the system tray (bottom right of the screen) and choose Sound settings. On Windows 10, click "Open Sound settings".
2. Under Input (or "Choose your input device"), pick your real microphone — usually labeled with your headset name (e.g., "Headset Microphone (Logitech G733)") or your computer's built-in mic ("Microphone Array").
3. Test by speaking. The input volume meter should react.
4. You don't need to uninstall VB-Cable or Voicemeeter — just change the default. They stay installed for next time.

Windows: Voicemeeter specifically

1. Close Voicemeeter completely (right-click its icon in the system tray → Exit, or use the X in its window). Closing alone stops the routing.
2. In Windows Sound settings, set Input to your real mic and Output back to your headphones or speakers (instead of "Voicemeeter Input").
3. In Zoom, Teams, or other meeting apps, reset Speaker and Microphone to your real devices in their audio settings.
4. If Voicemeeter is set to auto-start with Windows, you can disable that in its Menu → System Tray (Run at Startup).

Mac

1. Open System Settings (or System Preferences) → Sound → Input.
2. Pick your real mic — your headset, built-in mic, or AirPods — instead of BlackHole or Loopback.
3. If you're using Loopback, you can also quit the Loopback app entirely; its virtual devices disappear until you reopen it.

Per-site override in Chrome (advanced)

If you want VB-Cable to be the default mic only when you're using Glossary Buddy, and your headset mic everywhere else, Chrome can do that:

1. While on Glossary Buddy, click the 🔒 lock icon on the left side of the address bar.
2. Click Site settings.
3. Under Microphone, choose the specific device you want this site to use (VB-Cable Output, or your real mic). Chrome remembers it for this site only.
4. You can do the reverse for sites where you want your headset: open that site, click 🔒, set its mic preference to your headset.

When Active Recall, notepad dictation, or other mic features seem broken

If you press the mic button and nothing happens for several seconds:

• Check that your input device is your real mic — open Sound settings using the steps above.
• In Chrome, check the 🔒 → Site settings → Microphone setting for Glossary Buddy. If a virtual cable is selected, switch to your real mic.
• Verify the browser can hear you: in Windows Sound settings, watch the input volume meter while you speak.
• Refresh the page after switching devices. Chrome sometimes holds onto the previous device until reload.

Settings

Open ⚙️ Settings in the top right of the app from any mode. The window has two parts: AI configuration (top) and Backup & restore (bottom).

AI configuration

All OpenAI features (translation, term extraction, AI explain, difficulty classification, help bot, list-import translation) share a single configuration here.

Field	What it does
OpenAI API Key	Stored only in this browser. The 👁 button shows or hides it. The ❓ How? link expands instructions to create a new key on the OpenAI platform.
Default model	Choose between gpt-4o-mini (fast and cheap, recommended), gpt-4o, gpt-4.1-mini, or gpt-4.1.
System prompt	The instruction sent to GPT for term translations. Edit it for special projects, or click ↺ Reset to default to restore the original.
Domain / context note	A short phrase appended to the prompt, like "laparoscopic surgery" or "criminal trial". Biases translations toward the current assignment's domain.
Test connection	Sends a tiny request to OpenAI to confirm the key, the model, and your network all work. Useful before a live assignment.

After saving, the same settings are used everywhere in the app, so you don't need to enter them again per feature.

Backup & restore

Save everything stored in this browser (glossaries, preferences, notes, ASR corrections, AI settings) to a single .json file. Use it to move to another device, or as a safety copy before clearing browser data. See "Moving the app to another device" in the Exporting section below for the full walkthrough.

Translation Engine

• Google Translate (free). Populates the target field directly in Lookup and inline in Live Quick Lookup. No new tab.
• OpenAI GPT. Context aware. Uses your system prompt and domain note from AI Settings, and injects glossary terms into the request. Requires an API key.

In Lookup, choose the engine in the Engine dropdown. When OpenAI is selected, a small link appears to open ⚙️ Settings directly.

Import as List

When you already have a clean list of terms and don't need AI to extract them from prose, paste the list into the Extract tab's text area and click 📝 Import as list. A window opens with these options:

• Separator detection. Each non-empty line becomes one term. The window scans the first 20 lines for a common separator (tab, comma, semicolon, colon, dash, slash, equals, pipe) and pre-selects the most likely one. Override it with the row of buttons below, or pick Custom... for anything else.
• Missing translations. Pick how to handle lines with only a source term: 🤖 Translate with AI (batches 20 at a time and marks results with the robot glyph for review), Leave empty (import as is), or Skip (drop those lines).
• Target glossary. Choose any existing glossary or create a new one called "Imported list".
• Live preview. The first 15 parsed pairs appear at the bottom, along with a count of terms with and without translations.

Duplicates against the chosen glossary's existing terms are skipped automatically.

Acronyms

Live mode detects acronyms inside your term sources automatically. If a source has a recognizable acronym pattern, the acronym itself becomes a separate trigger that lights up when spoken on its own.

Recognized patterns:

Pattern	Example	Acronym extracted
ACR — full form	UN - United Nations	UN
ACR: full form	WHO: World Health Organization	WHO
ACR / full form	MRI / Magnetic Resonance Imaging	MRI
ACR (full form)	ER (emergency room)	ER
Full form (ACR)	Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)	FBI

Acronyms are matched case sensitively in the transcript (so "UN" matches but "un" in Spanish does not). The full form still matches case insensitively as before. When both could match, the longer one wins.

No setup needed. As soon as a term has an acronym pattern, Live mode picks it up.

Term Extraction

The Extract tab pulls bilingual term candidates from a reference document using AI. Drop a file onto the slim drop strip at the top, or paste text directly into the larger text area below, then click 🧠 Extract terms with AI. For clean lists where you don't need AI to find the terms, use 📝 Import as list instead (see the Import as List section).

Supported file types for extraction

Format	Notes
TXT	Plain text, any language
DOCX	Full text is extracted including every paragraph
PDF (text based)	Digitally created PDFs only. Scanned PDFs won't work.
PPTX	Text from all slides is extracted in order

For any other source, paste the text directly into the text area. The ✕ clear link next to "Or paste text or a list of terms:" empties the area.

Term candidates window

• Edit the language column headers at the top to label source and target correctly.
• ⇄ per row swaps source and target for that term.
• ⇄ Swap all reverses every row and the column labels at once.
• 🤖 checkbox per row is checked by default. Uncheck it on rows whose translation you've verified to add them without the AI flag.
• 🔍 validates the pair on Google.

Managing Terms

Action	How
Edit (including notes)	Hover the row, click ✏️, edit source, target, category, note, then 💾 Save
Duplicate	Hover the row, click ⎘. Creates "{source} (copy)" and opens it for editing.
Swap direction	Hover the row, click ⇄ (swaps source and target instantly)
Delete	Hover the row, click 🗑
Pin	Hover the row, click 📌 (pinned terms stay visible during search)
Add manually	＋ Add term, fill the form, click Save. The destination glossary picker appears when multiple glossaries are active.
Add from Live	Double click or drag select in the transcript, then ＋ Add in the popup
Add from Live Quick Lookup	Click ＋ in the Quick Lookup column. If you have text in the search box, the source field is pre-populated.
Export active glossary	Glossary Stats & Management, then Export ⬇
Export all glossaries	Glossary Stats & Management, then Export all ⬇ (one sheet per glossary)
Remove 🤖 flag	Click ✏️ on the term, delete 🤖 from the target, click Save

Session Timer

Visible in all three modes. Select 15, 20, 25, or 30 minutes, or click Custom… to enter your own duration. Press ▶ Start. The timer continues as you switch modes. Use ⏸ to pause and ↺ to reset. The display turns amber at 2 minutes left and red at 1 minute, and a toast fires at zero.

Pronunciation

A 🔊 button appears on Lookup row hover, beside the term on flashcards, and beside the revealed answer. Press P in flashcard mode. Voice pickers live in the Translation Engine panel (Lookup) and in the Flashcard settings area.

If a term's translation contains the 🤖 glyph or the marker "(AI)", those are stripped before speech so they don't get read aloud.

Themes

The 🎨 Theme menu offers 🟣 Violet (default), 🔵 Slate, 🟢 Sage, and 🧱 Terracotta. Toggle 🌙 dark mode from inside the same menu. The Aa − ＋ buttons adjust the table font size. The Source and Notes checkboxes next to Aa control inline display of glossary name tags and term notes.

Exporting

• Export ⬇ exports the active (merged) glossary as .xlsx.
• Export all ⬇ exports every glossary as a single .xlsx with one sheet per glossary. Column headers use detected language names.
• Live ⬇ (next to Quick Lookup) exports the active glossary or glossaries as .xlsx, with the glossary name and today's date in the file name.
• Notes ⬇ downloads session notes as a dated .txt file.
• Stop & save in Live (with Record checked) saves the transcript and hit log as a .txt file.
• ASR corrections ⬇ / ⬆ exports your speech recognition corrections as CSV (Wrong,Correct,CaseSensitive) so you can carry them across machines, and imports the same format back.

Moving the app to another device

Open ⚙️ Settings in the top right of the app, scroll to the 💾 Backup & restore section, and click 💾 Backup all settings ⬇ to save everything to a single .json file: all glossaries, difficulty marks, pinned terms, mastered and review flags, ASR corrections, AI settings, preferences, layout sizes, voices, theme, and session notes.

If you have an OpenAI API key saved, you'll be asked whether to include it in the backup. Choose OK to include it (convenient, but the file will contain a sensitive secret). Choose Cancel to leave it out (safer for sharing the file or storing it in the cloud, and you re-enter the key on the other device once).

On the other device, open Glossary Buddy, open ⚙️ Settings, and click ↻ Restore from backup ⬆. Pick the .json file. A confirmation asks you to acknowledge that this will replace the current data on that device. After you confirm, the page reloads with all your settings in place.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Global

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl/⌘ + F	Focus search box
Esc in search	Clear search field
1 2 3	Switch Lookup / Learn / Live
Alt + D	Toggle dark mode
Esc	Close any open window or popup

Flashcards

Space / Enter	Card action (show or flip)
→ / ←	Next / previous
F	Switch Show / Flip mode
P	Pronounce term
E	Open Explain popup
Y / N	Mastered / Review

Live

L	Start / stop listening
Double-click word	Translate single word
Drag to select	Translate multi-word phrase
Esc	Close translate / ASR popup

File Formats

Format	Import glossary	Term extraction (AI)
.xlsx / .xls	✅	n/a
.csv	✅	n/a
.docx	✅ (requires a table)	✅
.pdf (text based)	✅ (two column layout)	✅
.pdf (scanned)	❌	❌ paste text manually
.pptx	n/a	✅ (slide text extracted)
.txt	n/a	✅
.xliff / .xlf	✅	n/a

FAQ

API Costs

Feature	Cost
Lookup, all Learn activities, export, timer, notes	Free
Google Translate, pronunciation, speech recognition	Free
Google Search links, inline translation	Free
Live translation, Google engine	Free
OpenAI translation (Lookup)	~$0.001/term
AI explanations	~$0.001/explanation
Live translation, OpenAI engine	~$0.005/hour
Live transcription, Web Speech engine	Free
Live transcription, GPT-Live-Transcribe	~$0.017/minute (~$1/hour)
AI term extraction	~$0.003/document
AI difficulty classification	~$0.003/100 terms
Help AI chatbot	~$0.001/question