Get started
Your first recording, in about twenty minutes.
Five steps, most of the time spent waiting for a download. Nothing to decide before you start, and nothing you cannot undo.
What you need on the day
- A Mac running macOS 13 or later.
- A microphone. A clip-on is best; the built-in one is fine for a first go.
- An account with the service that turns the recording into text — step 3 walks you through it. They bill you directly for what you record. Mila itself costs you nothing.
- Consent, through your practice's own process, exactly as for any other recording. Mila does not handle it and does not ask for it.
Take the right file for your Mac
Apple menu, then About This Mac. If the line beginning Chip says Apple M‑something, take the Apple silicon file. If it says Processor and mentions Intel, take the Intel one.
Apple silicon · 135 MB Intel · 142 MB
Version 0.2.0. Mila does not update itself; when there is a new version, this page says so.
Open it
Open the file you downloaded, drag Mila into Applications, and open it from there. It opens straight away: no warning to click past, nothing to allow first.
If your Mac says the app is damaged, or from an unidentified developer, the copy you have is an old one. Put it in the bin and take a fresh one from this page.
Set up the transcription account
Turning your recording into text is done by Speechmatics, in the EU. You hold that account yourself, so the audio passes between your computer and a service you have your own agreement with, and nothing of ours sits in between.
- Go to portal.speechmatics.com and set up an account. Choose pay-as-you-go and add a payment method when it asks.
- In their portal, open the section headed API keys and create one. You get a long line of letters and numbers. Copy it there and then — the portal shows it once and never again.
- In Mila, open Settings, paste that line into the transcription box, and save. Mila keeps it the way your Mac keeps passwords.
What they charge is by the hour of audio and is on their pricing page; an appointment is a fraction of an hour. Their settings also have a switch for whether they may use your recordings to improve their own service. Turn it off.
Allow the microphone, then choose it
Press Record once. Your Mac asks whether Mila may use the microphone; allow it. Then, in Settings, pick the one you want. The level should move when you speak.
Avoid Bluetooth headsets. They drop to a narrow phone-call band, and that is exactly where the consonants that tell dental terms apart live. A wired clip-on, or one on its own dongle, reads far more cleanly.
Record a minute, then read it back
Record yourself and a colleague talking the way you would in an appointment. Say a name near the start. Then stop.
- The conversation comes back after you stop, not while you record. A couple of minutes later the recording shows as ready for you, under Recordings.
- Open it. You get the conversation as turns, each labelled dentist or patient. Wrong label? Change it at the top; your choice is kept. Where Mila cannot settle who was speaking, it says so rather than guessing.
- Write your note from what is in front of you, in Mila or straight into your practice software, and copy it across.
Stuck, or something looks wrong?
Write to Mila-app@protonmail.com. The reply comes from the dentist building this. Say which step you were on and what the screen said — and keep patient content out of the message; ordinary email is not a channel for it.