Until this release, Trilla had a quiet limitation: it could only transcribe the calls it recorded itself. Anything you'd already captured — a Zoom MP4, a voice memo, last week's all-hands — sat outside the app.
That ends in 1.11.4. You can now drag any audio or video file straight into Trilla and it will transcribe, diarize, and summarize it the same way it handles a live recording.
The split button
The "New Recording" button in the top right is now a split button. Click the main half and you start recording, exactly like before. Click the little dropdown chevron and you get a second option: Import recording. Pick a file, confirm the language, and Trilla takes it from there.
If you'd rather not click anything, you can drag the file straight onto the app window. A full-window overlay tells you to drop it. You drop it. Trilla starts working.
Video files, too
Most meeting recordings I get from people are MP4s. So Trilla now extracts the audio track from a video file before transcribing it. You don't have to know that's happening. You just drop the video in and end up with a transcript.
The shape of the feature was obvious. The work was making it feel like one thing — drop, wait, read — instead of three.
A note on what stays private
Imported files behave the same way live recordings do. If you're set up for local transcription with Ollama or LM Studio, the file never leaves your machine. If you've configured a cloud provider, the audio goes directly from your computer to that provider with your own key. Trilla still has nothing to see, even when the audio came from somewhere else.
Imported recordings are tagged in the database so they're easy to find. A small upload icon shows up on the row in your list. That's the only visible difference between a recording you made in Trilla and one you brought in.
Onboarding, smoothed
I also took the opportunity to clean up first-run. The local AI model lists are now live — they reflect what you actually have installed in Ollama and LM Studio rather than a hardcoded set that was always slightly wrong. New users get a quieter, faster path through setup.
Small thing. Big difference if you're new.
What's next
Bulk import, so you can backfill a whole folder of old calls. Calendar integration, so you don't have to remember to start recording. Better search across everything you've ever brought into the app.
If you've been waiting to give Trilla a real test, you don't have to start from scratch anymore. Drag in last week's meetings and see what comes back.