VoiceCell 🎙

Voice notes for Jupyter notebooks — record audio comments linked to specific lines of code.

Author: Muhammad Yahya Kamran
License: MIT

What it does

VoiceCell adds a Voice Note button to your JupyterLab toolbar. Click on any line of code, press the button (or Alt+V), and record a voice note. The recording is saved next to your notebook and a clickable 🔊 marker is injected into that exact line.

Features

• 🎙 Record voice notes linked to specific cells and lines
• 🔊 Click the speaker icon to play back inline
• 🌊 Waveform visualization
• ⏩ Playback speed control (0.5x, 1x, 1.5x, 2x)
• 🗑 Delete voice notes from within the player
• 💾 Audio saved to voicecells_of_(notebook) folder alongside your notebook
• 📓 References stored in notebook metadata

Installation

pip install jupyter-voicecell

Requires JupyterLab 4 (tested on 4.0.x through the latest 4.x). After installing, restart JupyterLab.

Upgrading

pip install --upgrade jupyter-voicecell

Then fully restart the JupyterLab server (not just the browser tab) and hard-refresh the page (Ctrl+F5) so the updated frontend assets load.

Usage

1. Open any notebook in JupyterLab
2. Click inside a cell on the line you want to annotate
3. Click Voice Note in the toolbar or press Alt+V
4. Record your message and click Stop & Save
5. A # 🔊 vm_1 [timestamp] comment appears on that line
6. Click the 🔊 to play it back anytime

Sharing notebooks

Share the .ipynb file together with the voicecells_of_<notebookname> folder. Anyone with VoiceCell installed can play back all voice notes.

Privacy & Safety

• 🔒 Microphone access is local only — browser permission required
• 💾 Audio saved locally as .webm files — never uploaded anywhere
• 🚫 No telemetry, no tracking, no external connections
• 📓 Metadata stored inside the notebook file itself

Compatibility

• JupyterLab 4.x ✅
• Jupyter Notebook 7.x ✅
• PyCharm Jupyter notebooks — planned
• VS Code Jupyter notebooks — planned (requires separate VS Code extension)

License

MIT © 2026 Muhammad Yahya Kamran