Tutorials

Forced Alignment quickstart

Learn how to use the Forced Alignment API to align text to audio.

This guide will show you how to use the Forced Alignment API to align text to audio.

Using the Forced Alignment API

1

Create an API key

Create an API key in the dashboard here, which you’ll use to securely access the API.

Store the key as a managed secret and pass it to the SDKs either as a environment variable via an .env file, or directly in your app’s configuration depending on your preference.

.env
ELEVENLABS_API_KEY=<your_api_key_here>
2

Install the SDK

We’ll also use the dotenv library to load our API key from an environment variable.

pip install elevenlabs
pip install python-dotenv
3

Make the API request

Create a new file named example.py or example.mts, depending on your language of choice and add the following code:

# example.py
import os
from io import BytesIO
from elevenlabs.client import ElevenLabs
import requests
from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv()
elevenlabs = ElevenLabs(
    api_key=os.getenv("ELEVENLABS_API_KEY"),
)
audio_url = (
    "https://storage.googleapis.com/eleven-public-cdn/audio/marketing/nicole.mp3"
)
response = requests.get(audio_url)
audio_data = BytesIO(response.content)
# Perform the text-to-speech conversion
transcription = elevenlabs.forced_alignment.create(
    file=audio_data,
    text="With a soft and whispery American accent, I'm the ideal choice for creating ASMR content, meditative guides, or adding an intimate feel to your narrative projects."
)
print(transcription)

Then run it:

python example.py

You should see the transcript of the audio file with exact timestamps printed to the console.

Next steps

Speech to Text

Transcribe audio to text without requiring an existing transcript

Text to Speech

Generate the audio from text to use with forced alignment

API reference

Explore all Forced Alignment parameters and response formats