diff --git a/whisper/mlx_whisper/transcribe.py b/whisper/mlx_whisper/transcribe.py
index bced16a58..3e9a834cc 100644
--- a/whisper/mlx_whisper/transcribe.py
+++ b/whisper/mlx_whisper/transcribe.py
@@ -19,7 +19,6 @@
 )
 from .decoding import DecodingOptions, DecodingResult
 from .load_models import load_model
-from .timing import add_word_timestamps
 from .tokenizer import LANGUAGES, get_tokenizer
 
 
@@ -412,6 +411,8 @@ def next_words_segment(segments: List[dict]) -> Optional[dict]:
                     seek += segment_size
 
                 if word_timestamps:
+                    from .timing import add_word_timestamps
+
                     add_word_timestamps(
                         segments=current_segments,
                         model=model,