Voice memo to text

Voice Memos keeps recordings inside the app, so a website cannot see them until you save one as a file. Apple’s steps, from its iPhone User Guide:

1. Open Voice Memos and tap the recording.
2. Tap the More Actions button, then Share.
3. Tap Options and choose Rendered. Apple describes this as a single .m4a file with any effects and layers mixed in. Editable is for someone who will open it in Voice Memos again.
4. Choose Save to Files, pick a folder, and tap Save.

Then come back to this page on the same phone, tap the upload box and pick the file from Files. A recording is named New Recording, or after where you were if Location Services is on, so a memo called New Recording 54 is the 54th of those.

To share several at once, tap Select above the list in Voice Memos. Upload them one at a time here: each is its own transcript.

Voice Memos can show a transcript itself. Apple says it is available on iPhone 12 or later, in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Korean and Chinese, and not in every country or region. You copy it from the recording’s More menu (View Transcript or Copy Transcript). If that gives you what you need, you do not need this page.

Where people get stuck with it:

• No transcript option at all, usually on an iPhone older than the 12 or in a language it does not cover.
• Garbled text when a lecture or interview is in English but the phone is set to another language. Here the language is detected from the recording, so the phone’s settings do not matter.
• Who said what. Apple’s page does not mention speaker labels. This one labels each speaker, so an interview reads as an interview.
• Files. You get .txt, plus .srt and .vtt subtitle files with every line timed, and with an hour pack, Word and notes with a timestamp on every paragraph.

People record whole lectures, interviews and meetings on their phone, and an hour goes quickly. The free tool takes 1 hour a file. Past that, the upload box tells you the length and which hour pack covers it.

A 78-minute memo, for example, uses 78 minutes of hours. The pack of 5 hours is $4.99 and leaves the rest for next time; the hours never expire. Recordings with hours can be up to 3 hours, and the transcript stays on your account until you delete it. See Slice Transcribe for every pack.

• Put the phone close to whoever is talking, microphone end towards them. Apple’s advice is the same: move it closer or farther to adjust the level.
• For one voice in a noisy place, Voice Isolation in Control Center (with Voice Memos open) filters out background sound. For a room of people, leave it off.
• For two people, put the phone between them, not in front of one.
• You can use other apps while recording, but if another app plays sound, Voice Memos stops recording.