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Google Recorder
Google’s Recorder app can seize and transcribe audio totally regionally with out an internet connection. Making it good for sophistication, conferences, or interviews.
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Apple Voice Memos
Apple’s Voice Memos app has come pre-installed on iPhones for years at this degree, supplying you with the flexibleness to report and edit audio in your phone. As of iOS 18, it could presumably moreover transcribe audio too.
Summary
- Apple and Google have built-in apps for recording audio on iPhones and Pixels.
- Every Voice Memos & Recorder have comparable design & navigation, and nearly an an identical choices.
- Recorder does lastly create larger transcriptions than Voice Memos.
Audio recording apps are the unsung heroes of every cell working system because of you have no idea it’s your decision a method to report a quick audio clip until it happens. Every Google and Apple embrace these apps by default on their telephones, nevertheless solely one amongst these apps is sweet enough to be anyone’s go-to.
Google’s journey with audio recording started with the Recorder app on the Pixel 4. It has been on every Pixel since, and at this degree it’s well-known for its ability to simply report and exactly transcribe almost any spoken audio you can throw at it. A straightforward use of artificial intelligence, nevertheless a helpful one. Apple launched its sort out a recording app with Voice Memos on iPhone OS 3 (what the cell working system was generally known as until Apple modified it with iOS 4). It stayed largely unchanged with each mannequin of iOS until iOS 18, when Apple decided in order so as to add the flexibleness to transcribe audio to the app in its gradual push to undertake additional AI-based choices.
The apps reaching some semblance of attribute parity is the correct different to position them head-to-head. Which app knowledge audio best will not matter to anyone who’s already devoted to at the least one working system or one different, nevertheless should you occur to’re looking for a objective to leap ship, realizing how good your phone is at recording your conferences and classes may sway you. That is how Apple’s Voice Memos and Google’s Recorder app consider.

Related
5 Google Recorder concepts I reap the benefits of to make readable transcripts
The Recorder app is no doubt one of many best distinctive on Google’s Pixel telephones, should you know how to utilize it to its fullest.
Value, availability, and launch date
Voice Memos and Recorder are technically free apps, should you occur to place apart the “worth” of attending to create an Apple or Google Account to utilize them. You’ll moreover should ignore the reality that, in any case for now, they’re distinctive to their respective working methods and telephones. Voice Memos may very well be on the market to acquire on the App Retailer, however it absolutely’ll solely ever run on an iPhone, barring some dramatic regulatory modifications. Recorder may very well be on the Play Retailer, nevertheless for now, Google’s sustaining its choices as a perk for current and future Pixel phone homeowners.
Voice Memos was launched on the iPhone 3GS in 2009, alongside such legendary choices as copy, decrease, and paste, video recording, and Spotlight search for locating contacts, emails, and apps. All these choices exist on iOS for the time being, irrespective of how uncommon it seems now that Apple launched two telephones sooner than it included what many assumed to be one factor as main as copy and paste.
Recorder arrived with the Pixel 4 in 2019, leveraging the Pixel Neural Core to transcribe audio in quite a bit the an identical method Reside Transcribe, an Android accessibility attribute. By the purpose Google launched its fourth Pixel phone, it was already an outdated hand at collaborating on smartphones. The novelty wasn’t merely that Recorder was using on-device AI, it’s that Google was sustaining it distinctive to {{hardware}} and a mannequin of Android it notably designed.
Voice Memos and Recorder have comparable approaches to design and navigation
There’s solely so some methods you can create an app that makes audio clips and have it make sense
You don’t really come to an audio recording app for adventurous design, and that’s mirrored in one of the best ways every Voice Memos and Recorder look and work. They’re clearly utilities first, and it reveals. In Recorder, Google dumps you proper right into a scrollable timeline of your recordings, broken up by date. You presumably can comb by way of all of the issues additional notably with a search bar up prime and immediately start a recording by tapping on the large pink report button on the bottom of the show.
If you’re actually in a recording, Google wouldn’t make points that somewhat extra subtle. You presumably can toggle between the waveform of your current recording and a transcript (it’ll exchange dwell should you occur to’re actually recording), stop and start the recording by pressing the huge button on the bottom, and alter the establish and placement of your recording by tapping on the establish on the prime. Everytime you’re happy with what you captured, you’ve got the selection to delete or save what you merely did, and that’s about it.
Voice Memos may be restrained. The first internet web page of Apple’s app is one different document of recordings, organized by date alongside along with your newest recording on the best and a additional modest pink button on the bottom for starting a model new recording. Till you in every other case rename your clips, they’ll be named after the position they’ve been recorded. Tapping on one expands the cardboard to reveal playback controls, a timeline you can scrub by way of, a button that takes you straight into the waveform for additional actual playback and viewing the transcript, and a three-dot menu for additional decisions like sharing your recording or enhancing it.
Apple and Google sort recordings based mostly totally on not merely when, however moreover the place they’ve been recorded.
Everytime you actually press that pink button to begin out a recording, it’s possible you’ll get a small recording window inside the bottom third of the app which you’ll be able to enhance to as soon as extra view all the waveform and the dwell updating transcript. On this comparable menu you can change the establish of your recording and reserve it. After you stop recording, you may additionally alter the clip by altering its playback tempo or robotically eradicating silences.
If there are any distinctions to be drawn between the two apps, it’s that Google just about really favors creating, viewing, and enhancing transcripts, whereas Apple’s app nonetheless seems centered on listening to and collaborating in once more audio, just about like the company imagines the software program will seemingly be additional useful to audio professionals fairly than the standard particular person attempting to report one factor.
You’ll get an an identical recording experience in Recorder and Voice Memos, with one exception
Apple and Google’s apps are equally capable of recording audio
Everytime you’re making a self-discipline recording or using your phone to report a lecture, every Voice Memos and Recorder will work whether or not or not your phone’s show is off or on. They’ll even assist you to start or stop your recording as needed if it is necessary to take a break. Top quality is proscribed by the microphones in your smartphone, nevertheless at this late in every the Pixel and iPhone’s lives, you will seize usable audio with out attempting too onerous. The microphones on these devices aren’t designed to decide on one factor up a lot of of ft away, nevertheless as long as you might be within the an identical room as your matter, and ideally inside speaking distance, it’s possible you’ll seize what you need.
A method Apple differentiates the Voice Memos app on the iPhone, notably the iPhone 16 Skilled and 16 Skilled Max, is a model new ability to layer tracks on prime of each other. As a result of 4 “studio top quality mics” and the A18 Skilled-enabled audio processing, you can hear once more to a Voice Memos clip whereas recording a layer on prime of it, making a model new twin layer observe. Apple imagines this may occasionally very nicely be good for capturing the sketch of a music, letting you sing over the guitar half along with your private vocals, as an illustration. Is that enough of a objective to buy an iPhone 16 Skilled? More than likely not, however it absolutely’s in any case one factor that makes Voice Memos distinctive.
Recorder has the upper hand when it comes to transcribing audio
Apple and Google are matched in accuracy, nevertheless not readability
Transcription is the place one app really stands out from the alternative. Google has been engaged on audio to textual content material transcription longer than Apple, in any case as a public-facing attribute, and it reveals. Recorder does a unbelievable job of transcribing textual content material on the fly, and a very good larger job offering a transparent transcript when you transcribe it as soon as extra using Google’s fashions inside the cloud. Previous that, new Pixels can also robotically decide when a recording has a variety of audio system and label the transcript accordingly.
Voice Memos lets all of the issues run collectively right into a protracted block of textual content material, with prolonged pauses performing as the first info for when textual content material must be broken up. In the event you occur to’ve study one amongst Apple’s automated transcripts inside the Podcasts app, then you definately acknowledge what you might be entering into proper right here. It’s serviceable, nevertheless quite a bit nearer to a main draft than a final one. Apple’s app can transcribe dwell an identical to Google’s, nevertheless there’s no technique to transcribe audio as soon as extra after you might have recorded it, nor any methodology to really edit your transcript itself except for to rerecord a bit.
Recorder presents far more decisions, along with all of the issues from relabeling audio system, and splitting up paragraphs of textual content material into new audio system. It’s not the cleanest enhancing course of, nevertheless Google gives you devices which could be a lot easier to entry than one thing in Voice Memos. That’s to not say each app is inaccurate. In my assessments, Voice Memos and Recorder have been evenly matched of their output. It’s merely {{that a}} transcript from Recorder is less complicated to study with labeled audio system and further clearly broken-up textual content material than what Apple spits out. Presumably that may change in subsequent yr’s exchange, nevertheless for now Recorder has the profit.
It’s merely {{that a}} transcript from Recorder is less complicated to study with labeled audio system and further clearly broken-up textual content material than what Apple spits out. Presumably that may change in subsequent yr’s exchange, nevertheless for now Recorder has the profit.
Which recording app is greatest for you?
Ultimately, it’s possible you’ll go together with the audio recording app that’s pre-installed in your phone. That’s the truth of a utility app like this, notably one that you simply simply won’t need until the occasion calls. By means of the raw recording and transcribing ability, though, Recorder comes out on prime. Google is sweet enough at recording audio, and quite a bit higher than the opponents at transcribing it, that it must match the bill for nearly all of people looking for a method to grab a gathering after which flip it proper right into a shareable transcript.

Google Recorder
Google’s Recorder app can seize and transcribe audio totally regionally with out an internet connection. Making it good for sophistication, conferences, or interviews.
Presumably Apple views its app another way than Google — that distinctive iPhone 16 Skilled attribute suggests Apple imagines musicians may use Voice Memos — nevertheless that doesn’t change the reality that Google’s app is additional useful for the standard particular person. In the event you occur to’re looking for the perfect audio recording app, go together with Google Recorder. In every other case, merely use what’s already in your iPhone and Pixel, it’s possible you’ll nonetheless get what you need, and you’ll not have to change telephones.

Apple Voice Memos
Apple’s Voice Memos app has come pre-installed on iPhones for years at this degree, supplying you with the flexibleness to report and edit audio in your phone. As of iOS 18, it could presumably moreover transcribe audio too.