How do I record a voice memo?

Some things are easier said than typed. Open the Memory, tap +, and choose Voice. You get up to three minutes, and your iPhone writes out what you said while it saves.

Record one, step by step

1. Open the Memory and tap +.
2. Choose Voice.
3. Tap Record voice memo. The first time, iOS asks for the microphone and for speech recognition. Both are needed.
4. Talk. Pause and Resume are there if you stop for a moment.
5. Tap Stop, then wait for Transcribing… to finish.
6. Type a title, then tap Save. Re-record throws the take away and starts again.

Save stays dim until the memo has a title. The card in the Memory then shows that title, the length and the shape of the sound, and tapping it plays the memo back. For something you’d rather write than say, see “How do I write a note in a Memory?”.

Three minutes is the limit. A warning appears at two and a half minutes, and the recording stops on its own at three. If you have more to say, record a second memo.

The transcript

Under TRANSCRIPT you get what Lumoria heard. Your iPhone does this itself, with Apple’s built-in speech model. The sound is never sent anywhere to be turned into text.

It won’t always catch every word. Tap the card, correct the text, and tap Save changes; you can rename the memo on the same screen. If your phone can’t transcribe the language you spoke, the memo still saves, just with nothing written under it.

Where the recording is kept

In a Memory of your own, the sound file stays on the phone that recorded it. The memo itself syncs with your account, so on a second phone you’ll see the card and read the transcript, but there’s nothing to play.

In a shared Memory the audio is encrypted and uploaded, so everyone in the Memory can hear it. Encrypted means scrambled, so the file can’t be played by anyone without the key.

That’s also why a memo recorded on a different phone stays behind when you turn a Memory collaborative. Lumoria lists what it couldn’t move, and the memo itself is left where it is, untouched. “Can I make an existing Memory collaborative?” walks through that switch.