SCI-TECH

Apple has packed a lot into iOS 18, not just the mobile operating system but also all the apps that run on top of it—and one of the most useful upgrades is in the Notes app. You can now record voice memos right inside Notes, and even have the text transcribed while you talk.

There are all kinds of scenarios where you might find this useful, from lectures to interviews to your own personal thoughts and musings. You can listen to the voice notes and review the text any time you like, and export the text elsewhere too (if you need to share notes from a meeting, for example).

Note that the Voice Memos app includes transcription features with iOS 18—so you can use that as an alternative to Notes.

Recording voice notes

With a note open on your iPhone, tap the paperclip icon on the toolbar underneath the note, then choose Record Audio. You get a new recording interface up on screen: Use the large red button to start recording, then tap it again to pause and resume recording. You can record several segments in the same audio file, if needed.

The playback controls on the recording screen are all straightforward: You can listen to what you’ve already recorded via the play button, and use the jump buttons on either side to go forwards or backwards in the audio in increments of 15 seconds. Note you can’t resume a recording unless you’re at the end of it.

Tap on the speech bubble in the lower left corner and you can toggle between the sound wave view and the transcription view. If you start recording while the transcription view is showing, you’ll see the text update in real time as you talk. If you play back the audio in transcription mode, the text is highlighted as the clip plays.

If you’ve enabled Apple Intelligence on your iPhone, you have access to a few additional features. You can tap the Summary button at the top to see an AI-generated summary of everything you’ve said so far, which can come in useful if you’re recording lengthy audio clips (for meetings and presentations, for example).

At the top of the recording you can see a date and timestamp to help you identify it, and you can give it a name by tapping the three dots (top right) and Rename—probably a good idea to avoid a whole series of clips just called “New Recording”. When you’re happy with your clip, tap Done to save it in the note.

Accessing voice notes

Recordings appear as small embeds inside notes, and you can have multiple clips inside the same note if you need. Each embedded recording comes with an AI-generated preview summary, and you can see the clip length and title too. To have the audio played back, just tap the play button.

Tap on the title of the voice recording to go back to the main recording screen again. From here you can listen to the clip, view the full transcription, and append more audio to the end of the file, just as you could when you first created it. Tap Done or swipe down from the top to go back to your note.

When you’re on the recording and transcription screen, tap the three dots (top right) to find more options to play around with. The menu enables you to add the full text of the transcript to your note, copy the transcript to the iPhone clipboard (for pasting into another app), or search through the transcript.

You can also save the audio clip to the main Files app on your iPhone, or share the clip to a different app. Finally, there’s a Delete option, which erases the recorded audio and its attached transcript. Anything you delete is fully wiped and can’t be brought back, so be careful with this (you do get a confirmation screen before deleting forever).

These transcription features can be applied to existing audio recordings too; you don’t have to record something new. Tap the paperclip icon inside a note, choose Attach File and select an audio file, and it’ll be embedded in the note in the same way as a live recording. Tap on the audio file to see a transcription.

The post How to record audio and get transcripts in Notes on iOS 18 appeared first on Popular Science.