Voice Memo to Text: Built-In and Free Options

Your phone may already turn a voice memo into text, so check the app that made the recording before you install anything. iPhone Voice Memos shows a transcript on iPhones and iPads that run iOS or iPadOS 18 or later ¹. Samsung Voice Recorder transcribes a Galaxy recording with Transcript assist on supported models ². Google's Recorder app on Pixel phones has Live Transcription ³. A recording that none of these apps transcribes can be exported as an audio file and sent to a file transcription tool. Every built-in draft needs a check against the sound before you rely on it.

Your phone's recorder app may already transcribe your voice memos

Start with the app that recorded the audio. Most phone makers now put speech to text inside their recorder, but the feature depends on the device model, the operating system version and the language. The table shows the main built-in routes. Each row is covered in its own section below.

Two things make these routes different from one another. The first is who sees the transcript. At WhatsApp's 2024 launch, a transcript was visible only to the person who received the voice message ⁴, so the sender could not read it. The second is what audio the feature works on. Recorder, Voice Memos and Samsung Voice Recorder work on recordings you make, while WhatsApp, Google Messages and Instagram work on voice messages people send you.

Use the built-in route first when it covers your language. Move to a file tool when the app has no transcript for your recording or your language, or when the recording is longer than the app handles.

iPhone Voice Memos shows a transcript on supported models, iOS versions and languages

On an iPhone, Voice Memos produces the transcript from inside the recording's editing view. The feature arrived in iOS 18. A university help article says that the iPhone or iPad must be able to run iOS or iPadOS 18 or later, which is the version that added on-device transcription of recordings ¹. An older phone that cannot update will not show the option.

The steps, as the same university article describes them for iPhone:

1. Open Voice Memos and tap the recording.
2. Choose Edit Recording.
3. Tap the speech bubble icon in the bottom left to generate the transcription ⁵.

Once the transcript is there, you can read it and edit it in the same screen, then copy the text into a document of your own.

Languages. Apple's iPad guide says Voice Memos transcription is available on supported models in English and nine other languages ⁶, so ten languages in all. The guide lists English in all its variants, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. The Apple page we could open covers iPad, and Apple's iPhone page was not available to us during this check, so the iPhone list may differ. Confirm it on your own phone. If the speech bubble is missing, check the iOS version first and then the recording language.

Region. Apple says on its Mac page that transcription in Voice Memos is not available in all countries or regions ⁷. If you live in a region without support, the built-in route will not appear, and you should use a file tool instead.

Mac. Apple's Mac page describes transcription with macOS Sequoia on a Mac with Apple silicon ⁸. The page does not say what happens on Intel Macs or on earlier macOS versions, so check your model and system before you rely on it.

Pixel Recorder transcribes live and Samsung Voice Recorder on request

Phone makers differ on when the text appears. Pixel Recorder can show the words while you speak. Samsung Voice Recorder transcribes a recording after you have made it, when you ask it to. The two designs suit different jobs, so check which one your phone uses.

Samsung Voice Recorder transcribes a saved recording

On a Galaxy phone, Samsung's steps are these:

1. Open the Voice Recorder app and tap Record to make the recording.
2. Select the new recording, then tap the Transcript assist icon, the four stars at the top of the screen.
3. Tap Transcribe ⁹.

Transcript assist is on select Galaxy models, and Samsung says availability may vary by model and region ². Its US page lists 16 languages for Transcript assist, including several regional forms of English, Spanish and Portuguese ¹⁰.

The chart below compares how many languages each built-in route lists.

The chart compares lists that are not the same kind of feature. The Samsung and Apple figures are the current lists on each maker's own help pages. The WhatsApp figures are the lists at its 2024 launch, when WhatsApp said it would add more languages over the following months ¹¹, so the current list may be longer.

Pixel Recorder transcribes live and re-runs other languages

Pixel Recorder has a Live Transcription capability ³, and it does not cover every language. For a recording in another language, a December 2023 report by 9to5Google describes Transcribe again, which gives a transcript in languages the live feature does not support ³. We could not open Google's Recorder help pages from this check, so the list of Pixel models and languages is not given here. Open Recorder's settings on your own phone to see the languages it offers.

Any recording can be exported and transcribed as an audio file

A recording from a dictaphone, a meeting app or a voice note saved to Files has no built-in transcript, but you can still transcribe it. Export the file, check its format and size, then upload it to a file tool. The steps are the same for any source.

1. Export or share the file to Files, to your computer, or to an upload page.
2. Check the extension. Microsoft's Word feature accepts .wav, .mp4, .m4a and .mp3 files ¹², and the OpenAI transcription API accepts seven formats, including m4a ¹³.
3. Check the size. OpenAI's Transcriptions API accepts files up to 25 MB. A larger recording must be compressed or split into chunks of 25 MB or less ¹⁴.
4. Wait for the draft. Word says an uploaded file can take up to about the length of the audio, depending on your internet speed ¹⁵, so a long recording can take almost as long as the recording itself.
5. Check the draft against the audio. Read it while you listen, as the next section explains.

The table compares the two file routes named above.

If you do not want to use an account or write any code, a browser tool is the simpler choice. Our free file transcription in the browser takes an audio file directly. For the full method, including when a human transcriptionist is worth the cost, read how to transcribe audio to text.

Compression is a judgment call. Compressing a file to fit under the limit can remove quiet detail, so keep the highest quality the limit allows, and split the file at a pause rather than in the middle of a sentence.

Voice messages in chat apps have their own, more limited transcripts

Chat apps transcribe the voice messages people send you, which is a different job from transcribing your own recordings. The feature is limited in three ways: it is often switched off, it is shown only to the recipient, and it supports fewer languages. The routes differ in detail, so check each app.

WhatsApp turns transcripts off by default, so you must switch them on yourself ¹⁶. WhatsApp says the transcripts are generated on your device, so that no one else, not even WhatsApp, can hear or read them ¹⁷. At its 2024 launch, transcripts on iOS 16 and later supported 12 languages ¹⁸, and the Android version supported four ¹⁹. For how to switch the feature on, see our guide to reading WhatsApp voice messages as text.

Google Messages hides the transcript by default, so you open it by tapping the text ²⁰. Android Central reports that Google says audio messages are not sent to the company and are processed on the device ²¹.

Instagram added a View transcription button under the audio waveform in direct messages in 2025, so the recipient can read a voice message as text ²². The same update raised the length of a voice clip in DMs to five minutes ²³, which is long enough to hold a short note you may want to keep as text.

Discord is the one major app where we found no official built-in transcript for voice messages. Searches returned third-party bots, not a Discord feature, and we could not open Discord's help center from this check. Treat any Discord transcript as coming from a bot you chose to add. For the general question, see how to transcribe voice messages.

A chat transcript is a convenience, not a record. If you need the words kept, copy them into a document of your own.

Treat a voice memo transcript as a draft and check names and numbers against the audio

A transcript is a first draft, and the errors in a draft are concentrated in exactly the places a reader would miss: names, numbers, dates and technical terms. In a 2018 study of clinical notes dictated with speech recognition, 96.3 percent of the speech recognition drafts contained at least one error ²⁴. After a medical transcriptionist edited the drafts and physicians signed the notes, the error rate fell from 7.4 errors per 100 words to 0.3, about 25 times fewer ²⁵. Clinical notes use specialist vocabulary, so a voice memo may differ, but the same check applies: the draft needs a human pass.

Accuracy figures also depend on the test. On the Fleurs benchmark, Whisper large-v2 had a word error rate of 4.2 percent for English ²⁶. Fleurs is read speech, which is easier than a memo recorded in a car or a crowded room. In one 2025 9to5Mac test of a single 7-minute-31-second episode, Apple's speech API had a word error rate of 10.3 percent, against 1.5 percent for Whisper Large V3 Turbo ²⁷. One episode is a small sample, so use these numbers as a sense of the spread, not a promise. The measure itself is explained in our definition of word error rate.

Use this checklist before you rely on any transcript:

1. Check every number and date against the audio, including the ones spoken quickly.
2. Check names, places and product names. A speech engine often writes a plausible word for an unfamiliar name.
3. Check technical terms and any word the speaker stressed.
4. Check who said what. If several people speak, a plain transcript may not label speakers, so add the labels yourself. Our glossary entry on speaker diarization explains how software tries to do this.
5. Decide the style. A verbatim transcript keeps every filler word, while a clean verbatim transcript removes them. Choose before you start editing.

Recording a phone call is a separate matter, because the other person has to agree. On iPhone, Apple tells you to make sure the other call participant is willing to be recorded before you record ²⁸, and both participants hear an audio notice that the call is being recorded ²⁹. Apple lists 19 countries and regions where call recording on iPhone is not currently available, including the European Union ³⁰. The full steps are in how to transcribe a phone call.

Start with the recorder app, then check every draft

For most recordings, start with the app that made them. iPhone Voice Memos, Samsung Voice Recorder and Pixel Recorder all have a route, each with its own device, language and timing rules. For anything else, export the audio, check the format and size, transcribe it, and then read the draft against the recording. The transcript is only as good as your check.

Answers to the questions people ask most: can Apple Notes transcribe audio, how to turn a voice recording into text on Android, can you transcribe voice messages from chat apps and how to transcribe a phone call recording.

Related reading: transcribe audio to text, video to text, meeting transcription, timestamps and speaker labels, Android voice typing, Samsung talk to text and is voice to text safe. For the whole subject, see our transcription overview.