Do transcription apps keep your voice recordings?

Most transcription apps do not say they collect your voice, but that does not mean they never touch it. Of the 109 transcription apps whose App Store label we read on October 29, 2026, 15 apps ¹ list audio data linked to you and 10 apps ² list it as not linked to you. None list it as used to track you (0 apps ³). The other 84 apps ⁴ do not list audio data at all. The label tells you what a developer declares as collected. It does not tell you how long a recording is kept.

Transcription apps leave audio undeclared more often than any other kind

The undeclared group is the biggest for transcription apps, and its share is higher than for any other kind we track. Dictation apps come next: 57 apps ⁵ of 84. The whole dataset shows 264 apps ⁶ of 428 with no audio declared, 106 apps ⁷ with audio linked to you, and 57 apps ⁸ with audio not linked to you.

All figures in the table are apps. Among apps that do declare audio, dictation apps lean toward "not linked", while transcription and meeting-note apps lean toward "linked". Transcription and dictation apps list audio linked to you at about the same share of their kind.

Meeting-note and medical apps link audio to you most often

Meeting-note apps record whole conversations, and their labels show it. Of the 109 meeting-note apps, 38 apps ⁹ link audio to you, 14 apps ¹⁰ list it as not linked, and 1 app ¹⁴ lists it as used to track you. That is far more than the 15 apps ¹ among the same number of transcription apps. Medical and professional dictation apps are the other place where linking audio is common: 17 apps ¹⁵ of 33 do, a bit more than half, against only 2 apps ¹⁶ that list it as not linked.

Named examples. Audio linked to you: Get Transcript ¹⁷, Pulita, a Mac dictation app ¹⁸, and Blue, a voice keyboard ¹⁹. Audio not linked to you: Hearvia ²⁰, Echo Dictation ²¹, VoiceInk ²², HiNoter ²³ and Playbacks ²⁴.

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An app can send audio to a server and still not list it

A label lists data the developer collects. A transcription app that sends your voice to a server for transcription and does not keep it need not declare audio data, so "audio not declared" is compatible with a cloud app. An app that processes everything on your device collects nothing and also declares nothing. The label cannot tell those two apart, and it cannot say whether a declared recording is kept for a day or for years.

A few cases show the range. Transcriptions ³², xcribe ³³, Teksto ³⁴ and Sublayer ³⁵, all Mac apps, say they collect no data. Whisper Transcription declares a data type not linked to you, but not audio ³⁶. Temi shows no privacy label at all ³⁷, and it is one of the 84 apps ⁴ counted as not declaring audio, because it declares nothing.

What the numbers do and do not measure

• A label is the developer's own declaration. Apple does not check labels before showing them ³⁸, and a 2023 study found that almost all apps labeled "Data Not Collected" had privacy policies indicating otherwise ³⁹.
• The label says what is collected, not what is kept. Retention is a separate question, covered in what apps say about keeping voice data.
• The label covers the app, not the developer's website or other apps, and one label covers every storefront. Each app is counted once, on its iPhone and iPad listing, or its Mac listing when it has no iPhone one.
• "Not declared" mixes three cases: on-device apps, cloud apps that discard audio at once, and apps with no label. Counts cannot separate them.

What this means for choosing a transcription tool

Do not read a missing audio entry as a promise that your recording is deleted. If you transcribe private interviews, client calls or medical notes, check three things: whether the app works on your device, whether the developer's privacy policy says how long audio is kept, and whether the label lists audio data at all. Apps that declare audio as "not linked to you" at least say they collect it, which is more than an empty label tells you. Our own app is not in these counts.

For the data behind this page, see the full dataset. To compare products, use the market overview. For background, read the voice privacy overview and the guide to whether voice to text is safe. A companion page asks whether voice-to-text apps track you.