Does Google keep your voice recordings?

Google keeps your voice audio only in a few cases, and the most important one is a setting you control. Its voice and audio activity setting is off unless you turn it on ¹. What Google keeps on its own clock is the record of what you asked, in the Gemini app. That record can last 18 months or longer, depending on the setting and on whether a person read the chat.

Google does not save voice audio to your account unless the setting is on

Voice interactions with Google, such as searches, Assistant requests and Maps commands, are saved to your Google Account as audio only when the voice and audio activity setting is on. Google states that, with the setting off, audio from voice interactions is not saved to your account by default ¹.

Turning the setting off does not clear what is already there. Google says audio already saved to your account is not deleted when you turn the setting off ². You have to delete it yourself. Google also says it may delete audio recordings from its servers sooner than the auto-delete period you choose, once the audio is no longer needed to improve its audio recognition ³. The period you set is a ceiling, not a promise.

Gemini keeps your chats on a timer, and reviewed chats last longer

Gemini has its own retention rules, separate from the audio setting. Google says the default auto-delete period for Gemini Apps activity is 18 months, and you can change it to 3 or 36 months or turn auto-delete off ⁴. That is about 548 days ⁵.

Deleting your activity does not remove every chat. Google says chats that human reviewers read are not deleted when you delete your Gemini activity, and are kept for up to three years ⁶. Google does not say what share of chats is reviewed, so you cannot tell from the page how likely your own chat is to be among them.

Some audio can exist even when the setting is off

Two cases do not fit the simple answer.

Gemini standby. Gemini apps wait in standby until you activate them. Google warns that audio recordings may begin a few seconds before activation ⁷. Google's page is about activation by a voice command, so a recording that starts by accident is possible even if you never asked for one. It does not say how long those early seconds are kept.

Keyboards, not just assistants. Google's own keyboard, Gboard, is a separate app with its own rules. The App Store listing for Gboard on iPhone says that if you use the Gboard microphone, voice input is sent to Google for transcription ⁸. That is the developer's statement for the iPhone app, not a test of network traffic, and the listing does not say whether the Android app behaves the same way. Check the app you use. For the mechanics of sending speech to a server, see online speech recognition.

It depends on the product, the account and the language

The answer changes with the product you use:

What to do if you do not want Google to keep your voice

1. Open your Google Account and check the voice and audio activity setting. Leave it off if you do not want audio saved.
2. Delete audio that is already saved. Turning the setting off does not do this for you ².
3. Set Gemini Apps auto-delete to the shortest period you are comfortable with, and remember that reviewed chats keep for up to three years ⁶.
4. For dictation of sensitive text, use a keyboard or dictation tool that processes speech on your device. Check the app's privacy label or help page before you trust it.

If the content is sensitive, on-device dictation keeps the audio on your computer. Yap, which we make, is an on-device dictation app for Mac and Windows, and you can compare the download options. Whatever you choose, the setting you check first is the one that controls what Google saves from now on.

For the other companies, read the question on Microsoft and voice recordings and the question on Alexa. The full comparison is in our guide to voice data retention, part of our overview of speech to text privacy.