How do you transcribe a phone call recording?

Record the call, save the audio, and then transcribe the file like any other recording. Before you record, make sure the other person agrees. On an iPhone, both participants hear an audio notice that the call is being recorded ¹, and Apple tells users to make sure the other person is willing to be recorded first ². Those two points come before any transcript.

Check that call recording is available where you are

Call recording on iPhone is not available everywhere. Apple lists 19 countries and regions where it is not currently available, including the European Union, Saudi Arabia and South Africa ³. If your country is on the list, the recording option will not work for you, and you should not try to get around the limit. The list changes, so check Apple's current page before you rely on it.

Consent rules also differ by place. Our guide to recording consent laws explains how they vary, and it is not legal advice for your case.

The steps

1. Check that the other person agrees to be recorded, and that your country allows call recording.
2. Record the call using the call recording feature on your iPhone. Apple's support page for recording a call on iPhone has the steps.
3. Tell the other person that the call is being recorded, since they will hear the notice anyway.
4. Save the recording, then move the audio file to a place where you can transcribe it.
5. Transcribe the file with a file tool or the built-in transcript of your recorder app, and check the draft against the audio.

We did not reproduce every step of Apple's call recording page here. Read the page on your own phone, because the menu names and the order of steps can change with the iOS version.

Transcribe the saved audio

Once you have the file, the process is the same as for any recording. Check the format and the size. OpenAI's transcription API, for example, accepts files up to 25 MB, and a longer call must be compressed or split into chunks of 25 MB or less ⁴. Other tools set their own limits, so check the tool you pick.

A phone call may be harder to transcribe than a memo spoken into a microphone. Two people can talk over each other, the line can be quiet, and a plain transcript may not say who spoke. Read the draft against the recording, and add speaker labels yourself if you need them. The glossary entry on speaker diarization explains how software tries to do this automatically.

What to keep and what to delete

A recording of a call contains the other person's voice and words. Store it only as long as you need it, and keep it secure. The transcript is also personal data, so treat it the same way. Our guide to voice to text privacy covers where recordings and transcripts can go.

Related questions

For a recording that is not a call, see how to turn a voice recording into text on Android or can Apple Notes transcribe audio. For the full method, read the guide to voice memos and voice notes.