Every iPhone can record audio without any extra app. The built-in Voice Memos app records lectures, meetings, interviews, musical ideas and personal notes, and saves them in good quality. This guide covers how to record, how to get better sound, and how to get your recordings off the phone as files, based on Apple’s iPhone User Guide.
The short answer
- Open Voice Memos (it’s in the Utilities folder if it isn’t on your Home Screen).
- Tap the red Record button.
- Tap the button again to stop. The recording is saved automatically.
Recording with Voice Memos
- Open the Voice Memos app.
- Tap the red Record button to start. To adjust how loud the recording is, move the iPhone closer to or farther from the sound.
- Tap the button to stop.
Your recording is saved as New Recording, or named after your location if Location Services is on. To rename it, tap the recording, then tap its name.
An orange dot at the top of the screen shows the microphone is in use, a privacy indicator iPhone shows for every app that records.
Pausing and resuming
To record in parts, swipe up from the top of the waveform while recording to show more controls. Tap the stop button to pause, then tap Resume to continue the same recording, and tap Done to save it. You can also review what you’ve recorded before saving by tapping play.
Recording while using other apps
You can leave Voice Memos and open another app while recording, as long as that app doesn’t play sound. If another app starts playing audio, the recording stops. On iPhones with the Dynamic Island, the recording in progress shows there; tap it to return.
Getting better sound
- Get close. Distance matters more than anything: about a hand’s width to an arm’s length from the speaker’s mouth.
- Filter background noise. While recording, open Control Center and tap Voice Memos at the top. Choose Voice Isolation to reduce background sounds, or Wide Spectrum to include them (not available on all models).
- Choose stereo or Spatial Audio. Go to Settings › Apps › Voice Memos › Recording Mode and choose Mono, Stereo or Spatial Audio, depending on your model.
- Use an external microphone. Microphones made for iPhone plug into the Lightning or USB-C port and sound noticeably clearer than the built-in one.
- Silence the beeps. Turning on Silent mode mutes the start and stop tones.
Saving or sharing a recording as a file
- In Voice Memos, tap the recording.
- Tap the More button (three dots), then tap Share.
- Tap Options and choose Rendered, which creates a single
.m4afile. - Choose where to send it: Messages, Mail, AirDrop, or Save to Files.
Voice Memos recordings are M4A files. They play on iPhones, Macs and most modern devices; to send one to someone whose device or app doesn’t accept M4A, convert it with M4A to MP3.
Recording in a browser instead
If you prefer to get an MP3 directly, open the online voice recorder in Safari. It records with your iPhone’s microphone and saves an MP3 or WAV file, without installing anything. Keep the screen on while recording, as iPhone may pause the microphone when the screen locks.
Editing recordings
Voice Memos has built-in trimming: tap a recording, tap More, then Edit Recording. To trim on a computer instead, or make a quiet recording louder, use cut audio and increase audio volume, which work in any browser.
Summary
For most recordings, Voice Memos is all you need: tap record, get close to the sound, and use Voice Isolation in a noisy place. Share with the Rendered option to get an M4A file, and convert to MP3 when you need a format that plays everywhere.