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iPhone User Guide

View a Voice Memos transcription on iPhone

Speech in your audio recordings can be transcribed to text in Voice Memos. You can view the transcription while you’re recording or after.

Note: Audio transcription is available on iPhone 12 or later in English (all variants), Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. It’s not available in all countries or regions.

If you open a recording made in an earlier version of Voice Memos (iOS 17 or earlier), Voice Memos will transcribe it automatically if it includes recorded speech.

View a transcription while recording

  1. Go to the Voice Memos app 👁 Image
    (in the Utilities folder) on your iPhone.

  2. Tap 👁 the Record button
    to begin recording.

  3. Swipe up from the top of the waveform, then tap 👁 the Transcription button
    to watch the transcription live.

    The waveform disappears temporarily, and the transcription appears, with the current word highlighted. To return to the waveform view, tap 👁 the Transcription button
    .

  4. Tap 👁 the Pause button
    to pause recording; tap Resume to continue.

  5. To save the recording, tap 👁 the Done button
    .

View or copy transcribed text after recording

  1. Go to the Voice Memos app 👁 Image
    (in the Utilities folder) on your iPhone.

  2. Tap the recording with the transcript you want to view.

  3. Tap 👁 the More button
    ,     then do one of the following:

    • Copy part of the transcript: Choose View Transcript, select the text you want to copy, then tap Copy.

    • Copy the entire transcript: Choose Copy Transcript.

    You can open another document—a Mail message or text file, for example—and paste the text into it.

With Apple Intelligence,* you can use Writing Tools to summarize transcripts with a tap, proofread your work, and find just the right wording and tone. See Use Writing Tools with Apple Intelligence.

Search for text in titles and transcriptions

  1. Go to the Voice Memos app 👁 Image
    (in the Utilities folder) on your iPhone.

  2. Swipe down from the top of the list of recordings to show the search field.

  3. In the search field, enter the text you want to find.

    The list shows only recordings with that text—either in the title or in the audio transcription.

When you select a term in the transcription, the playhead appears at that location in the audio waveform. To return to the waveform, tap 👁 the Transcription button
.

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