This hidden iPhone feature lets you record and transcribe, but it’s still not as good as Android Voice Recorder

Back in the 1980s, I recorded phone interviews by connecting a tape recorder to the back of my analog handset via a little black suction cup. These days, virtually all my interviews are conducted via Zoom or Google Meet; but while both are capable of recording and transcription, for convenience I still like to record on my iPhone, and lately I’ve been using a little-known Notes feature.

While some of you might know about the recording feature on the best iPhones (hidden under the paperclip ‘Attachment’ icon), you may not realize that since iOS 18, Notes has also been able to automatically transcribe the conversation. Even when conducting a video interview, I’ll place the iPhone near my laptop and let it record the audio conversation while I talk freely and don’t get too distracted (or distract my subject) by furiously typing.

During in-person interviews, Notes is a great backup for my note-taking, and with Apple Intelligence, it can also quickly produce a summary of the conversation – it recently boiled down a recent 29-minute recording to three paragraphs. That can be useful, though, for my purposes, I need the full conversation so I can find all the juicy quotes.

With all the text available on screen, I can tap any word to jump to that exact moment in the conversation. This is critical since the transcription is not always 100% accurate. And there’s another crucial reason for checking the tape.