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Tap the microphone button in the top-right corner of the Notes list. A recording sheet will appear — tap the blue mic button at the bottom to begin. The app will ask for microphone and speech recognition permissions on first use. Grant both for full functionality. You can start a recording anywhere: a lecture hall, a conference room, an interview, or a walk.

IA Voice Notes requires iOS 17.0 or later. It runs on any iPhone capable of running iOS 17.

The app uses Apple's built-in Speech Recognition framework. Your audio is processed on-device first — no internet connection is required. If the on-device engine is unavailable, the app silently falls back to Apple's server-side recognition. A notice appears in the recording sheet if the cloud fallback is active.

Yes. IA Voice Notes uses iOS's background audio mode, so recording and transcription continue when you lock your screen or switch to another app. The audio will keep recording; transcription results are delivered when you return to the app.

Apple's Speech Recognition works best with clear audio and a consistent speaking pace. Try these tips: hold the phone closer to the speaker, reduce background noise, and speak at a moderate pace. If you notice the live transcript shows "Using cloud recognition", check your internet connection — on-device mode generally performs better in quiet environments.

Yes. Go to Settings → Language and choose from the full list of languages supported by Apple's Speech Recognition. Your selection is shown as a flag and language name in the recording screen so you always know which language is active.

When Skip silence is on (the default), quiet periods are not written to the audio file, reducing storage use significantly. The toggle is visible during recording. Turning it off preserves the full audio including silent gaps — useful if you need an unedited record.

Go to Settings → Silence Detection to open the noise calibration screen. A live mic-level bar shows your current ambient level in real time. Drag the threshold slider until it sits just above your room noise, or tap Auto-detect to let the app measure and set the threshold automatically over three seconds. The Scenario picker (Solo / Office / Team / Conference) at the bottom of the recording screen also adjusts the silence threshold automatically for your environment.

Yes. During recording, tap the pause icon to pause. Tap it again to resume. Pause markers are automatically inserted into the transcript timeline so you can see exactly where gaps occurred. You can pause and resume as many times as you need before stopping.

If you cancel, the app asks you to confirm — a dialog appears if you have any transcript text or attached photos. Confirming discard deletes the audio file and any photo files. Nothing is saved to your note library.

Nothing to set up — AI features work out of the box on every install, using a free managed AI service with no account and no API key. If you'd rather use your own key, go to Settings → AI Features, choose Anthropic Claude or OpenAI GPT, paste your key, and tap Test Connection — this requires the Pro upgrade and gives free, unlimited use with your own key's usage governed by that provider.

Each install starts with a free trial of AI calls. Once it's used up, you can subscribe to the monthly AI Plan ($4.99/mo, 500 calls) for uninterrupted use — or switch to your own Anthropic or OpenAI API key in Settings for free, unlimited use (requires Pro). If you're on AI Plan and hit your monthly allowance mid-cycle, AI Plan Plus ($14.99/mo, 2,000 calls) raises it immediately with the calls you've already used carried over, rather than making you wait for the next renewal.

A Recording Mode is a preset that configures which AI features run during a recording. Choose from 10 built-in modes — Meeting, Interview, Lecture, Sales Call, and more — or create your own in Settings → AI Features → Recording Modes. The active mode is shown in the mode selector at the bottom of the recording screen.

Depending on the active mode, the AI panel can detect action items, flag key terms, track custom events, and produce rolling summaries as you speak. You can expand any result to read the full text and save it as an attachment with one tap — or enable Auto-save to attach everything automatically.

Yes. By default, AI analysis sends text from your transcript to our managed AI service; with your own API key configured, it goes straight to Anthropic or OpenAI instead. Your audio never leaves the device — only transcript text is sent. Transcription itself works offline via Apple's on-device speech engine.

A final post-recording summary is generated automatically. All saved AI results appear in the Attachments section of the note and are included in Markdown and HTML exports.

Tap the paperclip icon (📎) in the recording sheet. You'll see options to take a photo with your camera, scan a document, pick from your photo library, or add a text note. Each attachment is timestamped to the moment you captured it.

Yes. Open any saved note and tap the + button in the Attachments section header. You can add camera photos, document scans, photo library images, or text notes at any time.

No. IA Voice Notes uses Apple's privacy-preserving photo picker, which lets you select photos without granting the app access to your entire library. Only camera use and document scanning require explicit permission prompts.

Tap the calendar icon in the Notes list toolbar. Switch between Day, 3 Days, Week, and List views. Recordings you've made or scheduled appear as blocks alongside a live now-line; overlapping events split into side-by-side columns automatically.

Tap + in the calendar toolbar and choose New Event. Give it a title, a start time, and pick the recording mode to use. Turn on Start recording automatically and choose how many minutes before the event to arm the app. When the time comes, IA Voice Notes opens and starts recording — you just show up.

It's most reliable while the app is in the foreground or already recording in the background. If your phone is locked or the app has been fully closed, iOS can't launch a microphone session on its own, so the app instead sends you a notification at the event time — tapping it opens the app and starts recording immediately. The arm reminder before an event exists to help nudge you back into the app in time for the fully automatic path.

Yes. Weekly events you create in the app stay armed for the whole series. If you arm a recurring event from your iOS Calendar, choose Every <weekday> in the arming sheet instead of Just this event to cover every future occurrence at once.

Yes. Go to Settings → Calendar → iOS Calendar and grant access, then choose which calendars to show. Those events appear alongside your Voice Notes events for reference — the app only reads them and never modifies your system calendar.

It's where AI-detected events land for review. From the calendar's + menu, choose Scan a Flyer, From Photo, or Paste Text to extract dates and times from a source — or just mention a date out loud while recording. Each suggestion shows where it came from and links back to that exact moment in the recording, so you can confirm it before accepting. This works free out of the box; it only requires the Pro upgrade if you've switched to your own API key.

After a one-time event fires and you dismiss the recording sheet, auto-start is automatically turned off for that event. You can turn it back on manually or delete the event.

Yes. IA Voice Notes registers a Start Recording App Intent that you can add to a Siri Shortcut or iOS Automation. It opens the app and starts recording immediately.

Use the search bar at the bottom of the Notes list. Search runs against the full transcript text of every note, so you can find any word that was spoken during any recording.

Open any note, then tap the share button (↑) in the top-right corner. You'll see options to export as Markdown or HTML. Markdown includes timestamped transcript lines; the HTML export is fully self-contained with embedded photos and an audio player. Both exports require the Pro upgrade.

To export multiple notes at once, tap Edit in the Notes list toolbar, select the notes you want, then tap the share button at the bottom of the screen. You can choose Markdown or HTML and all selected notes are bundled into a single share sheet.

Swipe left on any note in the list and tap Delete. To delete multiple notes at once, tap Edit in the toolbar, select notes by tapping them, then tap the Delete button that appears at the bottom of the screen.

Pro unlocks note export — Markdown and self-contained HTML with embedded photos and audio playback — plus free, unlimited AI use if you bring your own Anthropic or OpenAI API key. It is a one-time purchase: no subscription, no renewal. AI features themselves don't require Pro — they work free out of the box via our managed AI service; see the AI Features section above for the free trial and optional AI Plan subscription.

Open any note and tap the share button. On the paywall sheet, tap Restore Purchases. Your Pro entitlement will be restored from the App Store automatically.

AI Plan and AI Plan Plus are auto-renewing subscriptions managed entirely by Apple. Open Settings → [your name] → Subscriptions on your device to view, change, or cancel at any time — cancelling stops future renewals but keeps your current period's allowance until it ends.