Quick answer: open Voice Memos, tap the recording, tap the More button, then tap Copy Transcript. That works on iPhone 12 and later and needs no app and no internet. If you want Markdown instead of flat text, share the memo to Brain Dump and tap Transcribe Now.
How to transcribe a voice memo on iPhone
Voice Memos transcribes every recording itself. There is nothing to turn on.
- Open Voice Memos, in the Utilities folder.
- Tap the recording you want as text.
- Tap the More button, then pick one:
- View Transcript to read it, select a passage, and tap Copy.
- Copy Transcript to take the whole thing at once.
- Paste into Mail, Messages, Notes, or any other text field.
Apple's requirements: iPhone 12 or later, in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, or Traditional Chinese. Apple also notes it is not available in every country or region, so a supported phone in an unsupported region will not show a transcript.
Two behaviours people miss:
- Old recordings are covered. A memo recorded on iOS 17 or earlier is transcribed automatically the first time you open it in the current Voice Memos, as long as it has speech in it.
- Transcripts are searchable. Swipe down on the recordings list and type. The list filters on words spoken inside the audio, not just on titles. Selecting a term in a transcript moves the playhead to that point in the waveform.
View the transcript while you are still recording
You do not have to wait for the recording to finish.
- Start recording in Voice Memos.
- Swipe up from the top of the waveform.
- The waveform is replaced by live text with the current word highlighted.
Useful when you are dictating something you need to get right the first time, because you can see a name or a number go wrong while you are still talking.
Free ways to transcribe a voice memo on iPhone
Every option below is free. The differences are output shape and which iPhones they run on.
| Method | Output | Runs on | Main limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voice Memos | Flat text with punctuation | iPhone 12 and later | No structure, no headings |
| Notes | Transcript attached to a note | iPhone 12 and later | Deleting the audio deletes the transcript |
| Live Captions | Rough captions you copy | iPhone 11 and later | You have to play the memo through in real time |
| Brain Dump | Markdown note | iOS 17 and later | Requires installing an app |
Pick Voice Memos unless one of the next three sections describes your situation exactly.
Transcribe inside a note with Apple Notes
Notes solves a different problem: the transcript lives beside the rest of your writing instead of in a separate app.
- Open Notes and open or create a note.
- Tap the attachment button, then tap Record Audio.
- Record, then stop.
- Tap the recording to see the transcript, then choose Add Transcript to Note or Copy Transcript.
Use this when you are already outlining in Notes and the words are going to end up there anyway. One warning from Apple's own documentation: deleting the audio recording deletes the transcript with it. Add the transcript to the note before you clean up.
Notes has the same floor as Voice Memos, iPhone 12 and a supported device language. Call and FaceTime transcripts also land in Notes, on iOS 18.1 and later.
Live Captions on an iPhone 11 or an unsupported language
Live Captions runs on iPhone 11 and later, which makes it the fallback when Voice Memos transcription is not available to you.
- Settings > Accessibility > Live Captions, turn it on.
- Tap Live Captions, then iPhone Audio.
- Play the memo and let it run.
- Tap the More button, then Copy Captions.
It is slow, because you sit through the whole recording at playback speed, and the punctuation is rougher. Apple states plainly that Live Captions accuracy may vary and should not be relied on in high-risk or emergency situations. Treat it as a salvage route, not a workflow.
Share an iPhone voice memo to another app for text
The built-in transcript is flat text. When the memo needs to become a document, share the audio out instead of copying the words.
To Brain Dump, for a Markdown note:
- In Voice Memos, tap the recording, then tap the More button.
- Tap Share.
- Choose Brain Dump.
- Tap Transcribe Now. Brain Dump opens and transcribes the recording on device.
The Brain Dump share extension accepts any audio or video file, not only Voice Memos recordings, so the same path works from Files, Messages, or a video in Photos. AI rewriting is a separate, optional step you trigger yourself.
This route is also a different transcription engine, which is the real reason to reach for it. Voice Memos, Notes, and iPhone dictation all run Apple's own on-device speech recognition, so they share Apple's language list, Apple's iPhone 12 floor, and Apple's mistakes. Brain Dump transcribes with a bundled whisper.cpp build instead. Same phone, same offline guarantee, different model, which means a recording that comes out garbled through one is worth retrying through the other before you give up on it.
To Files, if you want the audio itself:
- Tap the recording, tap the More button, then Share.
- Tap Options to choose the file format. Rendered gives you a single .m4a with effects and layers mixed down. Editable keeps layers adjustable for a recipient with compatible software.
- Scroll down, tap Save to Files, pick a folder, tap Save.
Apple notes the default export is .m4a, which flattens layers and turns Spatial Audio into stereo. That is fine for speech and it is the format every transcription tool expects.
If Brain Dump is not in the Share Sheet: open any Share Sheet, scroll to the end of the app row, tap More, then Edit Actions, and add Brain Dump to Favorites. Drag it to the top to keep it one tap away. There is a video walkthrough of that in the docs.
One tap with a Shortcut
A Shortcut collapses the share steps into a single Share Sheet entry. Grab it from the shortcuts library, or build it yourself in about two minutes. After that the path from Voice Memos is Share, then the Shortcut name.
Which method to use
- Need the words, right now: Voice Memos, Copy Transcript.
- Need the transcript inside something you are writing: Notes.
- iPhone 11, or a language Apple does not transcribe: Live Captions.
- Need headings, bullets, and a file you will keep: share to Brain Dump.
One route to avoid: uploading the .m4a to a browser transcription service for free minutes. It works, but you are handing a recording of your own voice to a server to do a job your phone already does offline.
Fixes for the four things that usually go wrong
- No transcript at all. Check the phone is an iPhone 12 or later and the language is one Apple lists. There is no setting to enable, so if the option is missing, one of those two is the reason.
- Share button greyed out. Tap into the recording first. You cannot share from the collapsed list row.
- Names and jargon come out wrong. Fix them once in a custom dictionary and they stick for later recordings.
- Long recordings stall on share. Trim the silence in Voice Memos before sharing. A 40-minute memo that is 30 minutes of dead air transfers and transcribes as 40 minutes.
Accuracy, offline, and privacy
All four methods run on device. Nothing is uploaded, and every one of them works in Airplane Mode. Apple states the same for Dictation: requests are processed on device in many languages with no internet connection required. Three of the four are Apple's speech recognition; Brain Dump is whisper.cpp. Both stay on the phone.
On accuracy, the honest state of the evidence is thin. Tom's Guide ran a hands-on comparison and found Voice Memos made fewer errors than Google Recorder. That is one reviewer with one set of recordings, not a benchmark. Expect proper nouns, acronyms, and crosstalk to be where any of these break first.
If punctuation is the thing that annoys you, iOS inserts commas, periods, and question marks automatically in supported languages, and you can turn that off in Settings > General > Keyboard > Auto-Punctuation.