How to transcribe iPhone voice memo to text: Step by step guide

Transcribing voice memos on your iPhone will allow you to have an accurate and precise text of valuable information; most importantly, you will be able to organize it so that you can always have it accessible when you need it.

If you use your device to record interviews, meetings, ideas and more, you will learn how to convert those voices to text easily and quickly in this post.

Benefits of iPhone Voice Memo Transcription

Transcribing voice memo on iPhone represents, among others, the following benefits:

1. More accessibility: if you face a situation that makes it difficult to use the keyboard or type, transcribing makes reporting or communicating with others feasible.
2. Saves time and effort: you will no longer have to invest time and energy in manually typing content; it is beneficial when you have extensive voice memos.
3. Facilitates grammar and spelling: the voice memo iPhone transcription will be written accurately and correctly in the selected language.
4. You can do other tasks: while transcribing, you can perform different activities simultaneously.

Here, you can find the ten best iPhone voice-to-text applications in 2025.

Step-by-step guide on how to transcribe voice memos on iPhones

Considering the benefits of converting iPhone voice memos to text, we detail how to do it step by step in the following section.

The first thing: record the voice memo

Before transcribing, the first thing to do is to record the voice memo.

You can do this with the "Voice Memos" app in the "Utilities" folder. It will make it easy for you to use your iPhone as a portable device to record lectures, personal notes, interviews, songs, recipes, ideas, thoughts, and other content.

The steps to record are straightforward:

• Open the "Voice Memos" option and tap the "Record" button.
• While the system is recording, you will see a constantly moving waveform.
• Tap the red "Stop" button to stop recording.
• The recording is saved in the "All recordings" list.

You can easily record any content of interest on your iPhone.

Play the recording

Once the voice memo is recorded, playing it back to listen to the content before transcribing is recommended. This way, you will be able to detect any kind of sensitive content that you do not want to transcribe for any reason.

Here are the steps to play the voice memo:

• Open the "Voice Memos" option to see the list of recordings.
• Under "All recordings", locate the one you want to listen to.
• Once you have detected it, tap the "Play" button.
• If you want to move to a specific point in the recording, you can do so by dragging the slider. Also, use the "Fast Forward" or "Rewind" buttons to skip 15 seconds of recording content backwards or forwards.

When you are in playback, you can tap the "Options" button, allowing you to vary the "Playback speed". If you drag towards the turtle, the playback pace will slow; if you drag towards the rabbit, the pace will speed up.

You will also see the "Skip silence" function so that the gaps in the recording are not played.

Edit voice memo on your iPhone.

If you have detected some content you want to change before transcribing, you can do it with the edit function. Here's how to make the most common edits.

But, before editing, duplicate the voice memo

It's always a good idea, before you start editing content, to duplicate the voice memo in case any errors occur; here are the steps:

• Tap your recording and press the "More" button.
• Choose the "Duplicate" option.
• You will display an exact duplicate of the note. It is identified with the word "Copy" at the end of its name.

Trimming a voice memo

To get a cleaner and clearer recording, before proceeding to transcribe an iPhone voice memo, remove the content you deem necessary with these steps:

• Tap the recording and press the "More" button.
• Choose the "Edit Recording" option.
• Tap the "Trim" icon (it is a square with two extended sides).
• To highlight the section you want to delete, drag the vertical slider on either side of the recording.
• Choose "Trim" to keep the section highlighted.
• Finally, to remove the highlighted section, choose "Delete".

Modifying content segments in the voice memo

You can change segments of a voice memo by recording new audio during playback; here are the steps:

• Tap the recording and press the "More" button.
• Choose "Edit Recording".
• In the "Edit Recording" window, drag the time slider to the segment you want to modify with new audio.
• Tap "Replace" to start recording new audio; it will appear in red.
• Tap "Done" to save.

If you do not tap "Done", the change to the voice memo will still be saved, so please think carefully and make sure of the content you want to replace before doing so.

Naming the voice memo

Another beneficial action you can perform is to write a name to the voice memo list so you can easily remember and identify the content. Here are the steps:

• Open the "Voice Memos" option to view all recordings.
• Tap the voice memo recording you want to edit.
• Press the "More" button (it has three dots).
• Choose the "Edit recording" option.
• Now, tap the file to give it the chosen name.

Transcribe iPhone voice memos with Google Docs.

Once you have edited the voice memo and have the exact content you want to have a quality transcription, you can do it using the free Mac or Windows tools on your PC or laptop.

In case you decide to go for the voice typing feature with Google Docs on a computer, here is the sequence of steps:

• Open a new document.
• Find the "Tools" option and choose "Voice typing".
• Click on the microphone icon and play the voice memo on your iPhone.
• Increase the volume as much as possible to ensure you capture the words accurately.

Transcribe voice memo with ScriptMe Lite.

ScriptMe Lite is an excellent option to transcribe the voice memo recorded on your iPhone. It is a desktop application that works on Windows and macOS, with which you will have access to unlimited and high-quality transcriptions (close to 100% accuracy).

Among other significant advantages, you don't need an internet connection, so you can get your transcriptions from wherever you are.

You only need to record your voice memo, and you will get the transcript in just seconds, in more than 30 languages for transcription and more than 100 for translation.

It's just four steps to voice memo iPhone voice transcription in a few moments:

1. Upload your voice memo file.
2. Edit the transcription to make it perfect, giving it your style.
3. Export the edited voice memo transcript as a text (.txt) or Microsoft Word (.docx) file.
4. You can share the transcript with other applications like Slack and Google Drive.

You can download it for free here and enjoy all of ScriptMe Lite's advantages now.

Conclusions

While there is no built-in feature for transcribing iPhone voice memos, you already have the information to make it quick and easy.

Either through dictation tools on your computer or laptop or through the applications of specialized automatic transcription services.

One of the most powerful on the market is ScriptMe Lite; you can download it for free, have unlimited transcriptions, and enjoy all its advantages.

If you need more information, write to us; we will gladly answer you as soon as possible.