9 Best Audio Recording Apps to Fit Your Needs

Whether you want to record a meeting, interview, classes, or personal notes reminding you to take the trash out or to avoid a restaurant that served you withered salad leaves on the side, there definitely is a variety of audio recording apps to choose from. Although there are specialized audio recording devices, some prefer using apps developed for a mobile device of their choice instead, as sometimes it proves to be more convenient for notes on the spot.

The purpose of this article is to look into some of the best voice recording apps available and identify their main features. The applications aren’t listed in accordance with any preferences.

What Is a Voice Recorder App

Before diving into specific scenarios where you'd probably want to have a voice recorder handy, it'd probably be useful to know what a voice recorder is, what it can do, and how to pick a good voice recording app for your phone.

A voice recorder app can capture sound and convert it into audio files. You can transfer these audio files to another device, share them via social media, e-mail, transcribe them, or simply store them for future reference.

What You Need to Know About Voice Recording Apps

Navigating the world of voice recording apps and devices can be quite a challenge. Each solution offers different characteristics like supported audio quality, available storage space for your recording, additional editing options, and other features. Before you settle on a specific solution, it’s best to test out as many options as possible and see what they have to offer.

Benefits of Voice Recorder Apps

Having a voice recorder handy is a great way to capture all kinds of content, from meetings and interviews to life’s small details. Recording audio improves factual accuracy and efficiency in professional, academic, and other contexts. Here are the four key benefits of using voice recorders.

• Optimized note-taking

If you ever tried writing a book, essay, or article by speaking it instead of typing, you know it’s significantly faster. Instead of staring at a blank page and waiting for the right words to pop into your head, you can just start talking and see what happens. You also don’t need to sit at your desk - taking notes while moving can get your creative juices flowing faster!

• Saving information on-the-go

Every little time-saving tip and efficiency hack is welcome when you’re short on time. Imagine ending an important call just a few minutes before the next one. Instead of writing down the key points from that call, you can simply record it or simply make a few quick audio notes.

• Listen instead of reading

Now that all your important calls are over, the last thing you need to do is reading, especially from your phone or laptop screen. Give your eyes some well-deserved rest and simply hit that playback button!

• Never forget the important stuff

Great ideas rarely come to us at the right time. You might be stuck in traffic, taking a shower, or enjoying a stroll through your favorite park and experience a moment of pure genius. Instead of digging for a piece of paper and a pen, you can just whip out your phone and make a quick recording.

Dolby On (logo)

Our smartphones have become the key tool for capturing and creating content. However, getting the best possible results from a phone can be quite a challenge. Dolby On promises to change this. The app is designed for recording or livestreaming audio and video in higher quality than you can get with your phone's built-in camera.

If you're looking to up your content creation game, Dolby On might be what you're looking for. It can't perform magic, so your results may vary, but it might be a perfect fit for those who are looking to make the most of their phone's hardware.

Requires: Android 8.0 and iOS 13.0 or later

Compatibility: iPhone, iPad, iPod touch

Size: 99.0 MB

Price: Free

Audio sharing: e-mail, social media, SoundCloud, livestreaming

Developer: Dolby Laboratories Inc.

Voice Memos (logo)

The Voice Memos app makes it easy to turn your iPhone, iPad, or even Apple Watch into a handy audio recorder and capture notes, lectures, family moments, and more. The app also features useful editing features to fine-tune your recordings on-the-fly.

You can use your device's built-in mic, Bluetooth headset, or a compatible external microphone for recording. The app supports compressed and uncompressed codecs, so you can save some storage space if you're short. Finally, it names your recording based on location and offers iCloud integration so your notes are synced across devices.

Requires: iOS 10.0 or later

Compatibility: iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple Watch

Size: Unavailable

Price: Free

Audio sharing: e-mail, Messages, AirDrop

Developer: Apple Inc.

RecForge II Audio Recorder (logo)

If you're looking for a bit more control over your records, RecForge II Audio Recorder is one of the best voice recording apps for Android. The app provides a variety of customization options, like bit rate and sample rate adjustments, choosing codecs, etc. You can also schedule your recordings and connect external microphones for the best recording quality.

In addition, users can manually adjust the gain, pitch, tempo, and playback rate for audio files they record with the app. RecForge II Audio Recorder can work in the background while you're working with other apps. To top it all off, the app is incredibly well optimized with minimal battery consumption.

Requires: Android 4.4 or later

Size: 12.1 MB

Price: Free (contains ads)

Audio sharing: e-mail, SoundCloud, WhatsApp, and more

Developer: Dje073

Music Maker JAM (logo)

Music Maker JAM might be a bit out there, but it's worth considering if you're an aspiring musician who likes to create music even while you're on the go. The app offers 300 mix packs and a variety of samples, beats, and loops you can use to create your next masterpiece.

You can also record vocals (or any other audio), set the tempo, or apply effects to all recordings you create with the app. Music Maker JAM also features an 8-channel mixer, which is a great tool for recording live performances. Once you're done putting everything together, you can share your creations on social media or directly on SoundCloud.

Requires: Android

Size: 76.7 MB

Price: Free (contains ads)

Audio sharing: YouTube, SoundCloud, TikTok, Facebook, and more

Developer: Loudly

Smart Voice Recorder (logo)

The app is very easy to use, has a well-laid-out interface, and also a feature to skip silence, which might be useful while saving memory card space. The quality of the audio is good, although compression seems to bring up background noises too much. Fortunately, there is an option to improve audio quality (from 8 kHz to 44.1 kHz) and make microphone adjustments.

Moreover, in advanced options, there is a feature to automatically pause the recording during phone calls. One of the drawbacks, on the other hand, is constant pop-up ads at the bottom of the screen, which can be removed permanently by paying €1. 

Requires: Android 2.1 and up

Size: 321kB

Price: Free (€1 to remove ads)

Audio Sharing: e-mail, Whatsapp, Dropbox, Google Drive

Developer: Smartmob Development

Voice Recorder (logo)

Although this very easy-to-use app doesn’t have as many settings as the others might, it doesn’t mean that it’s any worse. Voice Recorder has a very clear menu and you can change audio quality in the options section from Lowest Quality (for those who want to save space) to Highest Quality (for those who have plenty of space and care more about the quality).

To sum up, the audio quality with the setting Normal Quality was good, the audio files were recorded in MP3 format, and it was easy to manage and share them. 

Requires: Android 2.2 and up

Size: 1.8MB

Price:  Free

Audio Sharing: e-mail, Whatsapp, Dropbox, Google Drive

Developer: Iovekara 

Automatic Call Recorder (logo)

This app comes in handy when there’s a need to record interviews via phone. In the free version, which is recommended to be tried out first as your device might not be compatible with the app, there are three recording settings: Record all, Ignore all and Ignore contact. The problem is that it might be quite uncomfortable to manually select which contact should be ignored (if there’s no need to record all of them).

However, it is possible to go Pro on this app, which will enable a more comfortable selection of contacts you want to record. Of course, this comes with a price – the upgrade costs €5.59. Overall, the audio quality was good and the app was easy to use.

Requires: Android 2.3 and up

Size: 2.8MB

Price:  Free

Audio Sharing: Dropbox, Google drive

Developer: Appliqato

Call Recorder Free – Record Phone Calls for iPhone (logo)

Similarly to the previous app, this one is used for recording calls, but is designed for iOS. This app works quite well, although the setting up the recording might seem quite complicated. This is solved by following the provided instructions. The audio quality is quite good and the recordings can be easily shared using several platforms.

Requires: iOS 5.0 or later

Compatibility: iPhone, iPad, iPod touch. Optimized for iPhone 5

Size: 6.6 MB

Price:  Free

Audio Sharing: e-mail, iMessage, Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox

Developer: Component Studios

Audio Memos Free – The Voice Recorder (logo)

The app has a very comfortable and easy to use interface, making it one of the best voice recording apps for iOS. It offers three kinds of audio quality recording: 11025 Hz, 22050 Hz and 44100 Hz. Among other features, level of amplification and auto normalization of the audio can be selected in the options menu.

This app is available as a Pro version, which has such features as sending bigger audio files via e-mail (in the free version it’s up to 3MB), as well as the option to activate the recording by voice or timer. All in all, the audio quality was very good.

 Requires: iOS 5.0 or later

Compatibility: iPhone, iPad, iPod touch. Optimized for iPhone 5

Size: 13.0 MB

Price:  Free

Audio Sharing: e-mail, Dropbox

Developer: Imesart S.a.r.l.

Final Thoughts

To sum up, these are only a few out of many applications out there. Therefore, you should keep in mind that they were listed here because all of them have somewhat differing features, but at the same time, they also deliver in terms of quality.