Voice recording is one of the most underrated features of a smartphone. From recording hour-long lectures to capturing conversations and interviews, a voice recording app can make your lives easier in more meaningful ways than you can imagine. Even the sheer convenience of recording your flashes of inspiration with a voice note instead of jotting them down on a piece of paper or typing on your phone can’t be understated. Not to mention, they can also be a great alternative to the best note-taking apps if you’re tired or simply not in the spirit of typing.
Not all voice recording apps are built the same, though. Some of them offer better features, like the ability to edit the recordings and share or save them to the cloud, while others are simply popular because they’re an absolute joy to use. You may have a hard time picking the right one, which is why I’ve highlighted some of the best — and also my favorite — voice recording apps in 2023. The apps highlighted below are in no particular order, so feel free to explore all the options to see what they bring to the table before downloading them.
1 Dolby On
Dolby On is a fantastic voice recording app that comes with a slew of features for musicians and budding recording artists, but it can also be used by an average user to record voice notes and other recordings. One of the highlights of this particular recording app is that it supports Lossless Audio with which you can save uncompressed 48kHz, 16-bit WAV files. These recordings can quickly fill up your phone’s storage, but they’re great for those who truly care about the quality of the audio being recorded by their phone. It has a simple interface that lets you record both audio and video. All your recordings are automatically processed to ensure they sound the best, and you also get a host of post-processing options in case you want to fine-tune the recording further.
I am personally not a fan of the auto-processing feature as it tends to make some of my recordings sound a bit off by adding too much noise reduction and other effects, but you can always turn it off or revisit and edit your recordings to tweak those effects. Dolby On is available for free on both Android and iOS, and it has no ads or no in-app purchases to make you spend any money.
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2 J Labs Voice Recorder & Audio Editor
The Voice Recorder & Audio Editor app by J Labs, as you can see, has a unique UI that’s made to look like a vintage cassette player. It’s not as feature-rich as some of the other recording apps highlighted on this list, but I’d say this has the best-looking interface that’s a lot more fun to use. The app offers a bunch of tape decks and cassette designs, and it automatically rotates between them every time you open the recording page. You can also force the app to use a particular design by paying for the premium subscription, though.
The recordings can be saved in both .wav or .mp3 format, and you also get to choose the sampling rate and change the recording folder. You’ll see some ads on the page with the list of recordings, but they’re less intrusive and won’t really bother you all that much. It would’ve been nice to have some editing tools to at least trim or boost your recordings, but you don’t get any of them on this app. You can, however, share and save your recordings fairly easily. It’s available to download for free on both Android and iOS, but you’ll need to pay a premium to unlock more skins for the recorder and remove the ads.
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3 Otter
Otter is also a fairly reliable voice recording app that’ll save all your voice memos and recordings, but its highlight is the transcription feature that you get for both live recordings and pre-recorded audio. It uses AI to transcribe your audio and video recordings, and I’d say does a decent job. What I also like about Otter is that it lets you highlight text, add inline comments, and or even add images or videos to your recording. All these features come together and allow you to produce a great result overall that’s easy to share in a very presentable form. It offers seamless integration with Slack, Microsoft, and Zoom, and you can also import your favorite calendars and cloud storage.
The only complaint I have is that it has a very busy-looking interface with lots of elements cluttering the screen at any given point. The free version of the app will also limit you to just 300 minutes of transcription per month, and there’s also a 30-minute transcription time cap per conversation. Paying $8.33 for the premium subscription will reduce the transcription limit per month while also unlocking other features like PDF, DOCX, exports, faster playback speeds, and more.
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4 Smart Voice Recorder
Smart Recorder is perfect for those who are looking for a simple recording app that gets the job done for free. That’s right, this particular application is free to download from the Play Store, and it also allows for unlimited recordings, which is great. The best thing about this app is that it comes with a feature that automatically skips awkward silences during the recording. So if you or the person you’re recording stop talking, then the app will automatically cut those pauses, saving you the manual effort of editing them out. I also like how the app analyzes the storage space left in your phone to estimate how many hours of recording you can save. Smart Recorder, as I mentioned before, is available for free, but you will have to pay a small fee to remove ads. It’s not available to download on the App Store either, meaning iPhone users will have to pick some other app from the list.
Download from Google Play Store
5 Neutron Audio Recorder
Neutron Audio Recorder is the only paid application on this list, but it includes a lot of cool and useful features for its price. This particular application is from the developers of Neutron Music Player, which is among the best music players out there in 2023. In addition to all the basic recording features, the Neutron Audio Recorder also includes features to enhance your recordings. You get a comprehensive 60-band equalizer for frequency response correction, gain correction, and more. It also lets you resample your recordings to reduce their size without affecting the overall quality of the output. Some other highlights of the Neutron Audio Recorder app include playlist management, support for multiple languages, Android Auto, and more.
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6 Easy Voice Recorder
The free version of Easy Voice Recorder was one of my go-to recording apps on Android for quite some time before I tried the other options. It remains one of the best options out there for those who just want a simple app with basic features to get good recordings. One of the highlights of Easy Voice Recorder is that it comes with a bunch of mic presets that you can use based on the environment you’re recording in to ensure you get clear and crisp recording with less noise or echo. Students recording a lecture, for instance, can use the lecture preset, while musicians recording audio clips can pick music.
Easy Voice Recorder will also let you hide sensitive recordings, and you also retain the files you delete for up to 30 days. It’s available on both Android and iOS for free, but you’ll need to pay a fee to remove ads.
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Best voice recorder apps in 2023: Final thoughts
Those are the best voice recording apps you can check out right now in 2023. I’ve highlighted a good mix of options for you to try, so be sure to explore them to see which one suits your needs. I’ve been using the Dolby On and Smart Recorder a lot lately, but you can’t go wrong with any of the options that are mentioned above. Otter is a great app for those who rely on live transcriptions a lot, whereas the Easy Voice Recorder is also a simple and reliable option to get the job done without spending any money. The Google Recorder is also an excellent option that I often use for recording live transcriptions on my Pixel 7. But it’s exclusive to the Pixel phones at the moment, which is why it’s not a part of this list just yet.