To transcribe a voice memo, you usually don't need another app. Apple's Voice Memos makes a transcript for you: on an iPhone, tap the recording, open its options and choose View Transcript or Copy Transcript; on a Mac, select the recording and click the transcript button. That works on an iPhone 12 or later and on an Apple silicon Mac with macOS Sequoia or later. Apple's iPhone guide lists ten supported languages; its Mac guide doesn't list any.

It stops at reading and copying: no speaker names, no transcript file, no subtitles. Below are the steps for both devices, the gaps, how to move a memo from iPhone to Mac, and what to use when you need more. Disclosure: I build Vext, a Mac app that appears in the last part. Everything before it uses what Apple already ships.

How to transcribe a voice memo on iPhone

Voice memo transcription on iPhone happens automatically once the recording contains speech. You only have to open it.

  1. Open Voice Memos (it lives in the Utilities folder).
  2. Tap the recording.
  3. Tap the options button, then choose View Transcript to read it and select part of it, or Copy Transcript to copy all of it.
  4. Paste the text wherever it needs to go: Notes, Mail, a document.

You can also watch the words appear while you record: swipe up from the top of the waveform and tap the transcript button. According to Apple's iPhone guide, memos recorded on iOS 17 or earlier get transcribed when you open them, as long as they contain speech.

How to transcribe voice memos on Mac

On a Mac the transcript lives in the same window as the recording.

  1. Open Voice Memos on your Mac.
  2. Click the recording.
  3. Click the transcript button to show the text.
  4. To copy, select the text, Control-click it and choose Copy.

The search field looks inside transcripts as well as titles, so you can find a memo by something you said in it. Click a word in the transcript and the playhead jumps to that moment. Apple's Mac guide also says recordings made in macOS 14 or earlier, or on a device without transcription, are transcribed when you open them.

Languages. Apple's iPhone guide lists "English (all variants), Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese," and adds that transcription isn't offered in every country or region. A memo in Dutch, Russian or Hindi isn't covered by that list.

What the built-in voice memo to text leaves out

Apple's transcript is a reading view. The guides describe viewing, copying and searching it, and that's all; the gaps show up once a memo has more than one voice or has to leave the app.

  • No speaker names. Nothing in Apple's guides mentions telling voices apart, so plan on working out who said what yourself.
  • No transcript file. The documented way out is copy and paste. Apple describes no way to save the transcript as a file, and nothing for subtitles.
  • Summaries need Apple Intelligence. With Apple Intelligence turned on, Writing Tools can summarize a transcript. Without it, Apple offers no summary.
  • Ten languages. Outside Apple's list, don't count on a usable transcript.

If you only need to skim a note to self, none of that matters, and Voice Memos is the right tool.

How to transfer a voice memo from iPhone to Mac

The easiest route is iCloud: recordings then appear in Voice Memos on every device signed in to the same Apple Account, as described in Apple's sync guide.

  1. On the iPhone: Settings > [your name] > iCloud, tap See All, and turn on Voice Memos.
  2. On the Mac: Apple menu > System Settings, click your name, click iCloud, click See All next to Saved to iCloud, and make sure Voice Memos is on.

To export a voice memo from your Mac as an audio file, drag the recording from the Voice Memos window into a Finder folder. On the iPhone, you can also export to Files: open the recording's share options and choose Save to Files. Exports default to .m4a, which flattens layered recordings and turns Spatial Audio into stereo.

Convert a voice memo to text with speaker labels

When you need who-said-what, a file you can hand to someone else, or subtitles, the transcript has to come from somewhere other than Voice Memos.

For one quick file, free: our in-browser audio transcriber runs Whisper on your device, uploads nothing, and exports TXT, SRT or VTT. It's the right choice for an occasional memo.

For interviews, meetings and calls you recorded on your phone: this is what Vext's Import Recording… is for. It treats the memo like a recorded meeting:

  1. Drag the memo from Voice Memos into a Finder folder (if it was recorded on the iPhone, turn on Voice Memos sync as above so it shows up on the Mac first).
  2. In Vext, open Meetings and choose Import Recording… from the toolbar or the File menu, or drag the file onto the Meetings list. You can pick several files; they're processed one at a time.
  3. Vext transcribes the audio (on your Mac, with the default engine), then runs a speaker pass over it, so the transcript is split by voice. The meeting takes the file's name as its title and the recording date stored in the file.
  4. Click Summarize to get a summary, or turn on Summarize transcript under Settings > Language & AI to have every import summarized. Summaries need an AI model: Apple Intelligence on macOS 26 or later, a local model you download, or an API you configure.
  5. Use Export… to save the transcript as plain text, Markdown, SRT or WebVTT. Rename the speakers first and the export uses their names.

It also takes video files, and an imported memo works like any other meeting in Vext: you can search it alongside your dictations and meetings, or use Ask about this meeting to get answers that quote the transcript word for word.

The limits, so you can decide quickly:

  • Language. Imports go through the same engine as Vext meetings. Parakeet covers 25 European languages on-device. A memo in a language Parakeet can't transcribe, such as Hindi or Thai, needs macOS 26 or later, where Apple's SpeechAnalyzer runs on the Mac.
  • Speaker labels aren't perfect. Overlapping speech and similar voices still get mixed up, as with every speaker-labeling tool. Check quotes against the audio before you publish them; transcribing interviews locally covers that workflow.
  • Subtitle timings are estimated. Vext says so in the export dialog. Each cue starts where its segment starts, but the end time is calculated from the number of words.
  • Trial. Each imported file counts as one of the 10 free meetings in the trial.
  • Mac only. Vext doesn't run on the iPhone, so the memo has to reach the Mac first.

Which to use

  • A note to yourself in a supported language: Voice Memos' own transcript. Copy it and move on.
  • One file, once, or a language Apple doesn't list: the free audio transcriber.
  • Interviews, meetings or lectures you need with speakers, a summary or subtitles, kept on your Mac: Vext's Import Recording. The 1.6.0 release notes cover the rest of what came with it.

If your voice memos are really meetings: Download Vext. It's $49 once, and the trial includes 100 dictations, 50 notes and 10 meetings. It needs macOS 14 or later on Apple Silicon.

brew install muvon/tap/vext