Voice recording apps can be used in lectures, seminars, and various public events. They are also great for quickly recording your own ideas. If desired, a voice recorder can easily be turned into an audio diary. Just make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
Most Android smartphones come with built-in voice recorders. They work well, but lack functionality. It is best to use third-party apps. Voice Recorder has everything the average user needs. It is easy to use and has many features. Parrot and Cogi have interesting functionality that is ideal for students and journalists.
Easy Voice Recorder
Easy Voice Recorder allows you to easily record audio anywhere and anytime. One of the features of the application is recording audio in the background, even when the smartphone screen is not lit.
Easy Voice Recorder supports several file formats, including AMR and PCM. There are popular formats such as MP3 and WAV. The program comes with useful widgets and shortcuts that will allow you to quickly start recording at any time. Another interesting feature is support for the Android Wear operating system for smart watches.
The app lets you delete unnecessary parts of an audio recording and increase the volume. There is an option to suppress echo or background noise. The $4 pro version of Easy Voice Recorder will automatically (or manually) upload all recordings to Google Drive or Dropbox. The pro version supports a Bluetooth microphone and the Tasker scheduler app.
Zoho Notebook
Zoho – is a note-taking application in which voice recording is just one of the functions. You can create individual notes, organize them into categories, combine text notes with images and audio files.
Creating notes is done with one click. The entire track is displayed as a sound wave, which looks very nice. You can customize the color of the audio note, rename it and move it to different notebooks. The built-in alarm function is very useful. You can set up reminders for when you need to view the note and listen to the audio recording.
To keep the content private, you can use the locking feature. Then, outsiders will not be able to access the recordings. Zoho does not have any unusual features, but it does its basic tasks well. It is a great choice for students.
Voice Recorder
Voice Recorder closes the "hole" in functionality that remains from the previous program. It has all the features described above, but something else is added to them. There are settings for the sensitivity of the voice recorder, support for an external microphone, saving the recording in MP3 format with improved sound quality.
Editing of recordings is especially worth mentioning. Voice Recorder allows you to trim tracks, copy individual fragments from them, insert third-party fragments and delete unnecessary parts directly in the application. You can listen to the final version before saving.
The downside is the lack of automatic upload of recordings to the cloud storage. However, you can always do it manually. There is no support for PMR, but the WAV format is supported. The application is free and supported by advertising. Voice Recorder offers all or almost all the features that are needed. The various editing options for recordings deserve special attention.
Parrot
Parrot may be the most feature-rich audio recorder on this list, and the beautiful interface makes interacting with the app especially enjoyable. Parrot was created for experienced users such as teachers, lawyers, businessmen, journalists, etc. It is easy to use thanks to its user-friendly interface, and the feature set can leave many other programs far behind.
The free version allows you to use a built-in, external or wireless microphone for recording. The date of creation is indicated next to each track. This is especially convenient if Parrot is used for work or study. For example, you can quickly find a specific lecture. Android Wear OS is supported.
You can reduce echo and background noise, increase volume, and enable the "skip silence" option when recording. There is support for various recording formats, as in the above-mentioned applications. You can set the beginning and end of the recording automatically based on the volume level. There are also options for boosting low frequencies and reverb. The latter allows you to listen to recordings as if the user is sitting in a small room or a large hall. There is synchronization with cloud storage, support for Google Drive and Dropbox.
The paid version gives access to recordings of outgoing and incoming telephone conversations in automatic or manual mode. The user can pre-set the date and time of the recording start, as well as its duration. This allows, for example, to automatically record the teacher's voice from the beginning to the end of the lecture. Even if the student forgets to turn on the recorder, the application will do everything automatically.
Rewind
All modern smartphones have standard voice recorders. But they are quite difficult to use to record spontaneous moments, such as a child’s first words. It is also impossible to leave the built-in voice recorder running in the background. This is where Rewind comes to the rescue. This application runs in the background and turns on when a certain volume is detected. There is a function to start recording by shaking the device. Rewind – a great option for saving conversations. You no longer have to worry about missing anything.
If the device memory is full, the program will start deleting the oldest recordings. The application can be configured to save only the last 30 minutes of audio recordings. To save memory space, you can choose the mp3 format instead of WAV. Even if the application does not use all the memory of the smartphone, it still requires significant resources to work in the background. But Rewind is definitely a useful tool. The application is distributed free of charge and has no ads.
Voice Memos
A common problem when recording long lectures or interviews is the difficulty in finding individual fragments. It is not easy to find several phrases in a recording that lasts 2 hours. Of course, you can record the time manually. But this is not very convenient. Voice Memos – an application that allows you to quickly find fragments of an audio recording using tags.
The app does not have any unusual design or special features. There is a regular big button to start recording. There is also a special button for adding tags. In this case, a timestamp with a unique color is added to the recording. You can add tags after the recording is finished. Tags cannot be renamed. They just show the timestamp. Voice Memos is free to download from the Play Store.
Cogi
Cogi offers not only a beautiful interface, but also functionality that no other application can compare with. The developers have added the ability to save photos along with audio recordings, and this is a truly unusual solution.
Cogi actually offers features that will be useful to many people. For example, you can quickly record passages up to 45 seconds long, forming a single track from them. This will allow, for example, to highlight only the most important moments from a long lecture. In addition to photos, text notes can be added to audio recordings. Thus, the user gets a voice recorder combined with a notepad. Tags can be used to quickly search and manage files.
Cogi comes in three versions: free, standard, and pro. The free plan is limited to 500 MB of storage. The standard version costs $15 and includes access to 50 GB of cloud storage. The pro version offers 250 GB of cloud storage for $40. Paid versions also allow you to record phone calls.
Cogi is a great app, but the cost of using it is very high. For example, Evernote is much cheaper, and in terms of functionality it is almost as good as Cogi. The only thing it does not have is recording phone calls (in the free version). If you want to save money and still get advanced features such as adding images, links, videos to audio recordings, Evernote is definitely worth considering as an alternative.
Otter
Otter – one of the most advanced voice recording apps on this list. But it is only suitable for those who speak English or need to listen to speech in English, since recognition does not work for the Russian language. It is convenient to use in classrooms, at various public events, during interviews and business meetings. There is a function for searching for a specific person's speech in the recording: click on the name in the Speakers list at the top of the recording to search and navigate between paragraphs. In addition, the percentage of conversation time is indicated for each speaker to better understand the level of contribution to the conversation of each of the participants. If necessary, you can add a photo (the function works starting with Android 11).
After saving the file, the program generates keywords to simplify the search. When playing, these keywords are synchronized with the audio file. Otter can be downloaded for free from the Play Store, but the total length of recordings is limited to 600 minutes per month. To remove this limitation, you need to upgrade to a paid plan, the cost of which starts at $ 10 per month. The business plan has sorting of search results by relevance or date, time codes, improved indication.