Voice recording apps are great for recording lectures, meetings, public events, random thoughts and ideas, and they are also great to record yourself sleep talk non-sense in the dead of night. Just don’t share the last one with your friends.
Most Android smartphones come with in-built voice recorders, while those are good, they lack features even for occasional users. Let’s check out some of the best Voice Recorder Apps for Android.
Best Voice Recorder Apps for Android
There are quite a few voice recording apps for Android available on the Play Store which makes it difficult to choose the right one. It all comes down to what you are using it for and the features that you cannot do without. Recently, I wanted to make a quick mental note of ideas, and since it takes more time to put thoughts into words, it got me looking for voice recorder apps. If you’re an iOS user, fret not, you can check out voice recorder apps for iPhone as well.
1. Dolby On
Dolby secret tested a professional music recording “234” last year, and on the same lines released Dolby On for on iOS. This app was recently launched by on Android, and it soon replaced all my audio and music recording apps.
The main feature of this app is its post-processing features that are automatically applied to the recording. It filters the audio for noise reduction, normalization, compression, dynamic EQ, etc. Not just that, it also analysis of the surrounding noise and optimizes the levels even before the recording starts.
If you want to tweak the sound more the app also gives you inbuilt editing tools. You can trim the audio, apply profiles, manually adjust noise reduction, bass, treble, boost the audio, etc. Besides that, if you want to compare the audio without the Dolby sound, you have a quick toggle option for that as well. Although it’s not necessary, I would suggest using headphones at all times.
This app is a great start for normal users, although if you’re a musician, an added feature is integration with SoundCloud which saves you from exporting the track and manually uploading it every time.
Install Dolby On (Android)Â
2. Easy Voice Recorder
Easy Voice Recorder allows you to easily record audio anywhere, anytime. The app offers the ability to record audio in the background even when the screen is off.
It supports multiple file-formats including the space-saving AMR and the high-quality PCM. It also supports popular formats like MP3 and WAV. It comes with useful widgets and shortcuts that will allow you to begin recording at a moment’s notice, it also has support for Android Wear which is cool.
It comes with a magic wand that will allow you to increase volume and remove quite parts with dead space. Saves times during playback. You can also reduce echo or background noise.
There is a pro version ($3.99) that will allow you to upload all recordings automatically to Google Drive or Dropbox, but you can do it manually as well. Support for Bluetooth microphone and Tasker app.
Easy Voice Recorder is a great recording app that does everything you would expect from a voice recorder.
Install Easy Voice Recorder (Android)
3. Voice Recorder
Voice Recorder (such a generic name) picks up things where Easy Voice Recorder left. It offers everything that the former offered but adds some more features.
Now, you can also save your audio recordings in MP3 format which offers high audio quality. It comes with a microphone tool that will allow you to adjust the sensitivity of the recorder.
Also Read:Â 7 Best Audio Editing Apps for Android
Where it really shines is the editing department. Voice Recorder will allow you to edit your voice recordings. You can cut, trim, copy/paste, and remove parts that you don’t like, right inside the app. This is useful when you want to remove parts that are boring and useless. The app will also allow you to listen to the final version before saving it.
On the downside, there is no auto-upload function for cloud storage, but you can always upload manually. It doesn’t support PMR but does support WAV. The app is free to use and is ad-supported.
Voice Recorder offers everything that you may need out of your audio recorder except some features that can be taken care of manually. Ability to edit voice recordings can be handy in several situations.
Install Voice Recorder (Android)
4. Parrot
Parrot is probably the most beautiful as well as the most feature-rich audio recorder on the list. The UI is pleasing and makes using the app that much fun.
The free version will allow you to use the speaker, mic or Bluetooth mic for recording. You can see calendar style icons on the recordings to help identify the date you recorded the lecture or meeting. It supports Android Wear.
You can remove echo and background noise, and also control gain where you need more power. Supports different recording formats like previously mentioned apps. They can be set to stop and start automatically based on the sound threshold to skip silence parts during the recording period.
Also Read:Â Top 10 Call Recording Apps for Android
It comes with some playback options like volume boost, bass boost, and preset reverb. The last one is for listening to recordings as if you were sitting in a small room or a large hall. There is cloud sync and support for Google Drive and Dropbox.
The Pro version will also allow you to record phone calls, both incoming and outgoing. You can set it to automatic or manual. You can set schedules to record audio setting the date, time, and even duration in advance. So the recording will begin with every lecture, meeting that you know you will be attending in the future. Even if you do forget about it.
The free version is ad-supported while the paid version will set you back by $19.99 every year.
Parrot was built for advanced users like teachers, lawyers, businessmen who constantly attend meetings, and so on. It is easy and fun to use and once you use it, you won’t use any other app.
Install Parrot (Android)
5. Cogi
Cogi, interesting name, made the list because it not only offers a beautiful UI, but also a feature that no other app provides. The developers wanted to augment the experience by allowing users to take better notes.
In order to achieve that, they added functionality to take pictures and save it with your audio recordings. It makes so much sense.
Cogi actually offers features that will come in handy and will be used by plenty of people while voice recording. Like for example, you can go back in time, up to 45 seconds, to record what was said that you didn’t record. Cogi does it by actively listening behind the scenes so that you do not miss important things, thinking if only I had started audio recording before.
You can add images and text notes to audio recordings to help to remember the highlights of the day better. They are all grouped together and you can use tags for better search and management.
Cogi offers three plans. Free, Standard, and Pro. The free plan comes with 500 MB, Standard is $14.99 with 50 GB cloud storage, and Pro is 250 GB for $39.99. Premium plans also allow you to record phone calls.
While Cogi is a great app, it is expensive when compared to something like Evernote which allows you to do everything Cogi does, except for the call recording, in the free plan. If you are looking for advanced functions like adding images, links, video to your audio recordings, Evernote is more suitable.
Install Cogi (Android)
6. Rewind
We all have voice recorders on our smartphone but capturing spontaneous moments like a child’s first words are hard to capture. It isn’t feasible to leave the recorder in the background and that’s where Rewind comes in. Rewind is a smart voice recorder app designed to capture spontaneous moments. It runs silently in the background and records everything that happens in your surroundings.
It doesn’t fill up your memory though as it discards all the recordings after a threshold and keeps the latest recording. For example, you can set the app to record 30-minute clips and the app would keep the latest 30 minutes of the audio recordings.
To save up on space you can choose an mp3 instead of wav file format. The app also has a couple of features which you can enable to set a custom trigger for recording like shake to record.
Even though the app doesn’t burn up the memory of your smartphone, it would consume significant resources while running in the background. The would come in handy for brainstorming sessions, surveillance, and recording notes and memos. The app is free and doesn’t have any ads.
Rewind is a great app to have as a backup tool for your conversations, you wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting anything as it will be saved automatically to the phone.
Install Rewind (Android)
7. Voice Memos
The most common problem while recording long lectures, interviews, or meeting sessions is that you have no way of knowing where are important bits in the recordings. I used to either memorize the timestamps or wrote it down on the piece of paper. Voice Memos is a simple app which lets you add tags while recording audio.
The app doesn’t have any fancy layout or features. It features a red record button and a list of recordings. Recording begins as you tap the red button and you can add tags to the recording by tapping the memo button. The tag marks the timestamp with a unique color which makes it easier to access after recording is finished. What’s even better? You can add timestamps after the recording has finished.
There is one thing which is missing, the option to rename the tags. The tags just show the timestamp and you can’t rename the tags. Voice Memos is free on the Play Store.
Voice Memos is great for tagging your recordings with timestamps for easy discovery in case of long recordings.
Install Voice Memos (Android)
8. Zoho Notebook
Zoho is more of a note-taking app which implements voice recording rather intuitively. You can create separate notebooks to keep your notes categorized. Recording Notes is a one-tap action and you can see the whole recording as a waveform which looks cool. You can customize the color of the audio note, rename, and move it around different notebooks.
One small feature which makes it the app great is the alarm feature. You can set a reminder on your recordings and receive a notification when it’s time to review the audio file. To keep the contents private, use the lock feature to secure the files within the app.
Zoho doesn’t have any fancy features, just the essentials like reminder and lock features. It is best for students.
Install Zoho Notebook (Android)
9. Otter
Otter is one of the most advanced voice recording apps in this list. Otter is not just an audio recording app, it also transcribes in real time. You can use it in meetings, and classroom to record lectures.
After you’ve recorded your files, otter generates summary keywords for easy discovery. When you play back the recordings, it syncs the words in the transcription with the audio file which makes reviewing notes a lot easier. Otter is free on the Play Store but you get a capped limit of 600 minutes per month. You can upgrade to their subscription plan which starts at $9.99/mo.
Install Otter (Android)
Wrapping Up: Best Voice Recorder Apps
I like Voice Recorder because it has everything a regular person would like in a voice recorder app. It is simple to use and comes with many good features.
Parrot and Cogi both try to offer premium features to make a case for their premium plans which are over-priced in my opinion. I would rather recommend using the popular Evernote app if you are looking to attach images and links to your audio recordings. But, it’s a bit of an overkill for a recording app.
In the end, like always, it all comes down to your personal or professional requirements, what you want and need with your voice and music recording app for Android.
Which one are you using and why?
