How to turn a voice memo into text
August 27, 2026
"Voice memo" isn't one file format — it's whatever the recording app on your phone happened to save. That turns out not to matter much for getting a transcript, but it's worth knowing what you're actually holding.
What each platform actually gives you
Apple's Voice Memos app — the default recorder on every iPhone — saves in M4A (AAC-encoded) by default. Most Android recorder apps save as M4A or bare AAC, depending on the app. Dedicated recorders and dictaphones more often output WAV, since they're usually optimized for quality over file size rather than for sharing.
None of that changes how you get the text out. Audio to Text auto-detects whichever of these formats you upload, so in practice you rarely need to know or care which one you have. If you do know it's specifically an iPhone recording, M4A to Text is tuned for exactly that case.
The only step that actually varies by platform is getting the file off your phone in the first place — AirDrop, a cable, or sharing it to yourself over email or a messaging app all work the same way once the file exists on your computer. From there, the transcript comes back in seconds regardless of which app made the recording.