How To Record Calls On an iPhone

A new feature in iOS 18.1 is the ability to record phone calls. The recording is added to your Notes app and is automatically transcribed.

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Video Transcript: This is Gary with MacMost. Let's look at how to record phone calls on your iPhone. 
So a new feature on the iPhone in iOS 18.1 is the ability to easily record phone calls. Not only that but you get a transcript as well. It is important to realize that you need version 18.1 for this to work. It's a new feature there. 
Now this works the same whether you place a call or receive a call. Let's say you place a call on your iPhone. Then you're on a phone call with somebody, just as you normally would be. Notice the little icon here at the top left. This button allows you to start recording a call. As soon as you tap it it will start a countdown and begin recording. At the end of that countdown it's going to play an automatic message telling the other person that the call is being recorded and then from that point on it is recorded. Let's give it a try. You can see that countdown there. "This call will be recorded". Now from this point on the call is being recorded. You'll see this little indicator here showing you the waveform and also a Stop button to stop recording and the time of the recording. 
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If you tap this, somewhere right in the middle here, it actually goes to the Notes App. Recording is actually going to a new note and it is showing up there as a recording in iPhone. You can use this note to take notes. So you're still on the call here. You can see at the top in the Dynamic Island the phone call duration and the waveform there. You can tap here and you can take some notes as you're talking to the person on the phone. You can tap in the Dynamic Island to go back to the phone app and you can tap on the waveform to go to Notes. So when you're done with the recording you can tap Stop here, or you can just end the phone call. Ending the phone call, naturally, ends the recording. So you can end the recording a little early, "This call is no longer being recorded", and then you can end the call after that if you like. 
It takes you automatically to the Notes App where you see the recording in the note. There is a convenient Play button but you can also tap on it and it will bring up this whole interface here where it shows you the transcript. It even knows when you were talking versus the other person. You can Play. You've got convenient buttons to jump forward and back. You also can tap here and switch from the transcript to this waveform here. So you can kind of drag this like that to go to another part of the call. 
In the transcript you can tap anywhere and it will start playing from that point. So it follows along with the transcript as the audio is playing and vice versa. You can even Search in the transcript for something if you like. You've got this button up here at the top right and you can Copy the entire transcript, paste it into another app, if you like. You can also Save the audio of the transcript out as a file or Share it directly. So you could say email it to someone. You can see there's an audio file attached here. 
To Dismiss the listing here you can drag down and you get back to the note. Notice here, if you have Apple Intelligence turned On, you also get a preview summary of the transcript in the note. You can also tap and hold the transcript here and Copy it. So if you don't want to leave this transcript in a note all by itself you can, say, paste it into another note where you store some transcripts. 
The transcript is being provided by your device using AI. So it is not going to be perfect. It does seem to work pretty well however, at least to give you an idea of where in the transcript you should go looking for some information. Then you can jump to that portion and listen to what is actually said. So this is a cool new feature. I particularly like the idea that you can stop and start the transcript when you want. So if somebody is, say, helping you out over the phone and they are about to give you some instructions you can record just that portion and then stop and then if they are going to give you more instructions later you can record that portion as well. It can be very useful for that. So, check it out. Like with a lot of features it is useful to try this before you need it. So if you think this is something you'll use, perhaps call a friend or family member and test it out with them. Try recording them and just see how it works. See how you can go between notes and the phone app and how you can look at the transcript later on. Later on when you need this feature you already know how to use it. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 11 Responses to “How To Record Calls On an iPhone”

JEFF PYLANT

3 weeks ago

Wow, Gary. Another great tip. Thanks SO much!

Trudy

recording is added to my notes app but is not transcribed. is there anything I can do to fix this?

Gary Rosenzweig

Trudy: Perhaps your Mac doesn't support transcription.

Scott Schroeder

great tip-thanx so much! Will this also work for Face Time conversations?

Fred Raimer

Thank you, Gary! You have a gift for presenting and I really appreciate your excellent guidance. I have learned so much from you and also enjoyed being entertained in a relaxing way. Apple should be grateful for you supporting their great products as you make them more relevant and useful to us users!

Scott: Audio FaceTime, yes. Try it and see.

Cindy

Wow, this is a great feature! Thank you Gary for sharing your wealth of knowledge!!

Jonathan

Gary what happens if the person you are calling doesn't want the conversation to be recorded? Is the iPhone smart enough to recognize this and automatically stop the recording or does the caller need to manually stop the recording? Also, other than the initial prompt is there anyway the recipient can know for sure that the call is not being recorded?

Jonathan: The other person would hear the message that the call is being recorded, and then they would decide what to do. They can hang up, or tell the other person to stop, or simply continue the conversation keeping the fact that it is being recorded in mind. I don't know how the other person would know the call is NOT being recorded. I mean you can always talk over a speaker and have a separate device recording the sound in the air. That's always been the case.

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

Mike Wyeth

Hi. Thanks for the tip. I tried it and got the Note with the recording but no transcript. I tried Apple support and it turns out that it is not just IOS 18.1, but you also need an iPhone 15 or 16 to get the AI.

How To Record Calls On an iPhone

Comments: 11 Responses to “How To Record Calls On an iPhone”

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