But if you’re like most people, you don’t use your Apple Watch to take voice memos. You use it to control your music and watch faces. That’s changing. Starting today, you can use your Apple Watch to take voice memos in addition to controlling your music and watch faces. Just open the app on your watch and type in a few words or phrases, and the app will automatically start taking notes of those words or phrases. You can even save those notes as voice memos so you can access them later on when you need them.
Using the Voice Memos App
You can take a quick sound recording using the Voice Memos app that’s pre-installed on your Apple Watch. This requires the counterpart iPhone Voice Memos app. If you can’t find it, there’s a good chance that you’ve deleted it so download it again from the App Store (for free) and add it to your Apple Watch.
You’ll then find the Voice Memos app in the main menu, accessible by pressing the Digital Crown. You could add the app to your Apple Watch dock or as a Complication on a Watch face for even quicker access. You can also tell Siri to “take a voice memo” to quickly open the app.
Once open you’ll see a red record button. Tap it, speak, then tap it again to save your recording. Once you’ve finished you can swipe left on a recording to quickly delete it, or tap on it to playback on your Watch.
Recordings Are Automatically Transferred to your iPhone
Just like screenshots taken on your Apple Watch, recordings will automatically be transferred to your iPhone. Open the Voice Memos app on your iPhone and you should see the recording there waiting for you. You may need to wait a short while for especially long recordings.
From here you can tap on a recording and use the ellipsis “…” icon to organize, share, or upload the recording to a location of your choosing. Recordings will be in M4A format and are remarkably small considering how passable the quality is (around 1MB for a one-minute clip).
All Sorts of Uses
The Apple Watch is useful for taking recordings anywhere you get a thought that you can’t be bothered to type out or jot down. You can embed these files into notes or documents, or transcribe them later.
This functionality is also useful for recording conversations, meetings, or other interactions. Just be aware of any privacy laws in your country before you start recording people without their knowledge!
You can record surprisingly usable audio with an Apple Watch, which may be useful in small video projects. If you don’t have a lavalier mic that you can attach to the speaker, it’s relatively easy to sync the M4A audio with a video you’ve shot on your iPhone using a free app like iMovie. To make things easy, start both recordings, then clap (on camera) so you can match the audio to your footage in post.
