The 5 best voice recorder apps for Android

Voice recorders have quickly become a must-have tool for personal and professional use. They come in handy for making quick memos, recording lectures and meetings, and even listening to your band practice.

With so many use cases, it’s no surprise that almost every budget or top-of-the-line Android phone has a built-in option that can do the job for most people. However, if you prefer a striking interface and a large number of sound enhancement features, you may find that your default voice recorder leaves something to be desired. If you want more from a voice recorder, download one of the third-party alternatives.

Although the Google Play Store is flooded with apps creatively named “voice recorder,” we curated a list of some of the most (well-named) powerful sound recording options for you. These apps are easy to use, reliable, and packed with features like sound enhancement, silence skipping, and real-time transcription.

Here are the best Android apps that could replace the built-in recorder on your Android phone.

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Otter

Otter is a powerful voice recorder that’s laser-focused on productivity. It records with real-time transcription and transcribes imported audio and video. While most of the best features are locked behind a subscription, you still get access to five hours of transcribed recordings per month (with a 30-minute max transcription time per conversation) that can be exported as a TXT file for free. You can also join Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom meetings and capture and share notes with participants.

If you decide the subscription is worth it, you’ll get a larger pool of up to 20 hours (90 minutes per conversation) of transcription time each month, along with the ability to export them as PDF, DOCX, or SRT files. You also get several playback speeds (from 0.5x to 3x) and silence skipping when listening to recordings, unlimited conversation history, and the ability to add 100 names and 100 other terms to improve the AI’s understanding of names, acronyms, and jargon.

There are other useful features if your business or school uses Otter, like live notes and captions for Zoom meetings and automatic syncing of audio and video files from Dropbox and cloud recordings from Zoom. However, Otter is still worth a recommendation, even without those integrations.

If you need to get notes from audio or video quickly, Otter is the app you want. While it has no audio quality settings, that shouldn’t be a huge issue, especially if you’re turning the audio into text.

Monetization: free / no ads / IAPs from $9.99 to $99.99

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Dolby On

Dolby On is targeted at amateur and professional musicians. What sets it apart from other apps is its built-in Dolby enhancement that makes your audio sound as if you recorded it in a sound booth. It’s also the only app on this list that allows you to record videos and livestream, all with that same audio enhancement.

The app has a basic editing suite and can upload directly to social media, YouTube, and Sound Cloud. Dolby On might be for you if you want to take your music to the next level.

Monetization:free/ no ads / no IAPs

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Easy Voice Recorder

Easy Voice Recorder gives you access to useful features, like noise and echo reduction, as well as tuned mic profiles for common recording scenarios. It even has a long-press shortcut to start a recording from the homescreen or app drawer.

While it doesn’t have one thing that it’s trying to be the best at, it doesn’t do anything poorly and has a user-friendly interface. It feels like the blueprint for the next version of the built-in recording app.

Monetization:free / contains ads / IAPs from $1.49 to $3.99

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Easy Voice Recorder Pro

In addition to the same features found in the free version, the paid version of Easy Voice Recorder Pro has plenty of quality of life and feature upgrades. Automatic cloud backup (Google Drive, Dropbox, and Microsoft OneDrive), silence skipping, gain adjustment, stereo recording, and an easy-to-use editor, to name a few.

Other recorder apps also have basic editing tools, but hardly any are as powerful, and even fewer are as easy to use. While the free version is good enough on its own to recommend, the pro version is worth buying.

Monetization: $3.99 / no ads / no IAPs

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Voice Recorder & Audio Editor

Voice Recorder by J Labs is a joy to use. As far as user experience is concerned, no other recorder app was as simple or fun as this one. The UI is laid out like a vintage cassette recorder, complete with (optional) click noises when you use any of the controls. There are eight skins for the recorder, dozens of cassette skins, and the logo of the audio file matches the cassette skin you used in your recording. You also save by ejecting the tape.

Features outside the aesthetics are pretty spartan, only letting you change the recording quality (sampling rate), file type (MP3 or WAV), and save location. Don’t expect much from the premium membership plan, which offers unlimited skins, an ad-free interface, and nothing else. However, this app is worth a try if you want something fun and aren’t looking for any special features.

Monetization:free / contains ads / IAPs from $0.99 to $14.99

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Pick an app and start recording

Voice recording apps have become indispensable tools for capturing the world around us, from preserving memories and capturing important conversations to jotting down ideas. Whether you’re mainly interested in productivity, sound enhancement features, or just a quirky UI, our options have you covered. So download the one that tickles your fancy and never miss a beat again.

While this list contains apps for capturing external sounds, there are situations where you might want to record in-app audio. See our guide on recording audio from apps installed on your Android phone.