View a Voice Memos transcription on Mac
With macOS Sequoia and a Mac with Apple silicon, speech in your audio recordings can be recognized and transcribed to text in Voice Memos (not available in all countries or regions). You can view the transcription while you’re recording or after.
If you open a recording made in macOS 14 or earlier, or a recording made on a device that doesn’t support transcription, Voice Memos transcribes the recording automatically if it includes recorded speech.
View a transcription while recording
Go to the Voice Memos app
on your Mac.
Click
to begin recording.
Click
to watch the transcription live.
The waveform at the top of the window disappears temporarily, and the transcription appears, with the current word highlighted. To return to the waveform view, click
Click
to pause recording; click Resume to continue.
To save the recording, click Done.
View or copy transcribed text after recording
Go to the Voice Memos app
Click the recording with the transcript you want to view.
Click
Select the text you want to copy, Control-click it, then choose Copy.
You can open another document—a Mail message or text file, for example—and paste the text into it.
Search for text in titles and transcriptions
Go to the Voice Memos app
In the search field, enter the text you want to find.
The list shows only recordings with that text—either in the title or in the audio transcription.
Click
When you select a term in the transcription, the playhead appears at that location in the audio waveform.