How to do voice recording on mac

The ability to make a quick voice recording on your computer can be a handy tool for a small business owner. Whether you want to make a few voice notes or make an audio instructional recording, you can use the GarageBand application on your MacBook Pro to record. While the application offers many complicated features designed for musicians, you can use its "Voice" feature to record your voice and export the recording as an audio file.

1. 1.

   Open the GarageBand App on your MacBook Pro. Open a new file and click on the "Voice" option in the window displaying your recording options.

2. 2.

   Type a title for your recording in the "Save As" field. Select the location on your computer where you want to store the recording file using the drop-down menu labeled "Where." Click the "Create" button to open the recording window.

3. 3.

   Click on the "Male Basic" option in the left sidebar if you are male. Click on the "Female Basic" option in the left sidebar if you are female.

4. 4.

   Click on the button marked with a red "Record" symbol at the bottom of the window to start recording. Click the button marked with the "Play" symbol to stop recording. You can click on the "Record" button again to resume recording if desired and click the "Play" button again to stop.

5. 5.

   Click on the "Share" option in the program menu at the top of the screen and select "Export Song to Disk" to save it as a widely compatible file on your computer. Select the "Compress" option for a smaller file size if desired and select either "AAC Encoder" or "MP3 Encoder." Use the drop-down menu below to select either "Low Quality," "Medium Quality," "High Quality" or "Highest Quality." The higher the quality is, the larger the file will be and the longer it will take to export. Click the "Export" button.

6. 6.

   Type in a name for the exported voice file and select the location you wish to export it to when prompted. Wait for your file to export and your recorded voice file to appear in the folder you specified.

   If you are wondering where the audio files of your Apple Voice Memos are, in case you want to browse through them, see their file sizes, or copy or remove them, they are located in the com.apple.voicememos folder inside of ~/Library/Application Support.

   That's the Library folder inside of your macOS username. For instance, if your username were john, the following would be your full path.

   /Users/john/Library/Application Support/com.apple.voicememos
   

   These audio recordings might have been recorded on your Mac or your iOS devices (such as iPad or iPhone) and synchronized via iCloud. And even when your voice recordings appear on all your devices, Apple doesn't make it easy to find the audio files of your voice memos.

   You can also drag and drop the recordings in the macOS interface to a Finder folder or the Desktop or send them over AirDrop to your laptop from iOS. I usually name the files on iOS, so they are properly named when sent over AirDrop.

   Hope that helps!

   For developers: Where are voice memos stored on Mac

   You can immediately open the Voice Memos directory by running the following command on Terminal. The file location containing your recordings will open on Finder.

   open ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.voicememos
   

   Path of Voice Memos on iOS

   Josh shared with me on Instagram that, on iOS 7, 13, 14, and probably 15 as well, you can find the voice memos at /private/var/mobile/Media/Recordings/ and that there's also an SQLite database at that location with the expected filenames. However, the structure of that database does change over time.

   Looking for Voice Memos in a new Mac?

   Note that your iCloud Voice Memos won't sync to your Mac until you've opened the Voice Memos app at least once when running macOS (say, Monterey or Ventura).

   Here's how you can verify that your Voice Memos are syncing.

   • On your Mac: Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Apple ID, click iCloud in the sidebar, select iCloud Drive, click Options, then select Voice Memos in the list of apps.

   • On your iOS or iPadOS device: Go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud, then turn on Voice Memos.

   If you've enabled iCloud on your devices, notes recorded on any device will show on every device which has the same iCloud account enabled, including the iPhone, iPad, MacBook, iMac, and Mac Pro.

   Further help

   After the response to this post, I recorded the video at the top of this post. You can see the full transcription, in which I explain how to get to the com.apple.voicememos folder step by step, explain how to get M4A with the names you assigned to them in your device, and more.

   Is there a voice recorder on Mac?

   With Voice Memos on Mac, you can easily record meetings, lectures, song ideas, and more. Just click Record.

   What is the shortcut to record audio on a Mac?

   Press "Option + Command + R" to begin recording.