SR-7 is a personal recorder, a dictaphone in lineage and spirit, for iPhone, iPad and Mac. It records your own voice, transcribes it on the device and writes a title and a one-sentence summary with Apple Intelligence. On the Mac it also keeps each recording as a markdown file and runs a local MCP server for AI tools. It costs $7.99 once.
Apple Voice Memos is Apple's free, preinstalled recording app for iPhone, iPad and Mac, with on-device transcription that shipped in iOS 18.
Side by side
| Point | SR-7 | Apple Voice Memos |
|---|---|---|
| Interface | A list of recordings, each with its transcript and, with Apple Intelligence, a title and a summary | List, waveform, play button, unchanged for years |
| Price | $7.99 once, for iPhone, iPad and Mac | Free, preinstalled |
| Where transcription runs | On device, with Apple's speech framework | On device, with Apple's speech framework |
| What it runs on | iOS 26, iPadOS 26 or macOS 26, and on the Mac Apple silicon. Titles and summaries need Apple Intelligence | Transcription on iPhone 12 or later with iOS 18, and on Apple silicon Macs with macOS 15 |
| Transcript languages | The languages Apple's on-device transcription supports; no fixed list published | English (all variants), Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese |
| Titles and summaries | Automatic title and one-sentence summary for every recording, on device, with Apple Intelligence | By hand, with Apple Intelligence Writing Tools (documented on the Mac) |
| What you get out | On the Mac, a markdown file with YAML front matter for every recording, in a folder you choose | Audio through the share sheet. Transcript text is copied by hand, and users report it loses paragraph breaks |
| AI tool access | Local MCP server with 20 tools, on the Mac | None |
| Search | File names, titles, summaries and full transcripts | Recording titles and transcriptions |
| Sync | iCloud through CloudKit, off until you switch it on, per device; audio optional | iCloud, automatic |
| Hardware recorders | Imports audio files in 8 formats from the teenage engineering TP-7 or any recorder: through the Files app on iPhone and iPad, by drag and drop or ⌘O on the Mac | No import path documented |
| iPad | Supported on iPadOS 26 | The app is there. Users reported no transcription on iPadOS 18; iPadOS 26 not verified |
| Account and telemetry | None. The App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected | None. It is a built-in Apple app |
What you see when you open each app
Open SR-7 and the record button sits at the bottom of the list. Each recording lands in that list with its transcript and, with Apple Intelligence, a title and a summary, with no separate export step to visit.
Voice Memos opens to a list, a waveform and a play button, the interface it has had for years: a minimal utility that assumes you will take the transcript elsewhere by hand. SR-7 keeps the transcript next to the recording; Voice Memos keeps the recording itself simple.
What the two apps share
Both apps transcribe with Apple's speech framework, on the device, and neither sends your audio to a server to do it. Neither asks you to create an account. On privacy, this part is a tie.
Where Voice Memos is the better choice
Voice Memos costs nothing and is already installed. It also runs on older hardware: it transcribes on iPhone 12 and later with iOS 18, and on any Apple silicon Mac with macOS 15.
SR-7 needs iOS 26, iPadOS 26 or macOS 26. Its transcription is built on SpeechTranscriber and SpeechAnalyzer, which arrived with the OS 26 releases, and it has no fallback to older speech APIs. If your devices can't run OS 26, Voice Memos is the option you have today. Apple also publishes the list of languages Voice Memos transcribes, and we don't publish one for SR-7.
What happens to the transcript afterward
On the Mac, SR-7 writes every recording to a folder you choose as a markdown file with YAML front matter, and rewrites the file when the recording changes. You can keep that folder in an Obsidian vault, hand it to an AI tool or commit it to git.
Apple documents no transcript export for Voice Memos. The way out is to select the text, Control-click and choose Copy, and people in Apple's support forums report that the paragraph breaks disappear on the way.
Titles, summaries and AI tools
SR-7 writes a title and a one-sentence summary for each recording as soon as the transcript is done, using Apple's on-device models, so a list of recordings reads like a list of notes. In Voice Memos you can summarize a transcript yourself with Apple Intelligence Writing Tools, which Apple documents on the Mac.
On the Mac, SR-7 also runs a local MCP server with 20 tools, so Claude Code or another MCP client can search your recordings, read transcripts and create notes on your machine. Voice Memos has no API or agent access.
Which one to use
Choose Apple Voice Memos if
- You record now and then and mostly want a transcript to read or search. It is free, and its on-device transcription is good.
- Your devices can't run iOS 26, iPadOS 26 or macOS 26.
- You rarely need the text outside the app, and copying it out once in a while is fine.
Choose SR-7 if
- You want each transcript as a file for Obsidian, your notes or an AI tool, written on your Mac without copying anything by hand.
- You want AI tools to search your recordings directly through the MCP server on your Mac.
- You bring in audio from a TP-7 or another recorder.
Also compare: Otter, MacWhisper and Just Press Record. All five apps side by side are on the home page.
Signal Recorder SR-7
A dictaphone for thinking out loud. It records your voice and transcribes it on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.
$7.99 once for iPhone, iPad and Mac. No subscription.