The Notes app that comes stock on every iPhone and iPad almost feels as if it were made for the Apple Pencil. While some people love using it for sketching, I love using it just to write.
By • 1:40 pm, September 18, 2018 • • Voice Memos' iOS 12 redesign is way more than just a lick of paint. Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac Even if you never make a voice memo, you might be interested in Apple’s updated Voice Memos app. Powerful new features in iOS 12 make it much more than just a way to record voice snippets.
In fact, in iOS 12, Voice Memos morphs into a full-fledged audio recorder and audio editing app. As such, it’s useful for people recording interviews, and for musicians working on ideas. Let’s take a look around. Voice Memos in iOS 12 The Voice Memos app came built-in with iPhone OS 3.0, and remained pretty much the same until now. In iOS 12, it gets a complete redesign.
Plus,Voice Memos will run on the iPad and the Mac as well, syncing between them using iCloud. Voice Memos audio quality Voice Memos’ setting are sparse, but important. First stop: The Settings app. There are only a few settings for the iOS 12 Voice Memos app, but one of them is very important: Audio Quality. If you’re recording Voice Memos to make notes, then you should leave the quality setting at the default: Compressed. If you’re recording music snippets or interviews, you should switch this setting to Lossless. This will take up more storage space, but as Voice Memos now saves files in iCloud, it’s no big deal.
The Settings app is also the place to set the length of time before the Voice Memos “trash” is emptied, and how new files will be named. The default is for files to be named for the Current Location, but you can also choose Recording Number. How to make a recording in iOS 12 Voice Memos Voice Memos launches straight to its own home screen, with a big red record button ready to go. You also see a list of your previous recordings, which can be played after tapping on them (I prefer a list where you can play a file immediately just by tapping on it, as in my current favorite app, ).
Tap record, and you’re recording. On the iPad, you can pause the recording.
On the iPhone, you’ll see only the stop button. To access these other controls on the iPhone, you must swipe the recording panel up to fill the screen. 
That will give you access to the rest of the recording UI. If you pause a recording, you can listen to what you already captured right there. You can skip backward and forward in the recording to find a certain spot, and you can even resume recording from that spot, not only from the end. In fact, you can access all of Voice Memos’ new editing tools right there on the recording screen.
(More on those in a moment.) Using Control Center or 3D Touch There are two other ways to record a Voice Memo in iOS 12: Control Center and 3D Touch. Both offer excellent widgets with quick access to your Voice Memos. Here’s the Control Center widget: The Control Center widget for Voice Memos in iOS 12. Photo: Cult of Mac And here’s what you see if you 3D-Touch on the Voice Memos icon: The 3D Touch widget for Voice Memos in iOS 12. Photo: Cult of Mac In either of these, tapping on New Recording will launch Voice Memos and immediately begin recording. That’s pretty great when a dodgy cop stops you in the street and you want to make a quick record of the encounter. Along with the New Recording buttons, you can also access the last three recordings you made.
Editing your Voice Memos There are two main editing tools in the new Voice Memos app. You access the tools by tapping the Edit button in the recording you want to edit. On the iPad, this is visible at the top right of the playback view. On the iPhone, you can find the Edit button by tapping the recording in the list, then tapping the three-dot icon and choosing Edit. You can also swipe left on a recording to access the same options. Record, replace, resume You can quickly make corrections to your recordings, or do deep editing.
Photo: Cult of Mac After entering Edit mode, you can scrub the waveform of the recording to find the spot you want to edit. The red Record button changes to a Replace button, and tapping it will record over the current audio. Right now, you cannot undo this. If you scrub the playhead to the end of the recording, the Record/Replace button changes to a Resume button, and you can add new material to the end. Trim and delete Trim and Delete. Photo: Cult of Mac Next up are trim and delete.
In the same screen, tap the crop icon (the little square-ish icon at top left in the iPad screenshots here). This brings up the Trim and Delete screen. Here, you move the yellow handles to select a section of the audio clip. You can move the handles on either the upper or the lower waveforms, and the other one will mirror the one you manipulate. Once you have the selection you want, you can tap either Trim or Delete. Trim removes everything except the current selection. Delete removes whatever you have selected.