Pick Two: Voice Memo Apps

You know, I often get asked about what tools one should use, and I have been recommending something a lot on this show lately. Just create voice memos, talk to your phone, create voice notes, dictate it if you need to. All things I've said over the last couple of months. But the main question is how? Sure, there's the default voice notes app on your phone, voice memos, or the voice recorder on Android. But what if you outgrow that? What if you need something more?

Today I am doing a pick 2. I was going to say classic. I don't think it's classic yet. I haven't been doing it long enough or often enough, but I want to do a pick 2 this week. If you like these sorts of episodes where I pick 2 apps in a specific category or that fill a certain use case, let me know at streamlinedfeedback.com because I will do these monthly if you want me to.

Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Streamlined Solopreneur, the show that helps overwhelmed coaches, consultants, and service providers build systems so that their business doesn't depend on them. Each week I share one practical idea or 2 apps to help you beat overwhelm, get your time back, use AI conscientiously, and run your business without sacrificing the rest of your life, or your health.

And today I am doing a pick 2 on voice memos apps. So you've likely heard me mention both of these apps, but I'm gonna throw in a little bonus segment for you where it's the most popular one that I didn't pick, and then an extra app.

The first app I'm going to shout out here, number 1, my number 1 voice notes or voice memos app is Whisper Memos. You can find that at whispermemos.com. I'll have a link to all of these in the show notes, but you record a voice memo, and you receive it as an email. It could not be simpler. I happily pay for this one every year. It's got a bunch of features so you can record right on your iPhone. This is iOS only. So I am sorry to the Android people. It is iOS only, but you can record on your iPhone.

You'll get a formatted email, but that's not the killer feature. The killer features, in my opinion, are that you can record on your Apple Watch. This is the only app I've come across that has an independent Apple Watch app, which means that I can leave my phone in the car, and use my watch to record these voice memos, and they will still get emailed to me.

That is so crucial, especially in my year of digital detox, where I am trying to leave my phone at home more. But it also has a bunch of other things. It has tons of integrations, including Zapier. So when I create a voice note, I have all of my notes sent to Zapier. And then Zapier sends them along to Obsidian, which is my notes app, my PKM of choice, right?

So they all go into this inbox, but the really cool thing is that you can have like, a phrase, like a trigger phrase. And so you can have multiple Zapier integrations. So let's say I have an article idea. I can start that voice memo with article idea and then talk about the article. And Whisper Memos will then send it to the Article Ideas Zap, right? Or Random Idea or Email, right?

hey also introduced something called Agents. And I haven't dug into this yet, but from the website, Agents are named automations in Whisper Memos. Instead of sending every memo to the same inbox, you can create one for tasks, one for journaling, one for your team, and more. So you can create the agent and name it. I have not done this, as you know. I don't name any AIs. They are tools. They are not people. But then you can assign it to an integration. So really, really good. My absolute favorite voice notes app. You've heard me talk about it a lot. That's Whisper Memos over at whispermemos.com.

The second app in this pick 2 episode is AudioPen. And maybe you're wondering, why am I using 2 of these dictation apps? Well, they do very different things. Uh, so AudioPen is— I have, like, the lifetime premium membership because I bought it very early on. And so I was rewarded for it. I guess I should say Whisper Memos is $60 a year. And for the amount of times I use it every day, it's well worth it. AudioPen, $99 a year. Okay. So it's a little more than Whisper Memos, but again, I've got the lifetime because I bought it for like $150 a couple of years ago.

But the reason I like AudioPen, I've actually had renewed interest in AudioPen because the developer, Lewis is his name. It could be Louie, I suppose, has been really putting a ton of effort into it. This app, and the big thing for me is now it has a similar feature to Whisper Flow, which, spoiler alert, that's the one that I'm going to talk about in the next segment that I'm not talking about. Um, where I press a key on my keyboard and then I can dictate.

So I will use AudioPen if I'm dictating a lot of instructions to a large language model, for example. But it also has an iOS keyboard. So you can do again, the same kind of thing as WhisperFlow. Um, the cool thing about AudioPen as well is it's available for iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. Uh, it has a Chrome extension and a web app. Really love that. This is what I originally used for voice notes before Whisper Memos came out.

And something else that it does, I don't really use this feature. Whisper Memos has it too, but like it will reword and reorganize your thoughts based on some settings that, you know, like that you can, you know, make it sound more professional or, you know, write for creative or whatever. I do like it for dictating long written notes or long prompts to large language models. And againI am using this one because you can start for free, but I do have the lifetime, and I love the keyboard integration, right?

The dictation, it's got like system-wide dictation, which is a little bit different from Whisper Memos. So I think that's really good. A big fan of it. If you want something a little bit more robust, uh, than Whisper Memos, I should say, that has more system-wide reach, right? So you can like, dictate into any app versus Whisper Memos, where you have to open the Whisper Memos app and talk into it and then copy and paste.

Audio Pen has the system-wide reach because it has that custom keyboard. So if you want to dictate something right into a large language model app or a notes app or something, right? Audio Pen is really good for that. It also has an Apple Watch app, but unlike Whisper Memos, you cannot use the app, as far as I can tell, you cannot use it independently from your phone. So it's basically just something that opens up your phone. So that's AudioPen. I know I probably sold Whisper Memos better than AudioPen.

The killer feature for me with AudioPen is the, like, push a key to start dictating, and then the text shows up in whatever field your cursor's in. Really good. Which I know WhisperFlow also does. So WhisperFlow has this, it's free to get started, and then it's either $15 per user per month, or if you pay annually, $12 per user per month.

The reason that I never got into WhisperFlow is because their whole thing is like dictating on your device. And while I just talked about AudioPen, I actually don't do that that much. I certainly don't do it enough to want to pay $12 a month for it, right? If I had to pay for AudioPen, I probably wouldn't do it at all. I would try to make the next app I'm going to talk about work because it also has this feature, but something that WhisperFlow just rolled out as I record this is a note-taker. So they are entering the fray for note-taking apps, right? It feels like these things are a dime a dozen.

I will say like WhisperFlow's dictation was really good. And when I tested it, I liked it a lot, but the reason I'm not using it is because like AudioPen does this. And for me, it's not a monthly subscription or even an annual subscription. And it doesn't have the app, like the standalone Apple Watch app. That is the killer feature that would potentially take down Whisper Memos for me. So that's why I'm not using Whisper Flow. I know a lot of people love it. For me, Whisper Memos is the GOAT. Like, I think it's the absolute best. If I'm wrong, like, if you use WhisperFlow every day, let me know at streamlinedfeedback.com. Maybe there's something I missed, but I, that's why I don't use it.

And then the last app I want to talk about is MacWhisper. MacWhisper is a transcription app. And so you can take something recorded and drop it into MacWhisper. It'll create a transcript and do it really well. It's got a lot of features. They've added a bunch. I like that it does like speaker detection. I think that's the main reason that I use it.

They also have a dictation feature. They have a meeting notes feature. And so these are all things that, again, if like Audio Pen wasn't working out or Fathom, which is what I use for meeting notes, wasn't working out, I might try MacWhisperer. They make the meeting notes feature like very clear that that's, it's in beta. And so I'm not, I'm not willing to give up that part. Like I want something very reliable.

When I tried the dictation, it didn't work nearly as well as WhisperFlow. AudioPen works for me, at least as well as WhisperFlow. So I love MacWhisperer for creating transcripts from recorded media. So I'll do this with podcasts or YouTube videos that I watch that I want to summarize or pull out. I'll do that for virtual summits. If I'm attending a virtual summit and I get the recordings, I'll do that with MacWhisperer. So again, this is an app that I paid for once and doesn't cost me anything. And I like it. It didn't make it into the pick 2 because I do use Whisper Memos and AudioPen a lot more.

So that's it for this episode. I threw 4 tools at you in this Pick 2, but Whisper Memos and AudioPen are the ones that I use the most. Those are the recommendations. Let me know what you're using. Everybody's using one of these tools now. So let me know what you're using over at streamlinedfeedback.com.

If you are wondering how you can use these tools in some sort of system, like what system you should start with, then I have a quiz for you over at streamlined.fm/quiz. It'll ask you a few questions and then recommend one of my 4 systems every solopreneur should have. It's admin work, CRM and client experience, content creation, and idea Generation and Capture. I'm going to guess if this episode resonated with you, Idea Generation and Capture is where you should start, but you can find out for yourself over at streamlined.fm/quiz. That's it for this episode.

Thanks so much for listening, and until next time. I hope you find some space in your week.