Try the trial first. See website.
Sharing from Voice Memos on iOS 26 does not work because of a iOS 26 bug outside of my control.
High-quality on-device transcription. Easily convert speech to text from meetings, lectures, and more.
The transcription is powered by OpenAI's Whisper running locally on your device. Nothing leaves your device.
You can export the transcription as subtitles too. It has a word-replacement feature to let you automatically fix common mistakes.
Aiko favors accuracy over speed.
It does not do live transcription while recording.
It does not currently have speaker detection.
Supports audio in 100 different languages:
Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Assamese, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Bashkir, Basque, Belarusian, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hausa, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Latin, Latvian, Lingala, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Malagasy, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Marathi, Mongolian, Māori, Nepali, Norwegian, Norwegian Nynorsk, Occitan, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Shona, Sindhi, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tajik, Tamil, Tatar, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh, Yiddish, Yoruba
The app was made possible thanks to Whisper by OpenAI and whisper.cpp by Georgi Gerganov.
■ FAQ
‣ Can I edit the text in the app?
I don't plan to support any editing. Export the transcription and edit it in a proper text editor.
‣ Why is the app so large?
The app delivers the highest quality transcription on the market for 100 different languages. Rather than asking why it's so large, the real question is how is it so small.
‣ Why is the transcription so slow?
The app favors accuracy over speed. However, performance is expected to improve in the coming months.
‣ Why must I keep the iOS app open while it transcribes?
iOS apps are fundamentally restricted from operating in the background for extended periods.
‣ Can I delete some of the languages to save space?
This is unfortunately not possible. The model has all the languages stored together in a way that makes it impossible to remove just some languages.
More FAQs on the website.
■ Technical details
The app uses the Whisper medium or small model on iOS depending on available memory and the large v3 model on macOS.
■ Privacy
The transcription is done locally on your device. Nothing leaves your device.
■ Support
You can contact me through the feedback button in the app.
I’ve been using Aiko on Apple Voice Memo Recordings of technical conference sessions, webinars, and training sessions. Initially on an iPhone X, and now on an iPhone 16. Aiko’s transcriptions are way more accurate than Apple’s transcriptions. Aiko takes more time to transcribe but produces a more comprehensible product with less scrubbing required. In fact I find Apple’s output to be mostly incomprehensible. Aiko works through accents and ambient and competing noise. It does its best to decipher names and comes close in difficult cases and keeps errors consistent so you can find and replace easily. It does OK with technical jargon as well - within reason. Whereas Apple’s transcriptions totally lose it and produce gobbledygook. This app is highly recommended as a very helpful productivity tool.
Amazing- but a fatal flaw
DrProctor
I love this app because it allows me to record my short staff huddles that are held in a noisy environment on my iPhone 12 Pro Max. It catches more words than I can, and after taking 4 min or so to process the recording, it provides a largely accurate transcript. I’ve also been able to record foreign languages and have the words translated into English. The translations aren’t always clear, but that happens often with app translating in general. The problem: it often flakes out before I can save the transcript, due to not working in the background. If a call comes in or the display sleeps or screen changes, there goes all that data. It’s a fatal flaw that has me looking for a different AI transcription app, unfortunately. The problem of repeating words/phrases isn’t a huge problem, but can take up a lot of line that I have to delete. If they fix the crashes, I’ll promote this to the high heavens.
Phenomenal and somehow free?
Siradia
I have researched endlessly trying to find my options to transcribe the many discussions I recorded with my parents about their past. Now that they are no longer with us I was looking for options to transcribe so many recordings with non-ideal audio. (We’d often chat with the TV on in the background, for example) I wasn’t expecting great results but hoping for a starting point and weeding through random background noise transcriptions. Somehow these things are so good and it only grabs the conversations. I need to clean them up a bit of course because no non-human translation is perfect, but it is so much better than I was hoping! I rarely leave reviews, but I’m almost in tears with how well this has suited my needs!
Excellent tool for transcribing dictation recorder
jld
I use this primarily with an Olympus DM-720 dictation recorder. So far it has worked perfectly and pretty fast (MacBook Pro M4 Max). I use the recorder when walking/hiking with my dog, so at times there is background noise, and it hasn’t had a problem. (the recorder is designed to do this which also helps). I am disappointed it does not have an AppleScript dictionary although it does have an Actions palette. I’m a long time coder in many languages and have used AppleScript for many tasks including a full interface with Apple Mail using Clojure and PostgreSQL as the backend. It can be done by calling shortcuts from AppleScript but that’s a kludge.
- Bug fixes.
Version 1.9.1
The developer, Sindre Sorhus, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features. Learn More
Supported Features
VoiceOver
Voice Control
Larger Text
Dark Interface
Differentiate Without Color Alone
Sufficient Contrast
Reduced Motion
Information
Seller
Sindre Sorhus
Size
1.8 GB
Category
Productivity
Compatibility
Requires iOS 18.2 or later and a device with the A12 Bionic chip or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 18.2 or later and a device with the A12 Bionic chip or later. • iPhone XS • iPhone XS Max • iPhone XR • iPhone 11 • iPhone 11 Pro • iPhone 11 Pro Max • iPhone SE (2nd generation) • iPhone 12 mini • iPhone 12 • iPhone 12 Pro • iPhone 12 Pro Max • iPhone 13 Pro • iPhone 13 Pro Max • iPhone 13 mini • iPhone 13 • iPhone SE (3rd generation) • iPhone 14 • iPhone 14 Plus • iPhone 14 Pro • iPhone 14 Pro Max • iPhone 15 • iPhone 15 Plus • iPhone 15 Pro • iPhone 15 Pro Max • iPhone 16 • iPhone 16 Plus • iPhone 16 Pro • iPhone 16 Pro Max • iPhone 16e • iPhone 17 Pro • iPhone 17 Pro Max • iPhone 17 • iPhone Air
iPad Requires iPadOS 18.2 or later and a device with the A12 Bionic chip or later. • iPad Pro (11‑inch) • iPad Pro (11‑inch) Wi‑Fi + Cellular • iPad Pro (12.9‑inch) (3rd generation) • iPad Pro (12.9‑inch) (3rd generation) Wi‑Fi + Cellular • iPad mini (5th generation) • iPad mini (5th generation) Wi‑Fi + Cellular • iPad Air (3rd generation) • iPad Air (3rd generation) Wi‑Fi + Cellular • iPad Pro (11‑inch) (2nd generation) • iPad Pro (11‑inch) (2nd generation) Wi‑Fi + Cellular • iPad Pro (12.9‑inch) (4th generation) • iPad Pro (12.9‑inch) (4th generation) Wi‑Fi + Cellular • iPad Air (4th generation) • iPad Air (4th generation) Wi‑Fi + Cellular • iPad (8th generation) • iPad (8th generation) Wi‑Fi + Cellular • iPad Pro (11-inch) (3rd generation) • iPad Pro (11-inch) (3rd generation) Wi‑Fi + Cellular • iPad Pro (12.9-inch) (5th generation) • iPad Pro (12.9-inch) (5th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular • iPad mini (6th generation) • iPad mini (6th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular • iPad (9th generation) • iPad (9th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular • iPad Air (5th generation) • iPad Air (5th generation) Wi‑Fi + Cellular • iPad (10th generation) • iPad (10th generation) Wi‑Fi + Cellular • iPad Pro (11‑inch) (4th generation) • iPad Pro (11‑inch) (4th generation) Wi‑Fi + Cellular • iPad Pro (12.9‑inch) (6th generation) • iPad Pro (12.9‑inch) (6th generation) Wi‑Fi + Cellular • iPad Air 11-inch (M2) • iPad Air 11-inch (M2) Wi-Fi + Cellular • iPad Air 13-inch (M2) • iPad Air 13-inch (M2) Wi-Fi + Cellular • iPad Pro 11-inch (M4) • iPad Pro 11-inch (M4) Wi-Fi + Cellular • iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) • iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) Wi-Fi + Cellular • iPad mini (A17 Pro) • iPad mini (A17 Pro) Wi-Fi + Cellular • iPad (A16) • iPad (A16) Wi-Fi + Cellular • iPad Air 11-inch (M3) • iPad Air 11-inch (M3) Wi-Fi + Cellular • iPad Air 13-inch (M3) • iPad Air 13-inch (M3) Wi-Fi + Cellular • iPad Pro 11-inch (M5) • iPad Pro 11-inch (M5) Wi-Fi + Cellular • iPad Pro 13-inch (M5) • iPad Pro 13-inch (M5) Wi-Fi + Cellular
Mac Requires macOS 15.2 or later.
Apple Vision Requires visionOS 2.0 or later and a device with the A12 Bionic chip or later.