CaptureAudio by the makers of CaptureNotes is a beautiful new voice memos app for iPhone that lets you organize your recordings into binders and notebooks. You can also flag important moments during a recording that you can quickly jump to during playback.
CaptureAudio features three main tabs: Binders, Notebooks, and Recording. The tabs represent hierarchy system that goes left to right. All recordings are in a Notebook and all Notebooks are in a Binder. For example, you may have a school binder filled with notebooks for each subject. The notebooks are where you store your recordings.
The big microphone button in the bottom of the toolbar launches the recording screen. It features big circular dials and a big timer at the top. The outermost ring of the circle is a bunch of icons that represent flags (test item, group project, research, etc), and the next ring can be rotated to point the marker to a flag. To set the flag, just tap the big Flag button. These spots in your recording are quickly accessible during playback.
CaptureAudio includes two flag groups: one for business and one for education. A flag group is a group of 8 icons that will be available to you while recording audio. There are 85 available icons that you can create your own flag groups with.
The organizational idea of using binders and notebooks is great, but I'm not a fan of the tabular implementation. It feels awkward. I feel like each tab should be something new, but instead they are a subset of the tab to its left. Once you get used to it, it's not bad, but I believe you shouldn't have to 'get used to' an app; it should come natural.
The good
- Incredibly intuitive recording interface
- Drop "flags" to mark important moments
- Flags can be renamed on the fly
- Create custom flags sets
- Categorize recordings in binders/notebooks
- Amazing playback screen showing all flags
- Easily access all recordings via iTunes
The bad
- Tabular hierarchy is awkward
- There's a bug that causes the Notebooks tab to only show notebooks in the binder you most recently created a notebook for
The bottom line
Although I'm not a huge fan of how folders are organized into tabs, CaptureAudio is still great app for voice recording. The ability to easily tag while recording is a huge convenience and will been appreciated by students and business people who like to record classes, meetings, interviews and more.
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Reader comments
CaptureAudio for iPhone review
Well written review! Seems way better than the stock voice memos app.
This is highly useful for doctors who have to dictate their notes as well as lawyers. This would be an amazing addition to my friends life to where he can ditch his silly tape recorder and use this. Instead of rewinding..or rewinding/forwarding too far. He can simply go to a folder. This is fucking brilliant.
Does this app have the ability to LOCK some of these recording with a passcode? Would be amazing! I'm definitely going to try this and recommend this to everyone.
Not an app I would have any use for but I am sure it would be useful to many.
Does this app still work in the background, like if you "minimize it" and go into another app? Say, making a phone call, will it record the call or whatever on Speakerphone or while sending an email or something so if I was recording a meeting or a conference call for notetaking later I could do that?
That's a great question. I would love to have this feature when I talk to companies via their 'stupid support' people that don't know their head from their ass.
Thanks for asking... CaptureAudio can go into the background and continue audio recording. However, once another device that uses audio media (phone, music, video, etc.), the recording will pause. You will certainly be able to send an email, browse the web, etc., but you will not be able to record phone calls. Please let us know if you have any other questions. Best regards, Scott.
Awesome, THANK YOU for the response!!! I guess to record conference calls Ill have to employ another iPhone or use the landline or something. We do a lot of team calls and we're not all in one place, and it's SO much easier to record them and make notes/meeting minutes when I am not trying to keep up at the same time as the call.
Happy to respond... We include a sample 4 minute conference call as an example of using CaptureAudio among a team within the app. With the Flags and the ability to share the recordings, CaptureAudio is a very good tool for conference calls and group meetings. CaptureAudio also allows Flags to be placed during playback, so you can concentrate on the material while live, and place Flags after the fact.
Seems interesting but 1.99 is pricy. apple's reminder app has the basics and I find it is good enough for me
This would be good for students like me who hate trying to write as fast as instructors are talking, you're forced into playing catch up when sometimes they don't care if you able to write everything down. Simply start the app, listen for key moments in the lecture and flag them. Awesome!
Also, did anyone else trip balls when they scrolled past the picture of the article? lol, damn optical illusions.
"CaptureAudio by the makers of CaptureNotes is a beautiful new voice memos app for iPhone that lets your organize your recordings into binders and notebooks. You can also flag important moments during a recording that you can quickly jump to during playback."
Typo:The first use of the word "your", I think, should be "you".
Top notch review, though. Actually had to get this app for myself.
Thanks! Fixed :)
Wow. That's some bold, original design work. Love the look.
Very interesting. I've been looking for a audio app like this that bridged the gap between Apple's native app and Evernote. May have to give CaptureAudio a whirl.
Looks interesting although in my line of work I really haven't figured out a use for such an app. I find that Evernote and Penultimate get the job done nicely for me.
This looks like a cool app.
The UI is very appealing. Glad they put extra thought into it. Does it have cloud support, like uploading directly to Dropbox or does it integrate with other services?
We are working on Dropbox integration right now...
Is there a way to import my audio recordings from my iPhone 5? I would like to sync Capture Audio with iTunes as well; is that possible? I can't stand restoring an iPhone and trying to get the voice memos back via iTunes.