Playing Back Your Recordings
Scrub, speed up, jump to any line of the transcript, and find where Trim and Share Audio are hiding.
The original audio stays with every Wave, so you can always check what was actually said. The player sits at the bottom of the session and does more than play and pause — speed, trimming, and sharing the audio file all live in the same place.
The player bar
Open a Wave and the player docks along the bottom of the screen:
- The round button plays and pauses. It shows a spinner while the audio loads.
- The waveform in the middle is the scrubber. Tap anywhere on it to jump there, or drag to move through the recording.
- Underneath, elapsed time and total length.
- On the right, a small button showing the current speed — for example 1×. That's also the way into the options menu.
Playback keeps going when you switch apps or lock your phone, and it plays even when the ringer is on silent. When the recording reaches the end, the player rewinds to the start rather than stopping mid-air.
Playback speed
Tap the speed button to open the options menu. Wave offers 0.75×, 1×, 1.25×, 1.5×, 1.75×, and 2×.
Whatever you pick sticks. The speed is remembered across every Wave you play afterwards, so setting it to 1.5× once means you don't have to set it again on the next recording.
Where Trim and Share Audio hide
This is the most common "where did that go?" question, and the answer is the same menu:
Tap the speed button on the right of the player bar.
Below the speed row, choose Trim to cut the recording down, or Share Audio to send the audio file somewhere else.
Share Audio downloads the file and opens your phone's share sheet, so you can save it to Files, AirDrop it, or send it to another app.
Trim is hidden on podcast imports, on Waves that are still processing, and on anything sitting in Recently Deleted. On the web the equivalent is a Trim button in the toolbar above the summary. Details are in trimming a recording.
Jumping to a specific moment
You rarely want to listen from the beginning. Open the Transcript tab and tap any line — the player jumps to that timestamp and starts playing, and the line highlights as playback moves through it. Action items with timestamps behave the same way. This works on both mobile and the web.
Waves without an audio player
Some Waves show something else instead of the audio bar:
- YouTube imports embed the video player, so you watch rather than listen.
- Meeting recordings with video show the video player.
- PDF imports have no audio at all — there's nothing to play.
FAQ
Not until the audio has finished uploading. Once a Wave is done processing you can play it back straight away — see what happens after you record.
Yes — the audio streams from Wave rather than from your phone's storage, so playback over cellular uses data. Length and quality decide how much.
Yes. Use Share Audio in the player options menu on mobile, or Audio in the Share & Export dialog on the web. More export options are covered in sharing and exporting your Wave sessions.
Yes — trims can be undone. See trimming a recording.
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