Recording on Your Phone
Start, pause, and finish a recording in the Wave app — and use the tools that live on the recording screen.
Recording is the heart of Wave: tap the red button, talk, tap Finish. Wave saves the audio, uploads it, and sends back a transcript and a summary. Everything below happens in the iPhone and Android apps.
Start a recording
Open Wave and tap the red Record button in the middle of the bottom tab bar.
The first time you do this, your phone asks for microphone access — allow it. If you previously denied it, Wave shows a Microphone Permission alert with an Open Settings button so you can turn it back on.
Recording starts right away. The screen shows a Recording status, a running timer, and a live waveform.
What's on the recording screen
- Status — Recording while audio is being captured, Paused if you paused it, Interrupted if something took the microphone away.
- Timer and waveform — the timer counts total recorded time; it stops while paused.
- Add title — tap this row to name the session before it's even finished. Leave it alone and Wave names the recording for you (see title format settings). If a meeting on your connected calendar is happening right now, Wave uses the event name instead.
- Live captions — an on-device caption feed you can switch on while you record. See live captions.
- Session tools — the row of five tools described below.
Pause, cancel, finish
Three controls sit under the waveform, left to right:
- Cancel throws the recording away. Wave asks Cancel Recording — Are you sure you want to cancel this recording? It will not be saved. with Keep and Discard.
- Finish (the big red button in the middle) ends the recording, saves the file, and opens the new session so you can watch it process.
- Pause stops capturing without ending the session; the same button becomes Resume. Pausing doesn't split your recording — you still get one continuous audio file and one session.
Discard deletes the audio from your phone and removes the session. It doesn't go to Recently Deleted, and it can't be recovered — use Pause if you're not sure yet.
Session tools
Under Session tools are five chips you can tap at any point during a recording. A chip lights up when it has something in it.
- Notes — a notepad that saves straight to the session. See taking notes during a recording.
- Photo — snap or pick a photo (a whiteboard, a slide, a receipt) and attach it. See adding photos to your recordings.
- Language — set the spoken language for this recording so transcription and the summary come out right. See language and translation.
- Summary — choose the summary format before the recording even ends: Default Wave Summary or one of your saved styles. See Customize Summary.
- Guests — when Wave sees a calendar meeting happening now, pick which attendees get the notes emailed automatically. See Wave guests.
The record button menu
Press and hold the red record button and a menu fans out with every way to start a Wave: Audio Recording, Phone Call, Meeting, Import, and YouTube. Each one jumps to the matching flow — the recording screen, the phone tab, the meetings tab, the file picker, or the YouTube import box.
While it runs, and after
Wave keeps the screen awake on the recording screen so your phone doesn't dim mid-sentence, and it keeps recording if you switch apps or lock the phone — see background recording.
When you tap Finish, Wave opens the session and starts processing it. For what happens next, see what happens after you record.
FAQ
Yes. Switch apps or lock the screen and recording continues. See background recording for what you'll see on the Lock Screen and in your notifications.
Wave detects that the microphone was taken, shows Recording interrupted, and tries to resume on its own. See handling audio interruptions.
Recording is limited on the free plan, and every entry point — the button, the menu, and the widget — checks the same thing. See Wave plans and pricing.
Usually the microphone is busy with a call or another app. See can't start a recording.
Was this article helpful?
Still need help?