Do markers carry over into an exported transcript on iPhone?

It is a reasonable thing to assume will work: you drop a few markers during a long recording, export the transcript afterward, and expect some sign of where those moments were — a mark in the margin, a line break, anything. Open the file and there is nothing. Not a bug, just two features that were never built to talk to each other.

What a marker actually is

A marker is a timestamp, dropped on the audio's waveform at the instant you tap it while recording. It has no text attached and no content of its own — it is a place, saved in seconds from the start of the recording, that lets you jump playback straight back to it later. Everything about it lives inside the audio timeline: open the recording, tap the marker's line, and playback jumps there.

What actually goes into an exported transcript

A TXT export puts the title, date, time and location above the transcript, then the words themselves as continuous prose below. A JSON export keeps those same details as separate fields and adds a few more — duration, mood, tags — alongside the transcript text. Look through either list and a marker is not one of the fields, in either format.

That is not an omission so much as a mismatch in what each thing is made of. A marker is a position in seconds against an audio file. A transcript, exported either way, is a block of text with no time axis running through it at all. There is nowhere in a TXT file, and no natural field in a JSON one, for "at this point" to attach to once the audio itself is no longer part of what you are looking at.

It is not just markers — nothing about timing survives the export

This turns out to be broader than markers specifically. Neither the TXT nor the JSON transcript export carries per-word or per-line timestamps for the transcript itself, marker or no marker. The words come out as they were spoken, in order, but nothing in the file says which word landed at which second. A marker not surviving the export is really one instance of a wider fact: exporting a transcript answers "what was said", not "when, exactly, inside the recording."

The two different jobs, again

A marker is only useful while there is still an audio timeline underneath it to jump around in. That is what it was built for — a doorway back into a specific second of a recording you still have open. Once you export a transcript, you have left that timeline behind; what you are holding is prose, and prose does not have a "point five minutes in" to mark. The marker was never meant to survive that transition, because the thing it points at is the audio, not the text.

How to not lose the moment anyway

• Note the rough time before you export. The waveform shows roughly where each marker sits — a glance at that, or at the playback position when you tap it, is often enough to find the spot again in a transcript by eye.
• Say the important part out loud, on tape. If you can, restate the name, number or decision that made the moment worth marking. That phrase lands in the transcript as ordinary words, which search a transcript for later, no timestamp required — the same trick that helps when a transcript does not show who is speaking.
• Export the audio alongside the transcript. The .m4a keeps the actual timeline a marker pointed at, and reopening that recording in the app still shows every marker exactly where you left it, even after a transcript copy has gone somewhere else.
• Treat the marker as a tool for while you are inside the app, not for the exported copy. It does its job perfectly there; expecting it to follow the transcript out is asking it to do something it was never built to do.

How Voice Studio handles this

A marker in Voice Studio is a tap on the waveform while recording, and it stays exactly where you left it for as long as the recording exists in the app — open the recording later and the marker's line is still there, still jumps playback to that instant. Exporting is a separate step: the TXT export carries the title, date, time and location above the transcript, and the JSON export adds duration, mood and tags to those same fields. Neither carries marker positions, because neither carries any timing for the transcript text at all. That has nothing to do with Pro — the only marker-related thing behind Pro is choosing a different icon or colour for them; placing markers, using them to jump around, and this export behaviour are the same in the free app.

Common questions

Does exporting a transcript as JSON at least keep the markers as timestamps?

No. The JSON export adds duration, mood and tags to the same details as the TXT export, but there is no marker field in either format — and neither carries per-word timing for the transcript text either.

If I delete or re-export a recording, do the markers disappear from the app too?

No, exporting does not change the recording itself. Markers stay on the recording inside the app regardless of how many times, or in what format, you export its transcript.

Is there any way to get a timestamped transcript out of an iPhone voice recorder?

Not through a TXT or JSON transcript export, since neither includes per-word or per-line timing. The audio file itself is the only place the timeline still lives, alongside the markers you left on it inside the app.

Why bother marking moments at all if they will not show up in the export?

Because a marker is built for getting back into the recording while it is still open in the app, not for the exported copy. For anything you need to find later in a transcript, restate it out loud so it becomes searchable text, or search the transcript for a word you remember.