How to record an interview on iPhone

Ask first, and record the asking

Consent law varies — some jurisdictions need only one party to consent, others need everyone. Journalistic and research contexts add their own rules on top. The universal practical answer is to ask on tape: start recording, then say who you are, the date, and "is it OK if I record this?", and let them answer. Ten seconds, and the question is settled permanently.

If you plan to publish, say so at that point rather than afterwards. People answer differently when they know, and finding that out later is worse for everyone.

Placement for two people

A phone microphone is omnidirectional, so it hears the room as much as it hears you. Distance is the whole game.

• Put the phone between you, closer to your interviewee than to yourself — they are the one you need to hear, and you already know what you said.
• On a soft surface: a folded jacket, a napkin, a notebook. Hard tables transmit every knock and cup.
• Away from air conditioning, an open window, and the espresso machine. Continuous noise is what actually ruins interview audio, not the occasional bang.
• Screen up, unobstructed. Do not put anything on top of it.

Cafés are the classic mistake. What sounds like pleasant background to your ears is, to a single microphone with no directionality, a wall of noise sitting exactly where the speech is. A quiet room beats good gear in a loud room, every time.

Before you start

• Airplane Mode. An incoming call interrupts the recording and, worse, interrupts the interview.
• Check free storage once. Not mid-interview.
• Record ten seconds and play it back. This catches a case over the microphone, a dead position, and the wrong app being open — all of which are recoverable now and not in an hour.
• Plug in for anything over an hour, or start at full charge.

During: mark, do not scribble

Taking full notes during an interview costs you eye contact, which costs you the interview. Since the audio has everything, note only what the audio cannot give you: the moment something interesting happened.

Marking a moment as it happens — one tap — gives you a line on the waveform you can jump straight back to. In practice you end up with eight or ten marks across an hour, and those eight or ten are almost exactly the parts you will use. In Voice Studio the flag button does this during recording and the marks are tappable afterwards.

Afterwards: transcript first, then quotes

Transcribe the same day, while you still remember who said what and what the mumbled name was. Then read the transcript against the audio once. Two things to know going in:

• Speaker labels are not something iOS speech recognition provides. You get continuous text, not "A:" and "B:". For a two-person interview, adding the breaks by hand while you review is quick.
• Names, companies and technical terms are the most likely errors and the most damaging. They are also the easiest to fix in one pass.

Never publish a quote from an unchecked transcript. Play the audio for anything going in quotation marks. This takes minutes and is the entire difference between a transcript and a correction.

Keeping the material

An interview is source material, so keep the audio, not just the text. Get both off the phone the same week: export the audio file and the transcript, and put them where your normal backup already reaches. In Voice Studio you can share the audio file itself and export the transcript as TXT or JSON, or export a single JSON backup of everything at once.

If you promised anonymity, decide now how long you are keeping the audio and where. The answer "on my phone, indefinitely" is a decision too, just not a considered one.

Common questions

Do I need permission to record an interview?

It depends on your jurisdiction — some require all parties to consent, others only one. Asking on tape at the start costs ten seconds and settles it regardless.

Can iPhone transcription tell two speakers apart?

No. iOS speech recognition returns continuous text without speaker labels. For a two-person interview, marking the turns while you review the transcript is quick enough.

Is an external microphone worth it?

A lavalier on your interviewee helps a lot in a noisy room. In a quiet room, moving the phone closer gets you most of the same benefit for nothing.

What if a call comes in mid-interview?

iOS gives the microphone to the call. Airplane Mode removes the risk. If it does happen, a well-behaved recorder pauses and resumes into the same file rather than losing the first half.