5 Best Free Android Voice Recording Apps in 2020

Take a look at the list of best free Voice Recording Apps of 2020. These Voice Recording Apps are for both the Android and iOS-powered phones.

Latest Android phones are equipped with high-end hardware. A lot of people sleep on one of the key hardware parts on a smartphone; the microphone. Of course, every phone comes with a standard microphone. Not so long ago, Android phones used to come with microphones that recorded mono audio.

However, the latest smartphone microphones record stereo and directional sound. One of the leaders in this tech is Samsung Galaxy Series. Even the old phone like Galaxy Note 5 has excellent recording hardware. With options like this, it is no secret that some of us may want to make good use out of this.

Therefore, we are listing down the free and best Android Voice Recording applications. This does not include the built-in recording apps. We are looking for some extra features to make most out of available tech.

Also Read: Best Free Android Voice Changer Apps

What to look for in an Android Voice Recording App?

Nearly every smartphone and its OS comes with its own native recording app. Most of these work well but only for the basic features. These can record sounds but lack number of features that may prove to be useful in lot of cases. 

Skip Silence Feature

The first and most important feature is an recording app to skip silence. Now this may come as a surprise to some people. Lets say someone wants to record a meeting or a lecture, or even a conversation, a normal recorder would record the whole time. It won’t skip even the parts when everyone is silent. It not only makes the recordings very painfully long but very hard to listen back. In this case, users need to trim recordings manually to make them usable.

The basic advantage of a Voice Recording app for Android that skips silence is the fact that it saves lot of storage space. This feature is mainly used by people who need to make long recordings. These recordings take place in meetings, class lectures or some long conversations. Some people even like to put the recorder on at night to see if someone snorts or sleep-talks!

Recording Formats

In addition to this, advanced recording apps include features to choose the recording format; AAC, WAV, OGG etc. Moreover, manipulate the recordings to change playback speeds and more. 

Organization

Lastly, a good recording app allows its users to organize their recordings under separate collections. For example, you may like to take voice notes, record lectures, record songs and even calls. A stock recording app would just stack all of the recordings into single pile. That is pretty hard to manage.

AI Features and Transcription

If someone is willing to use a recording app majorly to record interviews, lectures, meetings, conversations of any sort, then it is useful to get an AI powered recorder. It removes most of the hassle involved in extracting text from sound. Since it takes care of it automatically, therefore, it removes most of the stress and work on user’s end.

Best Android Voice Recording Apps

1: Otter Voice Notes (Otter.ai)

Want your notes, voice notes or even podcasts recorded, organized and even transcribed to text? Then Otter.ai is the best solution. It is one of the few Android recording apps that transcribes speech to text. Well, this is just the surface. As we explore the app even further, it offers a lot of valuable features to ensure that you never look for another alternative.

To start it off, the free users get 600 Minutes per month for transcribing speech to text. Premium users get 6,000 minutes. It all depends on whether or not you need it as much. 

Best Recording App for Transcribing

Otter is especially useful for journalists, podcasters, meeting recorders and students. Not only does it record and transcribe the sound to text, it keeps track of all the info. As the audio plays, you can watch all the words highlighted in live time. Moreover, add artwork and pictures in-between the text. For example, put Otter.ai on for recording a lecture and take pictures of the whiteboard or slides as well. Once the recording is done and transcribed, just use the pictures and insert them to make comprehensive lecture notes.

Similarly, journalists may record their interviews and use transcribe feature to save most of their work. Since it is AI powered, therefore, we can even train the app to learn to recognize who’s talking. It would add the snippets for it in transcribed text later.

Note happy with built-in microphone? Use a bluetooth microphone to record. Once you’re done with the text, export it as PDF, Txt or even srt file. It means that we can generate Android voice recording app to make subtitles (srt) file of a movie or show. 

Use the premium version to even sync all the recordings in cloud storage. Overall, Otter.ai is one of the best options in its genre. It makes recording lectures, meetings, interviews, podcasts and even normal conversations a breeze. 

2: Music Maker JAM

Our first pick in this list was dedicated to recording conversations and transcribing those. Naturally, the second pick is for music lovers and aspiring music producers. Music Maker JAM is the most comprehensive Android Recording App for Music, vocals, mixing and basically producing a song. 

Where there’s talent, there’s a way. Even if someone cannot get their hands on expensive equipment, it does not mean that they should give on their dreams. With Music Maker, you get access to thousands of music loops from genres like EDM, Trap, HipHop, House and more. Mix these built-in snippets in any way and give a sound to your creative ideas. 

You get all the basic mixer tools to get started with music career. Well, what you’re here for actually is to record voice. Add personal vocals or even musical instrument plays into your mix. Tap on a part of timeline where you’d like to add vocals. Simple record through the phone and that’s it.

The biggest advantage of Music Maker JAM is the fact that how easy it is to build a complete timeline for song. You get an intuitive and effective interface for adding, manipulating music as well as recording vocals. Overall, it is a great music producing app for Android. And use it to record your vocals and add favorite background music and sound effects.

3: Easy Voice Recorder

Our third pick in this list does exactly what it’s title says. It is one of the easiest to use Voice Recorders for Android mixed with just the right features. Easy Voice Recorders makes it super easy to record lectures, meetings, conversations, voice notes and organize in separate folders. Moreover, assign unique names or just sort by date to make sure you quickly find what you’re looking for.

The only downside for this app is that some of the features are locked for pro mode. Therefore, if you want to have all the goodies, you need to purchase a one-time upgrade. However, once done, it is permanent and works across all Android devices with that account. 

The pro features include the likes of Skip Silence, Setting custom bitrate, uploading files to cloud storage and volume boost. Additionally, the pro mode allows user to record via a bluetooth microphone. 

This Android voice record works with Smart Watch as well. Want to start a recording, just use its widget directly from the watch. As mentioned earlier, Easy Voice recorder is built just for the ease. It does nothing fancy but makes the basic tasks super easy to use. 

4: RecForge II

RecForge is a relatively unknown Recording app for Android. And truth be told, it is one of the best out there. The number of features that it includes is simple astounding. Even though there is a pro version, the free version even is more than enough for most of the tasks.

In the words of developers, it is actually an Android dictaphone. For those who are not familiar with this term, it was/is a popular device to record quick voice notes, letters in a small device. This device then serves as a carrier of these messages. It was actually a patented device. Ever since Android became so powerful, there is no need to carry a regular dictaphone anymore.

When recording with RecForge II, change settings like bitrate, sample rate, audio codec and even switch between mono and stereo settings. Mono is normally useful for recording speeches and podcasts while stereo is more suited for music. Use this app with an external bluetooth microphone to enhance the recording experience. You can manually switch between directional microphones or use all at once to make the sound more dimensional. 

The available audio codecs are  mp3, m4a, ogg, wma, opus, flac, speex and wav. Just like any other good voice recorder, there’s a skip silence feature built-in as well. This allows you to keep the recorder alive in background and still keep the recordings short. Audiophiles and experts can also manually control the gain on microphones with this app.

Once audio is recorded, use built-in editing tools to mix, trim, edit and compile various audio sources. Podcasters, musicians, journalists all use it in their own unique ways. 

5: Hi-Q MP3 Voice Recorder

For our last pick, Hi-Q MP3 Recorder seemed liked a no-brainer. It is one of the simplest voice recorders on Android with ton of useful recording options. Change the quality, bitrate, edit, trip, skip silences and more. 

Change the input between front and back microphone depending the type of recording you want. Or just record a stereo sound. Moreover, use cloud sync feature to automatically update recordings to Dropbox or Google Drive. 

Choose from the available formats of WAV, FLAC, OGG and M4A. When using cloud storage, the space is not an issue. However, you may like to opt for a high-compression format with low-bitrate if recordings will stay on phone’s storage.

Use Hi-Q MP3 Recorder to even record voice calls. Note that recording calls is illegal in lot of countries around the world. Therefore, the recording automatically stops when there’s a call. However, anyone can turn it off inside settings. Make sure you’re always following the law of your country.

Another useful feature is changing the microphone gain level. This means that we can change after which level of dB or decibels does the app start recording. It is very much like condenser mic for Android. It automatically ignores all background noise. You’ll get clean and clear recordings.

Conclusion

All five selections above specialize in unique features. Therefore, it all comes down to personal preference. The musicians and music producers may love to use the Music Maker JAM while transcribers would love Otter.ai. Similarly, the RecForge II is like a raw app with more features that we can handle. It does not have the best of interfaces but offers lot of actually helpful features. 

Feel free to leave your feedback and queries in the comments section below.