How to record audio on Android: Samsung, Pixel and any other phone

Android doesn't have one universal recorder app. Samsung phones come with Voice Recorder, Google Pixels come with Recorder, and most other brands include a Recorder or Sound Recorder app. Swipe up to open the app drawer and search "record" to find yours.

Open Voice Recorder. If you see modes at the top, choose Standard for a single voice, Interview for two people facing each other across the phone, or Speech-to-text if you want a written transcript. Tap the red button to start, pause if needed, and tap the square to stop. Name the recording and save it. In the app's settings you can raise recording quality to High, which is worth doing for anything you'll share.

Open Recorder and tap the record button. It transcribes while you speak, so you can later search a recording for a word and jump to that moment. Tap pause, then save. Turn on backup in the app's settings to reach your recordings from a computer at recorder.google.com.

Look in a Tools or Utilities folder for Recorder or Sound Recorder; the controls work the same way. If there's nothing installed, you can download a recorder from Google Play, or skip the install and use a browser voice recorder in Chrome, which also puts the take straight into an editor.

Voice recorders capture the microphone, not audio playing inside an app. Capturing internal audio works differently and depends on your Android version; see internal audio recording on Android.

Record in a small room with soft furnishings, hold or prop the phone a hand's width from your mouth with the bottom microphone facing you, and turn on Do Not Disturb. A USB-C lavalier mic is an inexpensive upgrade most recorder apps pick up automatically. Room noise can be cleaned up afterwards with noise removal.

Samsung recordings usually appear in the My Files app under Internal storage, in a Recordings or Voice Recorder folder. Pixel recordings stay inside Recorder; open one and tap Share to send the audio or transcript. On other phones, look for a Recordings folder in your file manager, or share from inside the app.

Upload the file to the Hilite editor to remove background noise, delete mistakes by editing the transcript, and export or publish it. If it's the start of a show, see how to start a podcast on your phone.