One of the more useful apps that you can find on the newly-released Pixel 4 is the Recorder app. It doesn’t just actually record things for you on your smartphone but it will auto-transcribe said recordings to turn the speech into text and it does so locally and not on the cloud. The good news for owners of older Pixel devices is that it will also soon be available for your smartphones, although when that will be is still unclear.
While the Pixel 4 has been receiving mixed reviews, the Recorder app has gotten a lot of good feedback from users. The auto-transcription feature is not just highly useful but it also has a “high level of accuracy” so that users sometimes don’t need to review and correct the app when it transcribes your recording. This is good news for those who need to record conversations often, like students, journalists, interviewers, etc.
What makes the Recorder even better is that the transcribing happens locally and not on the cloud. Some will feel uneasy having a recording up there on Google’s cloud but the app’s auto-transcription feature isn’t being transferred there. There are also third-party apps that can do this, but they charge you for the app itself or with a subscription fee, so having a Recorder app for free on your device is really important.
Initially, only Pixel 4 owners are able to enjoy this app but it looks like those who have older Pixel devices can expect this soon. In a Pixel subreddit, a representative from Google confirmed that the Recorder app will be available for older Pixel phones but this will be “in a future software update”. They did not state a specific timeline for this so don’t hold your breath just yet.
We assume that once the mentioned software update rolls out, all Pixel models will be able to download the Recorder app from the Google Play Store. The app is already there but unless you have a Pixel 4 device, you won’t be able to download it anyway.
