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1:00

on Hands On Mac, let's take

1:03

a look at Apple's own powerful

1:05

voice and audio recording app. Stay

1:07

tuned. Podcasts

1:11

you love. From people you

1:13

trust. This

1:16

is Twit. Welcome

1:24

back to Hands On Mac. I

1:27

am Mike Sargent and today we

1:29

are taking a look at a

1:31

built-in app that I find very

1:33

useful. It's voice memos and it's

1:35

available on Mac OS, iPad OS,

1:37

and iOS. It is the built-in

1:39

tool for recording audio. And

1:41

you may be surprised at how impressive it is.

1:44

In fact, I am a person who,

1:46

as you might know, does a number

1:49

of podcasts. And there have been on

1:51

occasion times when I have

1:53

invited a person onto the podcast that I

1:55

do called Clockwise. And that

1:57

person has... is

2:01

traveling and they don't have their microphone

2:03

with them. And so we

2:05

want to get good quality audio

2:08

and they don't really have a solution. The

2:11

solution in those cases has always

2:13

been the use of voice memos

2:16

on the iPhone because the microphone

2:18

that's built into the iPhone is

2:20

actually pretty good, particularly if you

2:22

are in an environment that is

2:24

quiet and has some level of

2:26

sound treatment. So a hotel room

2:28

is often a great place. What

2:31

you do in that case is you take

2:33

your iPhone and you place it on a

2:35

stack of books, maybe on

2:37

a chair that's set up on a table,

2:40

somewhere where you can kind of have the

2:42

microphone at the base of the iPhone near

2:44

your mouth, and then you don't touch it.

2:47

As long as you don't touch it, you're good to go.

2:49

If you hold it up to your mouth, that's not great, but

2:51

if you don't touch it, that can actually

2:54

be a powerful way of

2:56

recording good quality audio, not great quality audio,

2:58

but good quality audio. And

3:00

all they have to do is use the

3:02

Voice Memos app. They hit the record button on

3:04

the Voice Memos app and then they are recording

3:07

great, again, good quality audio. So

3:10

let's take a look at the Voice Memos app.

3:12

All right, so here's the Voice Memos app and

3:14

you can see a number of voice memos that

3:16

I have recorded over time. And

3:19

what we want to do is simply

3:21

tap the recording button. When we tap

3:23

the recording button at the bottom, you

3:25

can see that it starts to record.

3:27

And it shows you sound waves, they're

3:29

all right there. It automatically names it,

3:31

in this case, new recording, and this

3:33

is the 50th new recording. I will

3:36

stop and I am immediately presented

3:38

with new recording 50. Now

3:40

I have some options here. There's

3:42

a sort of adjustments option on

3:45

the left. There's the play button,

3:47

go back 15 seconds, skip forward 15 seconds,

3:49

the trash icon, which of course will delete

3:52

it. And you know it, my favorite button,

3:54

the three dots, the more button. If

3:57

I tap on that button, I am presented with a lot

3:59

of options. I can copy. this, I can share

4:01

it, and then I can do things that

4:03

are available in the share sheet like running

4:05

a script, saving it to Dropbox, but I

4:07

also have options like editing the recording, duplicating

4:09

the recording, favoriting the recording, or if I

4:11

want to I can move it to a

4:13

folder. If I choose edit recording, this

4:15

brings up a recording menu, an

4:18

editing menu for the recording, that lets me

4:21

clip this however I need to. So maybe I

4:23

want to trim some stuff off the front, maybe

4:25

I want to replace it so I might be

4:27

doing a voiceover, and there's a

4:29

part that I want to go into, and so

4:32

at any time I can tap replace and it

4:34

will start recording from that place and record out

4:36

new audio from that point on. After I'm done

4:38

I just choose done and that will let me

4:40

complete the recording. Now that of course is the

4:43

three dots, let's take a look at the adjustments

4:45

icon on the left. If I tap on that

4:48

I'm given the option to enhance

4:50

the recording which is going to

4:53

kind of make it sound better.

4:55

I can't speak to exactly what

4:57

happens because Apple does a few

4:59

things, but essentially if it's a

5:01

voice recording, these is voice memos,

5:03

it's going to make the frequencies

5:06

of the voice a little bit better and

5:08

clearer. It may remove some of the background

5:10

sound or at the very least change the

5:12

frequencies, the EQ, so that the

5:14

background sounds are kind of dropped out.

5:16

And then there are options like playback

5:19

speed, which of course lets you speed

5:21

it up, and skip silence,

5:23

which lets you skip

5:25

over the silences that you might have.

5:27

So if you have a

5:29

running track of thoughts, let's say you

5:32

are recording, I want to write

5:34

a book about a walrus,

5:37

that space that I just had there, the

5:39

thought space, the skip silence button will let

5:42

you remove that essentially as

5:44

you're listening to the recording. Now

5:46

these recordings can be shared, so

5:48

again I'll tap the three dots,

5:50

I'll tap share, and I'm going

5:52

to choose share to me, and

5:54

you will see that what pops

5:56

up is a new recording that

5:59

is an for a file.

6:01

It shows the audio recording, it shows

6:03

the size which is 566 kilobytes and

6:07

that is able to be shared. The person can open

6:09

it up on their device and it

6:11

is available as an M4A. Now if at

6:13

any time you want to

6:16

get rid of recordings, you can of course

6:18

hit that trash icon on any individual recording.

6:20

You can also choose edit in the top

6:22

right and then you can select multiple

6:25

recordings to either delete or

6:27

share. So if you want to share

6:30

multiple recordings with other people you can as well.

6:32

Now those of you who are watching will probably

6:34

notice that there is a button in the top

6:36

left corner of the screen, an arrow, a back

6:39

arrow, so you may be curious about that. Let's

6:41

go ahead and tap on that. What that does

6:43

is it shows you the folders

6:45

that you have. So if you are

6:47

a regular voice memos user, you might

6:49

want to sort your voice

6:52

memos into different categories. So you

6:54

could create a category for book

6:56

ideas, for big thoughts, for shower

6:58

thoughts, for spots on

7:00

driving, for whatever it happens to be, for

7:04

undercover agent recordings that I'm doing.

7:07

Probably don't make a folder for that if you're an

7:09

undercover agent, but that is an option as well. More

7:13

isn't necessarily better. At

7:15

CrowdStrike, we understand that a holistic

7:17

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7:30

to focus on our one mission. Stop

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hits, we need more power in your defense.

7:39

CrowdStrike, we stop breaches. The

7:42

future is a hefty responsibility and not one

7:44

that we take lightly, but then taking things

7:46

lightly has never been what hefty is about.

7:48

That's why we've created the happy renewed program

7:51

that turns hard to recycle plastics into

7:53

valuable resources like park benches and building

7:55

materials. To participate, simply fill

7:57

up an orange hefty renewed ad with a accepted agent.

8:00

High it up and drop it in with your regular

8:02

recycling. That's it. It's that easy.

8:05

It's time to rethink recycling with Renew. Particular

8:07

valued resources may vary by G. I

8:10

get some more info available at hasterrenew.com. Now,

8:13

that is everything that you can do within the

8:15

Recordings app. Apple also likes to

8:17

point out that at any time you can

8:19

tell S-I-R-I, Record

8:21

Voice Memo, and the virtual assistant

8:23

from Apple will help you do

8:26

that. Let's take a

8:28

look at the settings, though, because that

8:30

also plays a role in how things

8:32

go. There's a

8:34

very important setting that is

8:37

by default turned on that I have turned off

8:39

for Voice Memos. So I've launched the

8:41

Settings app, and in

8:43

the section for the Apple-included

8:45

apps, there is Voice Memos.

8:48

And you are provided with a few standard

8:50

options, which are the kind of privacy options.

8:54

Location, whether it has access to the calendar,

8:56

Siri and search, background app refresh, and cellular

8:58

data. I've talked about those in the past.

9:00

You are probably familiar with what all of

9:03

those do. But I will mention the two,

9:05

background app refresh, which of course allows the

9:07

app to work in the background. So this will likely

9:09

be that after you finish recording a Voice Memo, when

9:12

you swipe away, to be able to upload that file

9:14

to the cloud if you have cloud syncing. And

9:17

then cellular data, which of course lets

9:19

you sync these files while

9:21

you're using cellular data. Now, this

9:24

is important. The Voice Memos

9:26

settings. The first setting lets

9:28

you choose how long

9:30

it takes for deleted, aka

9:32

the ones that you've trashed,

9:34

to actually be deleted, to

9:36

be cleared away. So

9:38

if you find yourself

9:41

accidentally deleting things, you

9:43

may want to set this to a higher

9:45

value, maybe even never, because you can always

9:47

go in and clear the deleted files yourself.

9:50

Or if you are pretty confident that you'll

9:52

never delete, you can choose immediately, which means

9:54

that when you delete, it is gone gone.

9:57

Now, on this screen also,

10:00

are two other settings,

10:02

audio quality. And this is important

10:04

because if you choose compressed, this

10:07

is where you wouldn't want to use this for a podcast or

10:09

something like that. A compressed audio

10:11

file is going to be much

10:14

smaller, but it also isn't going to have that

10:16

richness. It's not going to, if you work with

10:18

an editor who, you know, does your podcast review

10:20

yourself, know what you're doing and like to play

10:22

around with the audio files and make them sound

10:24

good, a lossless version of the

10:26

file is going to be much better because

10:28

it's going to capture more, it's going to

10:30

have more, more there available

10:32

to work with. So just be mindful

10:34

of that when you're deciding whether you

10:36

need compressed files. These are probably audio

10:38

files that you're never going to do

10:40

anything outside of just have them. So

10:42

if it's just about collecting notes, if

10:45

you're not planning on sharing these with other

10:47

people in, you know, a

10:49

professional or semi-professional manner, compressed

10:51

is probably fine. But if you plan

10:53

to do something with these audio files

10:55

and have them actually be used in

10:57

other media or something like that, a

11:00

lossless option is much better. You'll notice,

11:02

you'll remember that when I shared it,

11:04

it was an M4A file, it is

11:06

a lossless M4A. And

11:08

then last but not least is location-based naming. You'll

11:11

notice I have that turned off. Apple

11:13

introduced this feature and I

11:15

immediately went in and turned it off. What

11:18

this does is it pays

11:20

attention to your location and

11:22

when you hit record on a voice

11:24

memo, it tags that voice memo

11:26

with the location where you are.

11:29

So I guess a lot of

11:32

people must use their current

11:34

location as some means of

11:38

informing how they're going to name their files. I

11:40

do not. I want to name them

11:43

according to the subject of the file. So

11:45

for me, location-based naming, no, no, no, no,

11:47

no, not for me. If

11:49

you want that though, you can have that turned on.

11:51

And of course, in your settings, you will open, you

11:55

will see that in the Voice Memos

11:57

app, it will pop up with locations For the files.

11:59

Now, Importantly, With

12:01

all of this arm, you want to

12:03

make sure that if is set up

12:05

exactly how you want it. Because if

12:07

you have a Mac, if you have

12:09

an I Pad, you can actually sink

12:11

all of your voice memos to all

12:13

those devices. So I A voice memos

12:15

on a Mac. I can pull it

12:17

up there as well and work with

12:20

these files. I could record voice memos

12:22

using this microphone and else will pop

12:24

up on my I phone as well.

12:26

Very handy to have those voice memos

12:28

memos across the whole platform. So

12:30

folks that his voice memos ah

12:32

it is a again a really

12:35

handy really easy to use but

12:37

I feel I'm powerful because of

12:39

that lossless option of because of

12:41

the quality of the I phone

12:43

have microphones are app that Apple

12:45

provides. Thank you so much for

12:47

tuning into this episode of Hands

12:49

On Mac. I appreciate it. I

12:51

appreciate each. never one of you.

12:53

Ah thank you for listening If

12:55

you are not a club twit

12:58

subscriber. Consider. Joining a club because

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so much for your support for your time.

13:09

Are we back again next week with another

13:11

of. Isis.

13:24

And us not into guess on a farm

13:26

and hum the also the sun lounger for

13:28

through front and so on Tatiana giddy up

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your one then put it is up to

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the infant on Tommy yeah they on the

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Us yes this and I'll born and vitamin

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A middle phone tag is seen as it

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and it's clear space website me that he

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also disney of undies not and conducted yes

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missing be a dozen I'd ask Lysa good

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we have to add a any website Madison

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replace square space not sitting under both coasts

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and for and facility it's important habits of

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that noise website Apple. Something

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