Make years of voice notes searchable by what you said

Easy to record, hard to find

People record song ideas on a walk, plot notes in the car, a parent telling a family story, a doctor's instructions, a list of things to fix in the house. The recorder names each file by date or place. Nobody goes back to rename them.

Years later you want the melody you hummed that summer, or the part where your grandfather described his first job. Unless you remember the date, the only option is to play recordings until you hit it.

Some people use voice notes as a journal. The value of a journal is looking back, and that is only possible if you can find what you said about a period of your life without listening to every entry in order.

What people do today

• Renaming as you go. Works for the few notes you remember to rename.
• The recorder app's own transcripts. Some recent phone and desktop voice recorders can show a transcript for a recording, depending on your device and version. That helps within one note, and searching across years of them by meaning is another matter.
• Cloud note apps with transcription. Convenient, and your recordings, some of them very personal, are processed by that service.

Searching voice notes with MediaFind

For a step-by-step version on a Mac, see how to search Voice Memos on a Mac.

1. Gather your recordings into a folder on your computer. Most recorders can share or export audio files; how you get them out depends on the app and version you use. MediaFind reads M4A, MP3, WAV, AIFF, FLAC and OGG, plus video.
2. Add the folder. MediaFind transcribes each note on your computer with word-level timestamps.
3. Search by what you remember, for example “the idea for a bookshelf under the stairs” or “Grandpa talking about the farm.” Results are ranked by meaning and play from the exact second.
4. Keep saving new notes into that folder. While the app is open it checks about once a minute and indexes new files once they finish copying.

Beyond words

Not every voice note is speech. Music and song search, and phonetic sounds-like search, help with humming, half-sung ideas and names the transcript got wrong. Speaker labels separate voices in a recorded conversation, and naming a voice once means it is recognized in your other recordings.

Per-file summaries and chapters make long recordings, like an hour-long family conversation, quick to skim. Ask, the on-device assistant, can answer “what did I say the contractor quoted for the roof?” and cites the note and timestamp it used.

Private by design

Voice notes are often the most personal recordings people own. MediaFind has no account and uploads nothing: transcription, search and Ask run on your computer, and after the one-time model download it works offline. A beta Android companion lets you search the library from your phone over Wi-Fi, connected to MediaFind on your computer.

If a note captures someone else, such as a conversation or a relative's story, ask before recording and before sharing clips of it.

How far the free plan goes

The free plan indexes up to 10 media files, which is enough to try it on your most important notes. A few years of voice memos usually means hundreds of files, and unlimited indexing is part of Pro. Exact-duplicate cleanup is free, which helps if the same notes were exported more than once. If your notes are part of a larger family collection, family archives covers photos and home video too.

Tags and saved searches are free as well, so you can mark notes by project, such as songs, house or family, and keep a search for each one.

Frequently asked questions

Can I search voice memos by what I said in them?

Yes. MediaFind transcribes each recording on your computer and lets you search by meaning, so you can find a note without knowing its date or exact words.

Which audio formats work?

MP3, M4A, WAV, AIFF, FLAC and OGG, plus MP4, MOV, M4V, MKV and WebM video.

Can it find a melody I hummed?

MediaFind has a music and song search mode, and phonetic sounds-like search for words. Results for hummed ideas depend on the recording, so expect to listen through a few candidates.

Are my voice notes uploaded for transcription?

No. Transcription runs on your computer with no account. The only network use on the core path is the one-time model download.