The voice recorder that writes for you

Your voice memos are asleep

Open the voice recorder on your phone. There are probably dozens of recordings, named by date. The plumber’s number is in one of them. To find it, you would have to replay them all. So you don’t.

A memo you never reread is no use to you. Timbre keeps the voice recorder habit and adds what was missing: the text.

How it works

Timbre’s bubble stays on screen, over your other apps. Hold it for about a second and talk. The text appears while you speak. Let go, and the dictation joins today’s note. A quick tap on the bubble lets you pick the note instead.

You don’t open any app. You don’t leave what you were doing.

On a phone, you write nearly three times faster by voice. Stanford study, 2017: short phrases, in English and Mandarin.

Example: leaving a meeting

What you dictate, on the sidewalk:

“Okay, meeting with Ms. Carter. She wants the version with the deck after all, so the quote has to be redone, before Thursday if possible. She mentioned damp in the basement, to look at next time. And remember to send her the photos from the Salem job.”

What Timbre gives back. The summary, on request:

The tasks found by “Analyze the note”:

You keep the ones you want. One tap adds the quote to your phone’s calendar.

Dictating well: four tips

• Say the deadline out loud. “Before Thursday”, “by the 12th”: Timbre puts it in the task. A date you don’t say, it can’t guess.
• Pick the note before you talk. If the subject already has a note, a quick tap on the bubble opens it. The dictation lands in the right place and there is nothing to move afterwards.
• Don’t look for the perfect sentence. Talk the way you talk. You fix the note afterwards like a page in a notebook, and the summary puts the whole thing back in order.
• Dictate even with no signal. On the subway or in a basement, the dictation is saved on the phone. It goes out by itself when the network is back.