Recording a Voice Note

How do I start a recording?

Go to your dashboard, the "Ready to record" screen. Tap the round mic button to start. The button turns into a live red pulsing dot with a running timer.

While recording, you get two controls:

1. Pause / Resume, to stop and restart capturing audio without ending the take. The caption reads "Tap to pause or stop" while live, and the screen shows "Paused" when paused.
2. Stop, to end the recording and move to the review screen.

If you are not sure what to say, look at the starter prompt above the record button ("Try answering this out loud") or open How it works at the top of the dashboard for a quick walkthrough.

What happens after I stop?

You land on a review screen with:

• Inline playback of what you just recorded.
• An optional Instructions for AI box, for typed guidance like "Pull all mentions of pricing" or "Turn this into a blog post." This is separate from anything you said out loud. See voice corrections for how spoken and typed guidance actually work.
• Discard, to throw the take away.
• Submit, to send it off for processing.

You can also assign the recording to a project before or after recording. See projects for how that works.

What happens while it processes?

After you tap Submit, you will see "Uploading your recording…" and then "Transcription starts automatically." You're routed to the recording's page, where a progress bar walks through "Transcribing your audio…" and then "Generating your output…". The page title reads "Naming your recording…" until the AI finishes picking a title.

You do not have to wait it out. The page tells you: "This runs in the background. You can leave this page and come back." If your browser supports it, you can also get a notification when it's ready ("Your recording is ready").

Once processing finishes, you land on the full recording page with your transcript, AI output, and any extracted tasks. See output formats for what you can do with the result, and tasks for anything InstantOwl pulled out automatically.

What if I get interrupted?

InstantOwl is built to protect a recording in progress:

• Your audio streams to the server in small chunks (about every 15 seconds) while you talk, so a dropped connection or closed tab does not cost you the whole recording.
• If you go offline mid-recording, you will see "Offline, saving when reconnected." Recording keeps buffering locally and finishes uploading once you're back online.
• If a take gets interrupted, a recovery banner helps you pick it back up.

What if my microphone will not start?

If your browser denies microphone access, you will see "Microphone access denied. Please allow access in your browser settings." Check your browser or device settings and try again. If your browser does not support audio recording at all, InstantOwl tells you directly: "Your browser doesn't support audio recording."

If you would rather not record live, you can also bring in audio or video you already have. See uploading files and importing from YouTube.

For more on how InstantOwl turns rambling voice notes into clean output, see the blog post on voice notes.