I discovered the wonders of ASR speech-to-text about six months ago. Iโd tried speech-to-text years ago, but revisiting it recently really opened my eyes to how far the technology has come. That kicked off a bit of a journey looking for the right client.
At the time, I was using another voice capture tool. It worked well enough, but the UI felt a bit clunky. Once you start using tools like this seriously, though, you realize how much potential they have to become a core part of your productivity workflow. I knew I had something decentโbut I also knew there had to be something better out there.
Thatโs when I came across AudioPen.
Pros:
Really thoughtfully designed UI. Clean, intuitive, and just gets out of the way. I use it heavilyโoften creating multiple notes in a rowโand it handles that well. You can finish one note and immediately start the next.
Webhook and API support. This was something I specifically needed, and itโs what pushed me to keep searching. AudioPen does this well, giving me flexibility to move notes into other systems.
Smart rewrite functionality. One of my core use cases is converting speech into useful formats like emails or technical documentation. For that, you need good transformation prompts. AudioPen has a solid, well-written prompt library that isnโt bloated and actually works.
You can still access the original transcript, which is important. Sometimes I want the clean version, sometimes I need the raw textโthis gives me both.
Works well on Android and across platforms. The interface makes it easy to manage notes, copy to clipboard, assign tags, download audioโitโs all just smooth.
Signed up for the yearly plan and happy I did. I heard about it on Reddit and Iโm glad I took the time to find something solid and reliable.
Suggestions / Things to note:
Iโd really like the ability to add custom system prompts. The built-in ones are good, but user-defined prompts would make it even more useful.
There should be an option to fully disable rewriting. Even though you can view the original transcript, sometimes I just want to record and keep it as-is.
15-minute recording limit per note. Thatโs fine with me, but worth mentioning.
The countdown timer during recording can be a little distracting.
Iโve run into the occasional sign-out due to authentication, but otherwise, itโs been stable.
Overall:
AudioPen does what it sets out to do: voice-to-text capture, and it does it really well. A lot of tools in this space try to do too much and end up being complicated. This one stays focused, and thatโs what makes it great. If youโre looking to bring voice into your workflow without the overhead, this is one of the best tools Iโve found.
AudioPen