Tonota

Capture your thoughts in seconds. Tonota records and transcribes on-device — no cloud, no account, no data leaves your phone.

Tonota is a privacy-first voice memo app that records and transcribes entirely on your device — no account, no internet connection, and nothing ever leaves your iPhone.

Key features:

• One-tap recording with automatic on-device transcription (powered by WhisperKit and Apple's Neural Engine), plus an optional real-time live dictation mode — and you can switch between the two modes on the fly, just for the current session
• Tap-to-play transcripts: place the cursor on any sentence and play from that exact moment, with the current line highlighted as it plays; edit, select, and copy the transcript freely (re-transcribe older memos to add timestamps)
• Long recordings transcribe in segments with a live progress percentage, so you can see how far along a long file is
• AI Tools on your transcripts — translate, summarize, extract to-dos, rewrite, or polish, all on-device; edit the built-in tools, toggle them on/off, and add up to 5 of your own custom tools (with a custom icon). Results stream in live as they're generated
• Choice of language models, including Apple's built-in system model on Apple Intelligence-capable devices (no download, no storage) alongside downloadable on-device models (MLX/Qwen family)
• On Apple Intelligence devices, freshly transcribed memos get a cleaner auto-generated title, in the language you spoke
• Apple Watch app: record right from your wrist for up to 2 hours per session — even offline, in the background, or with your iPhone locked or away; recordings are captured locally on the watch, then synced to your iPhone and transcribed automatically. Tonota stops safely and tells you why if storage runs low or the session is interrupted. Browse recent memos and play audio (play/pause, ±15s) on the watch
• Start recording from anywhere: long-press the app icon (Quick Action), run a Shortcut or automation ("Start Recording" / "Stop & Save Recording"), or tap the Tonota control in Control Center / on the Lock Screen (iOS 18+)
• Switch the app language in-app (English / German / Simplified Chinese) or follow the system — the interface updates instantly, no restart required
• Auto-detects 10 languages, with the option to pin a specific language for accuracy
• Edit titles and transcripts, play back original audio, copy text, re-transcribe, and share via the system share sheet
• Interrupted transcription recovery: if the app is force-quit mid-queue, unfinished transcriptions are detected on next launch and can be resumed with one tap
• Pause, resume, or cancel speech/translation model downloads, with friendly network-error messages and a one-tap connection check; the model list hides models too large for your device's memory
• Custom folders (shown as a tag in the memo list), real-time search across titles and transcripts, and multi-select batch actions with select-all (move to folder — including creating a folder inline — or delete)
• Guided onboarding that recommends the right speech model for your device, with simple one-tap downloads and management of speech/translation models
• Optional auto-export of transcripts (.txt) and original audio to a folder of your choice
• Clean, light "lavender" interface, available in English, German, and Simplified Chinese

Tonota requires iOS 17 or later and an iPhone 12 (A14 chip) or newer. The Control Center / Lock Screen control requires iOS 18 or later. The Apple Watch app requires a paired Apple Watch running watchOS 10 or later. The built-in Apple system model requires a device with Apple Intelligence (iOS 26+).