How to Record and Continue Voice Notes on Mac

October 8, 2026 · 5 min read · NotchLive 1.13.2

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A useful voice note rarely arrives in one perfect take. You say enough to capture an idea, return after a call, and add the detail you missed. In NotchLive 1.13.2, those recordings can stay in the same note, with the text and audio together.

This guide covers the current Voice Notes workflow. For captions, microphone setup and the rest of the app, use the main NotchLive guide.

Before your first note

Install NotchLive 1.13.2 or later, finish speech-model setup and allow microphone access. NotchLive requires macOS 14 or later. Creating and continuing Voice Notes requires Pro; reading existing saved content and workspace search are free.

In Settings → Speech & Audio, choose your Microphone Language if you mainly speak one language. Auto is useful when the language changes. Speak at a normal distance from your microphone and check important names and numbers afterward.

1. Record an idea, then save it with Stop

Open the mode control in NotchLive and choose Notes. Press Record, speak, then press Stop. NotchLive saves the note and its microphone recording locally. Open Notes in the workspace sidebar to find it again.

This is different from the optional audio attached to a caption session. Voice Notes save audio when you record a note even if Save audio with sessions is off. Recordings use the selected Compact or Lossless quality; the session-audio switch does not turn note audio off.

2. Use the active note’s text views

The active Notes view has Clean, Translate and Raw. Raw shows the recognized speech; Clean provides the cleaned text. Translate uses a supported Apple Translation language pair and requires macOS 15 or later with its language packs prepared.

These controls belong to the active note surface. The saved-note detail focuses on the saved text and recordings; it does not show the same three-way view switch. If your goal is simply to retain the thought, start with Record and Stop, then review the saved result.

3. Come back and continue the same note

Open the saved note from the Notes library and choose Continue recording. Add your follow-up, then press Stop again. The existing text and clips remain, and the new recording gets its own date.

You can also continue an older text-only note. Its original text stays, and the new recording adds audio from that point onward. This cannot recover audio that was never recorded.

Use a clip’s three-dot menu and Rename recording to give it a useful label, such as “First idea” or “After the client call.” The date still distinguishes when you added it. Finish active capture before renaming or playing clips.

4. Listen to a clip or play the whole note

Press the play control beside a recording to listen to that clip. Play all plays the note’s recordings in their recording order. The player sits beside the saved text, so you can check the wording against what you actually said.

The clips are joined as a sequence; a day between two recordings does not become a day of silence in playback or the combined export.

5. Choose text or audio when you export

• Text: use the saved note’s Export menu for TXT, Markdown or JSON. Copy and Share are available in its actions menu.
• One clip: open that recording’s menu and choose Export Audio.
• All clips: choose Export combined audio for one M4A file in recording order. Multiple recordings are re-encoded as Compact, including Lossless sources. If the note has only one existing M4A recording, it is copied unchanged and can remain Lossless.
• NotchPad: use the active note’s handoff when you want to keep the text in your NotchPad workflow. Audio export is a separate action.

For a library backup or transfer, use Settings → Data & Exports → Export All Data…. The saved-work guide explains data bundles and automatic exports. Deleting a saved note also deletes its recordings, so export anything you want to keep first.

A small workflow to try today

Record a short plan before a call. Afterward, open that note and continue with what changed. Rename the second clip, play both, then export the text for your next task. You get a readable note without losing the voice behind it.