Looking for “Sleep Talk” or “Sleep Voice Memo”? Sleep Talk Recorder & Snore is the App Store name; on your home screen the app is called Sleep Talk. Earlier versions were called Sleep Voice Memo. Same app.
Get in touch
Sleep Talk Recorder & Snore is made by a small studio in Helsinki, and the support inbox is read by the person who wrote the app. Write to [email protected] and you will normally hear back within two working days.
If something looks wrong, it helps enormously to include your iOS version, your iPhone model, the date of the night in question, and whether the phone was plugged in.
How it works
Place the phone face-down on the nightstand, tap Start tonight once at bedtime, and forget about it. Capture is sound-activated: it listens continuously but saves a short clip only when something is loud enough, so silence costs you nothing. Every clip is classified — talking, snoring, breathing, a cough, a gasp, movement — and quieter sounds are counted as events without audio. When you end the night, the speech clips are transcribed on-device and the night is laid out in order.
Getting started
- Allow Microphone and Speech Recognition. Both are required: one to record, the other to transcribe. Speech recognition runs on-device.
- Start a session before you sleep. Tonight tab → Start tonight. Then lock the phone and put it down — screen-down on a nightstand is ideal, roughly an arm's length from your head.
- Plug it in. A whole night of listening is real work for the battery, and capture is much more reliable on a stable charge.
- Read it in the morning. Tap End tonight (or Stop on the Lock Screen). Sleep Talk transcribes the speech clips and lays out your night: everything in order, with playback, time-stamps and the sleep stage each clip fell in.
- Optional extras worth turning on. Apple Health access, so the hypnogram can place each sound on the REM, Core or Deep band it happened in; Bedtime reminder, so you don't forget to start a session; Morning review, for a notification when the night is ready; and Dream interpretation under Settings → AI, which is off until you ask for it.
Common questions
Nothing was recorded overnight
Work through these in order. Confirm Microphone and Speech Recognition are allowed in iOS Settings. Confirm the session was actually running — the Tonight tab shows it. Turn off Low Power Mode, which throttles background work. Keep the phone plugged in. And raise the detection sensitivity in Settings if you are a quiet sleeper: the default deliberately ignores ordinary room noise. If it still captures nothing on a night you know you talked, tell us the date.
Does it keep recording when the phone is locked?
Yes. The app uses the audio background mode so capture continues through the night with the screen off and the phone locked. It stops when you tap End tonight, or Stop on the Lock Screen.
It recorded the street, not me
Voice activity detection is honest about what reaches the microphone, and a motorcycle at 3am reaches it. Make Sensitivity stricter, move the phone closer to you, and delete the clip you don't want — each clip card has a ⋯ menu with Delete Clip, or swipe left on it.
The transcript is wrong or empty
Transcription runs when you end the night, so clips stay untranscribed until then. Sleep speech is mumbled, quiet and often not really language, and on-device recognition has to guess. An empty transcript on a real clip usually means the recogniser found nothing it would commit to — the audio is still there to play back, which is often the more useful record anyway. Clips of snoring or coughing aren't transcribed at all.
How does the snore detection work?
On-device sound classification labels what it hears, and it also catches quiet snoring that never gets loud enough to trigger a recorded clip — those show up as sound events without audio. There is no snore score and no grade; it is an honest record, not a verdict.
What are the dots on the night chart?
Every captured sound, placed on the sleep stage band it happened in — REM, Core or Deep — in that sound's own colour. Sounds a few minutes apart merge into a single marker with a count. Sleep stages come from Apple Health, so the bands are empty if you haven't granted access or weren't wearing a watch.
Where does the dream interpretation come from?
Apple's on-device Foundation Models, and it is off by default — turn on Dream interpretation under Settings → AI. It needs a device with Apple Intelligence and a supported language. It is a gentle suggestion about what a fragment might mean, not analysis, and nothing is sent anywhere to produce it.
What is free, and what does Premium add?
Recording, transcription, snore and sound detection, dream interpretation, sharing and every privacy control are free with no time limit, and so are your last 7 nights with their sleep stages. Premium adds the long view — every night you have recorded, 12-week patterns and 12 weeks of sounds by sleep stage — and the Apple Watch extras: heart-rate responses around sounds, the snore nudge and a summary for your doctor. It is US$4.99 a month, US$29.99 a year with a 7-day free trial for eligible new subscribers, or US$44.99 once for life (prices vary by country), and all three work with Family Sharing.
Will my older nights be deleted if I don't subscribe?
No. Nights aren't deleted: older ones stay in your list, and Premium is what opens them. Clip audio follows your Keep clips for setting either way. If you used the app before Premium arrived, everything stays unlocked for you for 30 days as a thank-you.
How do I restore or cancel a purchase?
Purchases belong to your Apple Account, so reinstalling or moving to a new iPhone restores them from the app's Premium screen. Subscriptions are managed and cancelled in iOS Settings → your name → Subscriptions; refunds are handled by Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.
How long are recordings kept?
You choose how long clip audio is kept under Settings → Privacy & storage → Keep clips for: 7, 14, 30, 60 or 90 days, 30 by default. When a clip's audio is older than that it is removed; the night, its transcripts and its sound events stay until you delete them. To erase everything in one go, tap Delete all data and confirm with Delete everything; that removes every night, clip, transcript and sound event.
Can I get the audio or transcripts off the phone?
Each clip has Share Audio and Share Transcript, and a night has Share night summary, all through the standard iOS share sheet. With Premium and an Apple Watch, Share with your doctor sends a summary with up to five clips. There is no bulk export, and deleting the app deletes everything.
Can I ask Siri about my night?
Yes. Ask Siri how you slept for a summary of your latest night, or to open a night. Turn on Siri & Spotlight search under Settings → Privacy & storage to find a night by words in its transcript; it is off by default, and the index stays on your device.
Your data
Everything stays on your device. No account, no cloud, no analytics. We never receive your audio or transcripts, which also means we cannot recover them for you. Deleting the app deletes everything it held. The privacy policy sets out exactly what is and is not handled.
Please also think about anyone else in the room. Recording another person without their knowledge may be unlawful where you live, and it is worth asking first regardless.
Reporting a problem
Bug reports are genuinely welcome and are usually acted on. Include the steps that led to the problem if you can reproduce it, and the date of the night if it involves a capture. If the app crashed, opting in to share diagnostics with developers in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements sends Apple an anonymised crash report we can read.
Reporting a security issue
Security problems go to [email protected] rather than the support inbox, so they get looked at first. The security page says what to send and what we do with it.