Audio recorder recommendation

mrnike

hi folks,
i recently switched to GrapheneOs and am globally very satisfied with it.

I noticed there no stock audio recorder installed. I've been using Lineage so far with its stock recorder making quality recording and beeing able to choose the quality (lossless and lossy) and to adjust the recording level according to the distance of the person speaking.
I've been looking around on fdroid and all i saw seemed either oudated or very basic.

So what would your recommendation be for a good audio recorder ?

Tks

Nico

ps: i would like to avoid google products

treequell

mrnike I would personally recommend RecordYou: https://github.com/Bnyro/RecordYou

The developer maintains a few useful apps.

Graphite

Simple Voice Recorder is up to date (last month), and despite the brand name, has options to select audio source stream, file type (m4a, mp3, ogg) and a variety of bitrates

cowookie

treequell Would you still recommend the app, even though it has not been maintained since Aug 7, 2024?

SoulKeeper

Record You by Bnyro

mrnike

Thanks guys, i'll go for record you, looks promising.

ujjayi

As for being able to adjust the input volume depending on the distance/signal strength, like you mention, the only thing I ever tried that really worked was a Zoom AM7 microphone with a Zoom app for it. It has a input dB slider for managing that. I know that IK Multimedia has something similar, and probably others also. Not quite FOSS stuff, but not sure if you require that.

420at1104

How's the weather down there
Enjoy the OS

mrnike

Cheers, i just need something simple that records conversations as well as possible. I dont need to adjust anything manually if it's done fine automaticaly.

other8026

cowookie look at when they wrote that post. It was in 2023.

akc3n

No, there is no logical sense to recommend an app that is no longer maintained and the repo set to archived.

cowookie Would you still recommend the app, even though it has not been maintained since Aug 7, 2024?

One similar app that is quite often suggested is https://github.com/FossifyOrg/Voice-Recorder

cowookie Does that mean my question is no longer relevant?

It means that by our standards and any security conscious person would say the exact same thing:

other8026 look at when they wrote that post. It was in 2023.

cowookie

other8026 Does that mean my question is no longer relevant?

logsmarter44

Definitively this one:

https://github.com/Dimowner/AudioRecorder

The UI is the best I saw so far for a recorder app and it has all the settings you might need.

A recorder app doesn't really need frequent updates. I wouldn't look at that too much. It has no network access and doesn't talk to other apps. Nobody is going to develop exploits that penetrate a phone by sound waves and target a not up-to-date recorder app.

cowookie

logsmarter44 Thank you, but unfortunately it does not support MP3.

logsmarter44

akc3n

While I agree that avoiding unmaintained software is an important principle, like all software principles, it isn’t universally true. Much software remains unchanged for years, and entire operating systems depend on such legacy components.

For an Android recorder app, I’d argue that as long as it requests only microphone access and has no inter-app communication, running abandoned recorder apps targeting API 26 (2017) and above on GrapheneOS should be reasonably safe. To my knowledge, GrapheneOS hardens the microphone-use indicator and enforces scoped storage. While these old APIs could theoretically be exploited and give more attack surface, if an attacker found already a way in to the recorder app, they’d likely have circumvented other, stronger security measures as well. Though avoiding unmaintained apps may improve security, it isn’t always critical—the decision ultimately depends on the user’s threat model.

akc3n

logsmarter44

I understand your point and I do agree with what you are saying,

...it isn’t universally true. Much software remains unchanged for years, and entire operating systems depend on such legacy components.

including this to some extent generally speaking:

For an Android recorder app, I’d argue that as long as it requests only ...

However, like I said:

akc3n ... that by our standards ...

For me, on production devices I can't take any risks. And that stands true for others involved with the project. At the end of the day, folks are free to do as they wish. But by our standards, it's not advisable.

Thank you for expressing your insightful and informative point of view. It's good for others to learn from all this too.