How to record a lecture on your iPhone

A lecture is a long take in a room built to carry a voice a long way — which also carries every cough and chair scrape. Meetings & lectures mode is tuned for exactly this.

Set it up once

1. Swipe to Meetings & lectures on the home screen.
2. Put the phone on the desk with the bottom edge pointing toward the front of the room.
3. Tap Start recording as the lecturer begins, then lock the phone and take your written notes as usual.
4. Tap the mark button on the Lock Screen every time something is called important, or whenever you stop understanding.

Storage, honestly

A two-hour lecture in Meetings mode is around 57 MB, so a full semester of three lectures a week is roughly 4 GB. Standard mode doubles that. If storage is tight, keep the recordings you transcribed and delete the rest — the transcript is a few kilobytes.

Turn it into revision notes

1. Open the recording and tap Transcribe.
2. Read the text alongside the audio, and fix names and technical terms as you go — an edited transcript searches far better.
3. Export the transcript as a .txt file and paste it into your notes app.
4. Play back at 1.5× or 2× when you revise; the pitch stays normal.