Why voice notes?
I've recently made a few updates to my voice notes flow, removing various sources of friction and streamlining the experience. I figured I'd share a few details about that so other people can replicate it.
Use a smartwatch as the main note input device
It's configured in a way that recording is started on double-tap of one of the watch buttons
Two issues with the older iteration of the process motivated this bout of improvements
when I go to sleep - I leave my phone (which used to be the main input device for taking voice notes) away from my bed to avoid doomscrolling instead of sleeping sleep hygiene
but often when I drift away to sleep (or when I wake up at 3am), I'd have a thought that I'd want to record. But as I won't have a phone on me, I won't be able to do that.
I've tried screaming at Alexa or my phone from across the room to take notes, but that never worked well. Neither was I happy with the approach of having a physical notebook close to my bed (lighting questions + it doesn't really fit into my general knowledge management practices).
even when I had the phone nearby, the experience of taking a note involved an unfortunate amount of friction
reach for the phone (which can be surprisingly non-trivial, e.g. when biking, or just getting it from tight pants lol)
unlock it (ok, technically I found a way to start recording from lock screen, but it involved similar amount of work to unlocking the phone, so 🤷♂️)
click a button to start recording
These issues suggested a shape of the solution - I needed a dedicated device that would allow me to start recording with minimal friction, and won't be a distraction in a way the phone could be.
Originally this made me look for dedicated voice recorders with ability to automatically sync recordings online
I was thinking something in form factor similar to https://www.friend.com/
Surprisingly I wasn't able to easily find a device that would fit the requirements here.
I've considered adopting Go Note Go - a project a friend of mine created for similar purposes. But I didn't really want to deal with custom hardware.
Eventually I've settled down on the smartwatch as the form factor
it is arguably more convenient compared to a necklace format
and it is a more "socially accepted" tech thing to wear
I also feel like it exists in a nice middle-ground between a single purpose device and general-purpose phone. Allowing me to derive additional utility from displaying information or programming it to trigger automations, while not unnecessarily consuming my attention.
One thing I was not certain about with regard to smartwatch form factor is whether I'd be able to get the friction to start recording low enough, as mobile devices tend to be unnecessarily constrained in how much users can customize them.
Amazon return policies and an inkling that the baseline experience is not too bad led me to give it a shot.
It took some work, but I was able to get to a place where it takes just one action (double-click) to start the recording, which I'm pretty happy with.
The rest of the post describes technical details on how to get there, as I dearly wish someone wrote this guide before.
Tools
Galaxy Watch 6
This is the watch I have. Motivation for this specific model is that it's the latest android watch model I could get for cheap 🙃. And 80% of my intended use is just voice notes 🤷♂️
another motivation was that I've read from that Samsung watches built-in voice recorder is pretty good
The voice recording app I use, there are several reasonable options but this is my current preferred one.
Automatic sync of recordings to your phone is probably the key feature you want here if you're considering other alternatives.
Baseline experience (double-press the button + tap the screen)
This is the setup you can get to without going into the weeds (which is not terrible, but not ideal). The way to do it is to
then you'd need to tap the start recording button on touch-screen
Going beyond baseline experience - Android Macros (Autowear)
To further streamline the experience we need to dive into the world of Android Automation
Autowear is a terrible and confusing app, and mostly not designed to be used on it's own
but allows you to do things not possible at baseline
bonus points
Recording shower thoughts, which I deliberately have more space for now
clues
people on reddit mentioning that default voice recorder app for galaxy watch is decent
Things not quite happy with
the start of the recording is not instant 1-2 sec to start
I think mostly bc a cobbled together automatin flow
Stopping recording
need to press the touchscreen stop button
ideally just toggle with double tap again
Click
Misc
Appendix
"Show last app" setting
Easy Voice Recorder vs Samsung Voice Recorder
Native Samsung Voice Recorder also very nice, and is what I originally used, but Easy Voice recorder has a slightly better UX
when recording stopped - app navigates to "recording list"
which I never really want bc I don't want to listen to my recordings on the watch
and it prevents the flow from working again, until you navigate "back" to main screen
so the stop recording is actually 2 cations - tap and swipe back, which is a bit annoying
cloud upload
real human vs big corp
hope that can request tweaks, but it seems that app is not currently in active development
I reached out to the dev of the app to simplify immediate start recording experience
"it's on the roadmap" in a way that that they don't plan to get to it any time soon
can point to this for wf setup