TL;DR
- Google’s Recorder app now produces more detailed transcription summaries on the Pixel 8 Pro.
- You can export transcripts and summaries directly to Google Docs.
- Better summaries require Gemini Nano, which Pixel 8 and 8a owners can enable via developer settings.
Google’s Recorder app is one of the Pixel series’ hidden gems. In fact, I think it’s one of the best Pixel-exclusive features. It offers AI-powered transcriptions and speaker labels (as of the Pixel 6) to make voice recordings even more useful; it’s become an indispensable part of my work and personal routines. As part of the June Pixel Feature Drop, the app is receiving a notable upgrade.
The key improvement is that Recorder now delivers a much more detailed summary of its audio transcriptions. Google states that the app can now detect and include speaker names to improve summary flow and labeling, as shown in Google’s example image below.
Unfortunately, this new capability isn’t rolling out far and wide. Better summaries are only available out of the box on the Pixel 8 Pro. The reason is that the new feature requires Gemini Nano support, which was, until this Feature Drop, exclusive to the 8 Pro. That said, Pixel 8 and 8a users can now delve into developer settings to manually enable Nano support, but even then, only English transcription summaries are supported. Older Pixel owners are out of luck, at least for now.
In addition, transcriptions and summaries can now be exported directly to Google Docs or a raw text file, making them much easier to drop into other projects. This is just what I needed. This feature is available to all Pixels that support Recorder — hurray.
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English (US) ·