VoiceNote is a very simple application to demonstrate capturing the results of Google's voice recognition software. It is set up for API 16+ because as of Android 4.1, the voice recognition occurs on the device. That's pretty important, because relying on mobile data can make the voice recognition less reliable and the experience less fun.
I created this app just for myself upon getting a device with Android 4.1. I didn't find an adequate solution to easily capture thoughts when I was, for example, at a stop light. There are other options, but sometimes they have puzzling limitations (Google Now can fail to recognize voice when offline despite the voice recognition happening locally).
VoiceNote:
- Requires no internet connection, or any other permissions.
- Can be launched from the lock screen or anywhere. It's not a widget, so it won't take any resources until it runs.
- Can be configured to send notes directly to a few popular note apps.
Since I created it for myself, the interface may not be to your liking - there's no main screen at all, which is not normal Android UX. Go ahead and extend or modify it. Use this code a a reference, as a starting point for your project, whatever you like. It is licensed under Apache 2.0.
You can get this app already built from Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplifynowsoftware.voicenote
What does the app currently do?
- Start capturing immediatly upon start
- Respond to key words: help, preferences, settings, about
- Options:
- Select destination (Keep, Evernote, Colornote, Obsidian, system picker, or system default)
- Options extend timeout if Google thinks you're done talking too soon
Note that Obsidian has no deep link to create a note, so sent text is met by the in-app chooser for what note to add it to.
The Google Keep API is unpublished, and not intended for public use. As such, compatibility is fragile. As of ~September 2015, devices with multiple accounts stopped working when sending the text, as the account chooser screen interrupted the flow and the sent text disappeared. So, the current workaround (when selecting Keep as the destination) injects the text into a new Keep note for the currently selected account. This uses a different intent action, so the old method can be used (on single-account devices), by updating to code to ensure Intent.ACTION_SEND is used when sending to Keep.
The code has all been refactored to Kotlin, but there is other tech debt not yet addressed such as the preferences activity. The multi-account selection feature is currently inaccessible. In addition, some modernization such as using the Activity Result API has been skipped because it would force increasing the min SDK from 16.
The 1.4.0 release includes the conversion to Kotlin, but resolution of the preferences-related tech debt incurred a significant increase in size - bloating the APK from 60KB to over 1MB. This is due to the inclusion of the AndroidX libraries. While it may be possible to trim this bloat it is unlikely to be possible to entirely eliminate it. Therefore these changes have been applied on the androidx branch and the current release on Google Play is from the main branch.
Copyright (C) 2013-2025 Simplify Now, LLC
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.