I take advantage of Samsung Voice Recorder to keep away from this app’s premium plan

I can’t be alone in wishing I’d stored a journal over time. I’d like to mirror on what I used to be as much as on sure days 20 years in the past and the way I used to be processing all of it. Aside from a number of batches of photographs and my more and more fading reminiscence, the information of my numerous journey adventures have principally been misplaced. And people have been the thrilling occasions — the humdrum days in between have been nearly fully condemned to the mists of time.

I don’t beat myself up about not preserving a journal as a result of I do know I wouldn’t have caught with it. Having to take a seat down and write or sort for quarter-hour within the night would have fallen by the wayside fairly rapidly. However current advances in AI have made me rethink this. Now, belatedly, I’m journaling each day. It takes round two minutes earlier than mattress every evening to do it through Samsung Voice Recorder, and I even realized I can use it to keep away from the premium plan on one of many finest journaling apps.

After upgrading to the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus final 12 months, I began enjoying round with the brand new Galaxy AI options. The AI transcription in Samsung Voice Recorder impressed me to make use of it for journaling. I’m conscious that some Android telephones have had stay transcription options for some time, however I used to be notably impressed with how rapidly and simply Voice Recorder can each transcribe the voice notes after the actual fact and use AI to tidy them up.

This acquired me 90% of the way in which in the direction of the plan of a fast mind dump every night, however I used to be additionally cautious of leaving the transcribed notes scattered about in an unordered trend. You’ll be able to organize them in classes in each Voice Recorder and Samsung Notes, however what I actually needed was an organized journal setup through which I simply dictate an entry, and it labels and shops it in an easy-to-reference means later. The best possibility was to make use of a journaling app with AI transcription baked in.

The Day One app match the invoice nearly completely. It’s a sophisticated journaling app in style on each iOS and Android that permits you to log textual content, photographs, and audio entries, plus it could possibly sync throughout units. The one snag was that, whereas the app has a free tier to report entries, you must pay for the premium plan if you wish to use the transcription function. That left me with two imperfect options I may mix to satisfy my wants.

Now, every night, I do the next.

1. Open Voice Recorder and hit Report, then speak about my day for a minute or two.
2. Cease the recording and put it aside, then faucet on it and press Transcribe. A recording of that size takes round ten seconds to course of.
3. Faucet and maintain the textual content and choose Copy all.
4. Three faucets to exit Voice Recorder, open the Day One app, and press New entry.
5. Paste the textual content, and I’m executed.

The entire course of takes two to a few minutes. Admittedly, the Galaxy AI transcriptions aren’t all the time excellent as I’m often tiredly rambling into the cellphone. This isn’t a problem for me as I’m not planning to publish my memoirs. I simply need sufficient to jog my reminiscence, and it’s greater than ample for that function.

For the report, I’m not in opposition to paying for premium plans on apps in the event that they’re providing a real profit — Duolingo is one instance of an app that has definitely executed nicely out of me financially. Day One is a superb app, and I’d urge anybody who can profit from the premium tier to enroll if it suits your finances.

In my case, I’m simply minimally utilizing the app whereas getting the one premium tier function I would like at no cost on my machine. Nearly the entire many premium perks would go unused if I signed up. At over $40 per 12 months, I discover that expense exhausting to justify. However I’ll allow you to choose my actions within the ballot under.

This setup won’t work for everybody, nevertheless it’s been a game-changer for me. I’ve lastly discovered a low-effort option to preserve observe of my days, and it’s made me weirdly excited to look again at them sometime. If AI goes to take over our lives anyway, it’d as nicely assist us keep in mind the great outdated days when it was only a novelty.