The Silent Scribe
Recent updates to macOS introduced an intelligent feature within the Voice Memos app: automatic transcription. When you record a lecture, a meeting, or a personal note, the operating system utilizes on-device machine learning to generate a text transcript of your audio, which is displayed directly below the waveform. While incredibly useful for quickly searching through long recordings, it can be problematic for privacy. If you are recording highly sensitive medical or legal notes, you may not want a plain-text transcript generated and stored in plain sight, even if Apple guarantees the processing happens locally.
Halting the Auto-Transcription
To maintain the absolute privacy of your audio files and stop macOS from automatically converting your spoken words into written text, you must disable the transcription feature within the Voice Memos preferences.
Open the Voice Memos application on your Mac. In the top-left corner of the screen, click on Voice Memos in the menu bar and select Settings (or Preferences). A small window will appear. Look for a setting or a toggle switch specifically labelled Enable Transcripts or Automatically transcribe memos (the exact wording may vary slightly depending on your specific macOS version). Click this toggle to turn it Off, or uncheck the box. Once disabled, macOS will no longer attempt to analyze your audio recordings. Existing transcripts will be hidden, and any new memos you record will remain strictly as audio files, completely devoid of readable text.