Google Recorder is a powerful tool that can transcribe audio in multiple languages with surprising accuracy while also identifying multiple speakers. It also has a powerful web version that displays the audio content recorded and stored on your Pixel. A bulk of Google’s apps on the web have recently received the Material You treatment, including Google Drive and fellow Workspace apps like Sheets, Docs, and Slides. Well, the Recorder app is now following suit with a similar redesign, adding some novelty to a previously bland UI.
The Recorder app made its debut with the Pixel 4 back in 2019 and has been one of the top Pixel-exclusive apps out there. Although it arrived slightly later, the web version is surprisingly good, too, allowing Pixel users to check out audio recordings or transcriptions on larger screens. With this new redesign, there’s finally some UI consistency between the mobile and web apps of Recorder.
At startup, users will be greeted with a completely revamped playback control menu with the Play button getting a pill-shaped design, whereas the Pause button is larger and more rectangular in shape with rounded corners, as 9to5Google reports. There are the standard 5-sec rewind and 10-sec forward buttons on either side of the Play/Pause button, residing within a circle. Meanwhile, the redesigned volume slider is positioned in the bottom right corner.
Some minor design changes have been made to the single and dual-view pane icons at the bottom left corner, although their functionalities remain unchanged. Users can continue to choose between audio-only and transcription in the single pane view or view both side-by-side on the dual pane view. The color scheme across the board remains blue or a lighter version of it.
These additions will come as a breath of fresh air for consumers who were used to the dull old user interface. Fortunately, users don’t need to do anything as the changes should appear right away on recorder.google.com, provided you have a Pixel phone with access to the Google Recorder app and have web syncing turned on.
