The iPhone 16 Pro now lets you layer recordings in Voice Memos

With iOS 18.2, you can now record vocals while listening to an instrumental track without headphones.

by Emma Roth

Dec 11, 2024, 7:14 PM UTC

Screenshots showing the iPhone’s Voice Memos

Image: Apple

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Emma Roth is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

Apple is bringing layered recordings to the Voice Memos app on the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. With the new feature, you can record vocals while listening to an instrumental track out loud in iOS 18.2.

Even though the microphone will technically pick up the instrumentals, Apple says the iPhone 16’s A18 Pro chip allows it to isolate vocals with “advanced processing and machine learning,” letting Voice Memos create a separate track with just your voice. From there, you can mix the two layers, as well as edit or listen to them separately.

Apple first announced this feature with the launch of the iPhone 16 Pro in September. On a support page, Apple notes that you can still listen to multitrack recordings on any device with iOS 18.2, but they won’t work with devices running anything earlier. You’ll have to separate the tracks for them to work on a device with an older version of Apple’s operating systems.

The addition of layered recordings should make Voice Memos even more useful to musicians and creators, especially since they sync to Voice Memos on Mac and iPad, letting you drop them into Logic Pro for editing.

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