Voice notes

Hold Hold to talk in the Relay app, talk, and let go. The note shows at once, and its words fill in a few seconds later. The phone writes the words itself, with no signal and no server. Your voice never leaves the phone.

Make a voice note

1. Hold Hold to talk, beside New note. The card above it shows Listening and for how long.
2. Talk.
3. Let go to save. To throw the note away, slide your finger off the button before you let go.

The note shows Voice and Writing the words…, then its words. A note ends by itself after 5 minutes.

The first time you hold the button, the phone asks for the microphone. If you said no, allow the microphone for Relay in the phone’s settings.

Get the speech model

Voice notes need a speech model: a 57 MB file, one time. The first time you tap Hold to talk, the app asks before it gets it:

1. Tap Get it. Tap Not now to get nothing.
2. A card on your notes shows how much has come. You can type notes while it comes.
3. When it is done, hold Hold to talk again.

The phone gets the model from whisper.cpp’s page on Hugging Face, and checks it against a fixed checksum. A file that does not match is deleted. If the download stops, tap Try again: it goes on from where it stopped.

The model is whisper.cpp’s English base model, so voice notes are in English. The phone does not back it up to iCloud or Google.

To free the space, tap Remove in Settings. The next voice note asks to get it again.

No speech, no note

The app keeps nothing from:

• A press shorter than half a second. A bump in your pocket makes no note.
• A note you slide off to cancel.
• A recording with no words in it. The app says No speech heard.

The Relay ring uses the same rule: How the ring works.

Play a note back

Tap Play on a voice note to hear it. The recording stays on this phone.

The phone does not back up recordings to iCloud or Google. When you move to a new phone, the recordings stay behind: your voice notes come with their words, and Play says the recording is not on this phone.

Where your voice goes

What	Where
The recording	This phone only. It is never sent, and phone backups leave it out.
The words	This phone. With sending on, they go to your Relay server, the same as a typed note.

On your server and in other places that read it, a voice note shows as a typed note. A note goes to your server only when it has its words. Privacy