First Look: Windows 11’s New Sound Recorder App
Windows’ sound and voice recording app has long been very basic, but Windows 11’s updated recording app adds some new nice-to-have features. For starters, it’s now called Sound Recorder, replacing the Voice Recorder moniker in previous Windows versions. It’s more than a name change, too. The app, though still simple, gets a new look in addition to new features.
Microsoft announced the Sound Recorder(Opens in a new window) app last month, and it’s currently still in preview. But there’s a good chance it will be updated before the next big Windows version coming in the fall, just as the Media Player app was. Until then, here's a quick spin around the new sound-recording app.
As you can see, the new Sound Recorder app looks markedly different than the previous Voice Recorder app:
For comparison, here’s how bare-bones the Windows 10 Voice Recorder app interface is:
The new app also offers a light mode, shown below.
As with Windows 11’s new Media Player app, if you type in the old app name, in this case “Voice Recorder,” the new one, Sound Recorder, opens and updates itself. (The Media Player behaves similarly when you type “Groove” in the Start menu.) You can also find the app in the Microsoft Store, though oddly under the old Voice Recorder name. I expect the Store team will update that at some point.
After the app update, you need to allow it permission to use your system’s microphone. On one test system I had to enable a microphone in the main Settings before getting to this point. Go to the Sound settings, find Voice Recorder among the allowed apps, and tap its On switch.
The new Sound Recorder sports the updated Windows 11 icons and design language. The most obvious new element is the graphical waveform that appears as
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