Record a parent's or grandparent's stories — in their words, kept in your family's own iCloud.
In Their Words is a private family-story recorder for iPhone and iPad. Pick a question from the authored decks (or write your own), hand over the device, and press the big button. Recordings are transcribed on the device so stories can be read and searched, grouped into chapters, exported as audio and text, and turned into a PDF book.
No. In Their Words uses your iCloud account for storage and sync. There is no In Their Words account, no sign-up, no email and no subscription.
On your devices and in your private iCloud (CloudKit). In Their Words has no server; nobody but the devices signed in with your Apple Account can hear them.
On the device, using Apple's speech recognition. On iOS 26 and later In Their Words uses Apple's newer on-device engine, which may download a language model once; on earlier versions it uses on-device recognition where your device supports it for that language. Audio is never sent to In Their Words or to any speech service. If on-device transcription isn't available for a language on your device, In Their Words says so and you can type the transcript.
Question decks exist in English and German. Transcription and read-aloud follow the storyteller's language setting and depend on what your device supports on-device.
Recording pauses for the interruption and continues in the same file afterwards. In Their Words is built to continue recording with the screen locked or the app in the background (background audio).
Free: one storyteller and five stories, with full export of those stories. A single one-time purchase unlocks unlimited stories, every storyteller in the family and the PDF book. Family Sharing is enabled, so the purchase can be shared with your Family Sharing group. No subscription.
Yes. Share any story as audio (M4A) and text, make the book as a PDF, or use Settings → Export everything for a folder with every recording, transcript and book. On a new device, choose Import and pick that folder; stories already there are kept, and missing recordings are filled in.
What was recorded is kept on the device. The next time you open the app it offers the recording under “Recovered recordings”, where you can keep it as a story, save the audio file, or delete it.
In Their Words shows an “Ask them first” screen before the first recording with a storyteller. Please make sure the person knows they are being recorded and agrees — and delete anything they ask you to.
jago.naeher@gmail.com — questions, problems, feature requests and data requests all go here. You will get an answer from the person who makes the app.
Availability: In Their Words is being prepared for the App Store. This page will link to the listing as soon as it is live.