ThinkCap
Voice notes with structure. Your models, your keys. Free on the App Store.
ThinkCap is an iPhone app for people who think out loud. Press the Action Button, talk, and the recording becomes a note with a title, a summary, decisions and tasks. Dictate into any app through the ThinkCap keyboard. Record a call playing on a nearby speakerphone, or import one you already have. Every model is yours: run everything on the iPhone, or bring your own API key for the provider you prefer.
Free. No account, no subscription, no ThinkCap server. Requires iOS 17 or later; the Action Button needs iPhone 15 Pro or newer.
What it does
- Capture in one press. Action Button, Control Center, Siri, Lock Screen widget or the Record tab. Recording carries on when the phone is locked, with pause and stop on the Lock Screen. What you say is written to disk as you speak, and an interrupted recording keeps what was captured.
- A note, not a pile of audio. Nine formats: brain dump, idea, meeting, phone call, task list, journal, lecture, interview and voice memo. ThinkCap picks the format when you stop, or you choose it. Re-run any note with another format later.
- Dictate into any app. Record in ThinkCap, return to Messages or Mail, tap Insert on the ThinkCap keyboard. iOS keeps microphones out of keyboards, so this hand-off is how every dictation keyboard on iPhone works.
- Call notes. Record a speakerphone playing on another device, or import a recording you already have, including Apple's own call recordings where that feature is available. No app can tap a call on the same iPhone, and ThinkCap does not pretend to.
- Your models, your keys. Transcription and summary are chosen separately. On this iPhone with Apple Speech and Apple's on-device model, or your own key for Groq, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, OpenRouter, Deepgram, AssemblyAI, ElevenLabs, or any OpenAI-compatible server. One key per provider; a free Groq key runs the whole app.
- Free tiers handled. Uploads are shrunk to a small copy, split under file caps and paused when a minutes cap would be exceeded, with a usage estimate kept on the phone.
- Findable later. Search titles, transcripts, summaries, tasks and people. Filter by type, project, date and open tasks. Export any note as Markdown, or everything at once.
What stays where
Audio, transcripts and notes stay on the iPhone. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you choose a cloud provider, and then only to that provider, under its own terms, using your own key. ThinkCap has no server, no account and no analytics. The privacy policy says the same thing at greater length.
Help
Setup guides for the Action Button and the keyboard, answers about keys and free tiers, and how to reach us are on the support page.