Pio is a slick audio recorder app for the iPhone that offers some very nifty advanced features. It is a great app to have when you’re looking to record interviews, lectures, meetings or similar moments when you not only want to record the audio, but you also want to remember specific moments in the recording for a later time.
Pio has a really simple interface that lets you quickly start recording onto a file. The app allows you to neatly sort and save all your recordings into custom projects. When you begin a new recording, Pio assumeS it is an interview that you’re going to record and offers you a screen where you can enter the interviewee’s name, photo, age, gender, location and other additional information, if any. All these fields are optional though, and you can skip straight to the recording if you wish to, but I do wish there was an option to turn this off.
Pio offers the ability to add marks to your recordings. While the recording is in progress, a single tap on the screen starts the mark and another single tap ends a mark. If you’ve just missed an important moment while recording, you can quickly double-tap on the screen and Pio will smartly mark a few seconds of already recorded audio and end the mark a few seconds later, totaling 5 seconds. I found this feature really handy, but unfortunately, you have to be very careful with your taps as the iPhone’s microphones easily pick up the sounds of your taps. You can also manually add notes to your marks. Once the recording is complete, you can browse all the marked moments and play them one by one, skipping the unmarked bits altogether. Alternatively, you can also create new marks after a recording is complete. Once everything is ready, you can share your recorded files directly to Dropbox or Google Drive.
Pio is available for Free on the App Store and you can record any number of audio recordings and create up to 2 projects. To create additional projects, there’s a $0.99 IAP you need to purchase. Additionally, if you want to export your recordings as files to Dropbox or Google Drive, there’s a separate $0.99 IAP for it.
I’d love to see an update where Pio introduces an Apple Watch app. This will not only save you from creating unnecessary tap sounds in the recordings, but also give you the ability to keep the iPhone away from you, closer to the subject, while still being able to control the recording and creating marks when you want to.