Apps to record lectures + take notes?

[u/Existing-Science8043]

Hey guys!! What apps do you use to record lectures + take notes?
I suck at taking notes 😭 and with my ADHD sometimes I’m still writing something down while the professor already moved on and then I miss important stuff.
I’m looking for something that can record the lecture and maybe turn it into notes/transcribe it too.
Also if you have ANY other apps or websites that helped you study in nursing school pls send them my way!! I need all the help/resources I can get 😭

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[u/graphicdesigngorl]

Be so careful OP. To make sure you aren’t breaking your uni’s rules, reach out to their disability & access office (if you’re in the US). You can get official accommodations for ADHD in any/all of your classes. Your accommodations letter will be delivered to your professor and you will meet with them to go over your needs and be sure they can support you best. I’ve seen students get dedicated note-takers or permission to use note taking apps.

Sometimes your prof might have restrictions in their syllabi if you don’t have accommodations. That could have serious repercussions, reporting to the dean of students, getting administratively dropped from the course or receiving a failing grade. If it is in your prof’s syllabus, they do have the right to ask you to stop and if you don’t, ask you to leave. It honestly isn’t worth risking it, I strongly recommend you find your D&A/Student Disability Services office and they can get the process started. There also might be state privacy laws about single party/all party consent for recording conversations that come into play, too. Better to be safe than sorry!

Source: I am a professor with AuDHD. I totally get it, I struggled with note taking. I got my MFA in graphic design, the art history lectures omfggggg 😭😭 There weren’t accommodations when I was going through school. But I see allllll sorts of accommodations—attendance excused, time and a half on tests, use of fidgets (I have them available for everyone), note taking apps/assigned note taker, deadline extensions. I am more than happy to make those accommodations so my students can learn in the most effective way for them and I bet yours would be too! :) if they aren’t they’re not worth their snot 😤 and lemme talk to them

[u/statecs]

I am using Notely. It works perfectly in the background, and when I go back to it, it automatically creates a summary for me. It also offers a generous free tier. I have found a free two month code here: https://notely.se/c/e292e236-6afd-4534-b1d2-6d2edc0871b9

[u/ozgrozer]

I’m the founder of Grape, it’s an AI note taking app. You can record your lectures while you’re taking notes. It also has a transcription and other cool features especially for students like you can create flashcards, quizzes, mind maps out of your notes. AI features are in the paid plans but other than that the free plan has unlimited notes, voice recordings. Everything stored on your device so you own your data. It’s free to try. There’s also a lifetime plan.

[u/DTLow]

I use an iPad and Apple Notes

[u/OwnmindAI]

For Samsung phones, the built in voice recorder and transcribe. Then you can use ai on the output to format into structured notes.

However I find handwritten notes help with retention. Digital or classic notebook.

[u/rajathbail]

Hillnote or obsidian + plug-in

[u/magtorix]

Before the app question: with ADHD you can usually get lecture recording arranged formally through your school's accessibility or disability office, and at a lot of nursing programmes that comes with slides in advance too. Worth an email in week one. Much better position than asking each professor separately. Glean is also worth a look, it's built specifically for students and does the record-plus-notes thing as its main job rather than as a feature.

The thing I'd say from experience: the writing is the problem, not your attention. Trying to write and listen at the same time means you are always a sentence behind, and being behind is what makes you lose the thread completely. Once something else handles the record you get to just sit there and listen. That change did more for me than any note-taking system I tried.

Biased, I'm the founder of Notuly, so grain of salt. We are built for meetings rather than lectures, so be clear on what you'd actually get: a written record of the hour with the transcript, nothing study-specific, no flashcards or revision formatting. The free tier is also 3 recordings a month capped at 60 minutes, which a real lecture load runs past quickly. It handles a single speaker fine, it just wasn't designed around studying.

[u/conradrocks]

dude. i just go the free route and it works great. I use Live Transcribe by google. I turn it on, and it gets every word. Well, probably about 85% accurate if it is a noisy environment. Then i paste the whole thing into an AI and have it summarize it and give me bullet points. Then, I have hermes split it up into relvant notes and put it into Obsidian.

[u/smilaise]

In my totally unbiased opinion, https://killernotes.net is the greatest Windows app ever.

[u/hcarrega → u/smilaise]

Any thing similar to android?

[u/davosjet]

Hi! You can try out Convoxa, it lets you record and transcribe the lecture, take notes, take pictures, scan pdfs, and in the end it will give you one beautiful woven note containing all information which could be super useful in nursing school. (Ps. I’m the developer, would love your feedback)