Pre-roll: never miss the start (Field Pro) By the time you tap record, the sound is over. Pre-roll puts the last few seconds at the head of the file instead. Off, 3, 5, or 10 seconds. Also in 1.8: iCloud sync now shows a live count of recordings as they arrive, and Resync picks up where it left off instead of starting over. After restoring on a new device, Field offers to download your recordings' audio. Fixed: audio downloads resume when Wi-Fi returns. Fixed: changing a recording's color on iOS 26.

Your photos come with you. Photos you attach to recordings now sync through your iCloud, so they're there when you reinstall or set up a new device instead of being stranded on one phone. Better with external mics. The record screen shows which input is active and highlights external hardware, and playback stays on your connected interface instead of jumping to the phone speaker. Thanks to the recordist who reported this. More reliable transcription. The language list no longer offers languages your device can't fully transcribe on-device, so you won't pick one that quietly produces nothing. Fixes. Adding a photo to a recording works reliably again, plus stability improvements.

Field 1.7 Crash-safe capture. Field now records in a format that survives interruption — if the app is killed or interrupted mid-recording, your audio is protected and recovered on next launch. Export to Freesound. Export any recording ready to upload to Freesound — tags, license, geotag, and description travel with it in the format Freesound expects. (Thanks to the reviewer who asked for this.) Record from your Home & Lock Screen. Add the Field widget to start recording with one tap — no need to open the app first. Lossless ALAC export. Share recordings as Apple Lossless when you want the full-quality file, with title, tags, and artwork embedded. Bird species identification, in the Bay Area (Field Pro). Field can now listen for birds and name the species it hears — running entirely on your phone, with nothing uploaded. Species identification is available for recordings made in the San Francisco Bay Area. Also in this release. Fixes to recording detail, sync recovery, and playback stability.

What's new in 1.6.2 Fixed a bug that could stop some recordings from opening, and recovered files affected by it. Settings → iCloud Sync now shows your last sync time, so you can tell it's working. Recordings started right after opening the app now wait for a GPS fix before saving, so they keep their location. The "audio unavailable" message is clearer when iCloud Sync is off.

Fixes a bug where some new recordings weren't saving their location. Field will ask for location access again if it needs to.

Start a recording from anywhere. - Add a Field complication to any Apple Watch face. See whether a recording is in progress, and tap to start one without taking your phone out. - Recordings now appear as a Live Activity on iPhone, with the elapsed time visible from the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island. - A new Field button in Control Center lets you start or stop a recording from anywhere on iOS. - New "Resync All Recordings" button in Settings → iCloud Sync if your library ever falls out of step between devices.

Field 1.5.1 True stereo capture. Stereo recordings from your iPhone's built-in mics now record in true stereo, not dual mono. Field uses the rear mic array — the same pair iOS uses for stereo audio in video — for a wider, more natural environmental image. External USB-C and Lightning audio interfaces work the same as before. Action Button. Assign "Toggle Recording" to the Action Button (Settings → Action Button → Shortcut → Field) to start and stop recordings with a single press, from anywhere — even before the app is open. iPhone 15 Pro and later.

Field 1.5.0 Soundwalks. When you record on the move, Field now scans the recording afterward for its most distinctive moments: rare sounds, unexpected events, the things you'd want to remember. It marks them on the route map. The more you record, the better Field gets at picking them out. Route maps beyond walks. Cycling, drives, any recording with usable GPS now shows a route on the map, not just walks. Tap to expand to full screen, with its own play/pause and scrubber. Pause to pan around, or jump to a moment. Camera follows playback. Tap play and the map zooms to the playback dot, then follows as you scrub or listen. Pinch out anytime to pan freely. Imported audio. Fixed audio being cut off near the end of some imported files. iCloud sync. Behind-the-scenes work so recordings make it to your iCloud library more consistently.

Transcription and playback get more reliable, and a few rough edges around the map and photos got smoothed out. Transcribe any recording after the fact. A new button on the recording detail page runs on-device transcription. Handy for imports, which never had a transcript, and for any live recording that came back empty. The last word makes it in. Stopping mid-sentence used to clip the trailing word or two as the analyzer shut down. Those now land in the final transcript. First recording after launch works. On iOS 26, the speech model needed a moment to load, and the very first recording could come back blank. Field now gets the model ready at launch and holds onto the opening audio while it warms up. You'll know if a recording didn't take. If something prevents it from starting, Field tells you on the spot instead of leaving you with an empty file. Audio routes where it should. Plug in wired or Bluetooth headphones during playback and the sound follows, instead of staying stuck on the speaker. Playback also picks back up cleanly after a phone call or alarm. Damaged files explain themselves. If a file can't be read, whether from an interrupted recording, a partial iCloud download, or similar, the detail page now says what's happening instead of failing silently. Map opens where you've been recently. The map now opens centered on your most recent geotagged recording, instead of zoomed out to show everywhere you've been. Photos stay where you put them. The Add Photo button now sits inline with your recording's photo thumbnails, and photos you attach before hitting record stick with the recording.

Import audio from other apps Field can now bring in recordings you already have — from Voice Memos, JustPressRecord, Files.app, or anywhere else. Two ways: Tap the new import button in the Library toolbar (down-arrow icon) to pick files from your device. From any audio app's share menu, pick Field. The file lands in your library and opens to its Detail view. Imported recordings get the same treatment as native captures: automatic tags, fingerprints, transcripts, soundmark candidacy, Similar Recordings, iCloud sync. Also in this release iCloud sync activity now appears in Send Diagnostics reports, so troubleshooting sync issues is faster. Transcription events appear in diagnostics too. Smoother handling for files stored in iCloud Drive. Library toolbar fits cleaner on smaller iPhones.

Recordings folder is now visible in the iOS Files app — share, copy, or open in any other app. New in Settings → About: Send Feedback (email) and Send Diagnostics (privacy-respecting debug report — never includes recordings, titles, or locations). Fixes for transcript saving and regional locale transcription.

Field 1.4 introduces Soundmarks. A soundmark is a sound that belongs to a place: a car clacking over a trolley track, a bell that rings over your city; a sound that people who know a place would recognize at once. You can mark a soundmark on any recording. With Semantic Search enabled, Field suggests candidates by listening for recordings that stand out from their peers. Soundmarks group by place in your library. You name each one yourself: a neighborhood, a trail, a room, whatever fits. The vocabulary comes from R. Murray Schafer's acoustic ecology, a framework for hearing places by what makes them sound like themselves. To get automatic candidate suggestions, enable Semantic Search in Settings. Refined sound tags Field now runs two classifiers: one while you record, a more accurate one after. When the second one finishes, it replaces the live tags with higher-confidence labels. The new × on each tag dismisses it for good, even if multiple classifiers detected it. Similar Recordings With Semantic Search enabled, the detail view of any recording surfaces others in your library that share its sonic character. A rail at the bottom of the recording shows what it sits near in your own collection. Settings → Semantic Search. Auto-bookmarks Field marks the moments worth coming back to. Useful for hour-long captures where you want to find the events without re-listening. Settings → Auto-bookmarks. Title formats Pick how Field titles new recordings: by date and time, by detected sounds, by both, or by the field-recording convention pros expect, like 20260512_0942_Birds_Wind. Existing titles stay as you set them. Settings → Recording Names. Soundmark status in Smart Playlists (Pro) Smart Playlists can now filter on soundmark status alongside the existing rules: tag, loudness, date, folder, duration, speech presence. Combine with All or Any. Reaper project export (Pro) For anyone editing field recordings in Reaper: share a recording as a Reaper .zip and the project is laid out for you. Bookmarks become project markers, sound tags become region markers, and the .rpp opens ready to edit on your Mac. Per-tag confidence thresholds (Pro) Tune how confident Field needs to be before adding each individual tag. Settings → Sound Identification → Advanced Thresholds. On-demand iCloud audio (Pro) With iCloud Sync on, audio now downloads to a new device only when you open the recording. Metadata syncs immediately; the audio waits for your tap. New toggles let you choose Wi-Fi only or allow cellular. Plus Acoustic fingerprint (LUFS, true peak, dynamic range, spaciousness) embedded in BWF metadata on export. Playback defaults to your phone's speaker when no headphones are connected. Sorting and collapsing for tags and bookmarks. A round of card and detail-view polish. On-device AI Refined sound tags use an on-device classifier that downloads (78 MB) on first use. Similar Recordings and soundmark suggestions require Semantic Search, which adds a ~58 MB model. Both run entirely on your device after the download. Settings → Semantic Search. Field has no servers and never sees your data. Everything stays on your device unless you turn on iCloud Sync, and even then, your sync runs through your own iCloud account, not ours.

Field. now works on Apple Watch. Start and stop recordings from your wrist with live duration, location, waveform, and Sound ID tags. Requires Apple Watch Series 7 or later. Also: WAV exports now include DAW-ready markers and metadata for Logic, Reaper, and Pro Tools. Plus improved video export and audio stability fixes.

What's new: • Live monitoring — hear what the mic hears through headphones while recording • Library playback — play, scrub, and auto-play from the library with waveform progress • Batch actions — select multiple recordings to share or delete at once • Transcription language — choose from 20+ languages for on-device transcription • Time-of-day colors — recording cards reflect when they were captured • Dark app icon — switch to a dark variant in Settings • Improved playback scrubbing — drag while paused stays paused • Audio stability fixes and improved session handling New in Field. Pro (one-time purchase): • Folders — organize by project, trip, or session • iCloud Sync — your library syncs across devices • Trim & Crop — set in/out points, preview, save as new or replace • Bookmarks — drop timestamped markers during playback • Video Export — share as waveform videos in 16:9, 1:1, or 9:16

Improved theme system with time-of-day auto-switching. Recording colors now reflect when they were captured.