simplemobiletools / simple-voice-recorder Goto Github PK

After denying permission two times, the app is crashing while opening till we allow the permission from settings.

Ref Video:

I'm a PhD student interested in finding security vulnerabilities in open source projects.

We found a total of 07 warnings (indicating potential vulnerabilities) when running the CogniCrypt static analyzer (*) on
Simple-Voice-Recorder (or its library dependencies). We documented each one of these issues in private gists for the sake of confidentiality (non-disclosure).

Can you please let us know whether we can share these gists with you? We are eager to evaluate the perception of developers (e.g. severity of these warnings) and improve Simple-Voice-Recorder's security, and the quality of the reports of static analysis tools.

(*) https://github.com/CROSSINGTUD/CryptoAnalysis

This app is using an external library for creating waveform, there is one sample type of waveform given for Audio player by Google Git, I created the same for audio recorder waveform for my project.

Would love to contribute this to your project.

Ref Video:

Would it be possible to add the ability to control the app via physical keyboard shortcuts? I don't mean arrow keying around the screen to hit enter on the record button, but pressing specific keys to directly control the app. Possibly QMK media control keys, or custom set key combos, etc. I'd like to be able to use the app via a macro pad, although I understand this is an odd use case.

Whenever I set the bitrate to 320 kbps, it records in 256 kbps instead. All the other bitrate settings seem to record as such (I get 256 kbps recordings when it's set to 256 kbps as I should, 128 kbps recordings when set to 128 kbps, etc.). This happens with all 3 formats/file extensions. I'm using a Samsung Galaxy A52 5G with Android 12.

Aside from #13, please add an option for compressed lossless formats. Flac comes to mind as probably the best candidate. Exposing the compression level or not is up to you, but in my experience the increased compression levels waste a lot of precious cpu time for barely any gain. I googled a reference example for you.

Thanks

I switched from the default recorder in oxygen os to simple voice recorder, and a feature i am missing is the ability to record in .wav format. Can this be added?

Many music players use id3 tags to index mp3 file on a device. If there are no tags, it is indexed as "unknown album" or something similar. It would be nice if simple voice recorder by default added "voice recordings" to the artist tag and %year to the album tag. Title can follow the current pattern. That way recording woul be indexed and some way meningfull. As it is now, the user can edit the title, and of course it should also be possible to edit artist and album from the same dialog box, and the defaults should be set in preferences. Hope you see the point in my sugestions.

Currently, Simple Voice Recorder put all recording file under Music/. It would be nice to add custom option to choose file location.

In Launchers like Nova, Apex etc

It would be cool to set the bitrate of the output file to lower the used space if the quality doesn't need to be that good. Thanks for your software

Sometimes I worry that through the recordings any app could have access to the microphone in an indirect way.
I understand that it's me who allowed reading of the public storage for all apps where I did, but usually it's a necessary bad for apps to be usable, and since on android you can't give access to only a certain directory of the storage, I can't make sure that those apps won't have access to the recordings.

I was thinking about what could be done to mitigate this, and while I see the shortcomings, I think it might be useful to allow saving recordings to the internal app data directory, /data/data/com.simplemobiletools.voicerecorder.
Since this can be confusing for new users, this could be a hidden option, either hidden in the menu, or only activatable by manually editing the Prefs.xml file.
What I tried is to edit the internal_storage_path in the mentioned file, but on next start it was imemdiately reset to /storage/emulated/0.

I see the shortcoming that it's kind of hard to access, because you either need root or ADB, but I don't have any better idea.
Though I think this might not be such a big problem, because one can share or "open with" the recordings to an other app.

I think that MIUI China ROM lacks of Media Store. But, Simple Music Player and Simple Voice Recorder seems to use that library. Just do like Musicolet.

Currently, this FLOSS tool only supports 2 patented, proprietary codecs.

OPUS is a libre codec, which is:

• has better quality than MP3 (or it consumes less space for the same quality)
• supported by most browsers, and player apps
• has 2 encoding algorithm specifically for high bitrate music, and low bitrate speech, and automatically chooses which fits better for the given audio content
• has nearly zero bitrate when audio contains silence
• supports extremely high and extremely low bitrates (8 kbps / 510 kbps)
• can be containerized in the libre OGG container

https://opus-codec.org/

I noticed that my .ogg (Opus) recordings play back significantly sped up and shorter as well as higher pitched as a result. Transferring the recordings onto my PC and looking at them in MediaInfo shows that the sampling rate for my .m4a and .mp3 files (both AAC LC) is 44.1 kHz while that of my .ogg (Opus) files is 48 kHz. After doing some reading, it seems that Opus (other than Opus custom) only decodes in either 8, 12, 16, 24, or 48 kHz, though the input sampling rate can be pretty much anything, including 44.1 kHz

I've played the .ogg files back on both a PC and my phone and on both devices, they're all sped up. I believe the issue here could be that the Opus implementation in this app is speeding up the recording from 44.1 kHz to 48 kHz instead of properly resampling it while keeping the length/speed the same, but I'm not sure.

I'm using a Samsung Galaxy A52 5G with Android 12, btw.

Current
When recording is stopped, a toast notification is displayed over the record button.

What's the problem?
Displaying a toast over an actionable button makes it more difficult to press the button. I often record voice notes back-to-back.

Suggestion
Move the toast to the center of the screen.

Screenshot

I'd like to use syncthing to back up my recordings, but the recorder won't let me select a directory where to save.

Hi, as the title I notice this issue yesterady. Step to reproduce:
1 - Start recording
2 - Pause the recording
3 - Close the recording

If you try instead to pause - unpause - stop recording then it stops and save the file properly.
Well, nothing crititcal, just to inform.

crDroid 7.5 (Android 11 based)

When playing back recordings, especially if the app is in the background, it would be very useful if there was a media notification available to pause or stop or rewind the recording.

more info at email from anon81962910 on April 29

While connected to bluetooth, my default phone app allows me to switch between my bluetooth microphone and the built-in phone microphone. It would be very useful if Simple Voice Recorder had a similar feature!

Thank you for this app and the line of tools you make.

Fdroid has this app listed as an Apache License 2.0
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.simplemobiletools.voicerecorder/

Here on github it's listed as a GPLv3 License.
The Apache 2.0 License is compatible with the GPLv3, but I'm not sure it works the other way.

I'm assuming one of these are incorrect, so I thought I would point it out.
One difference is Apache allows sublicensing, but the GPLv3 doesn't.
So, it could make a difference on how the code is used.

When playing back audio, the app could show the waveform (volume visualization) of the track, similar to what is shown during recording.

I find this useful to quickly identify periods of silence and move past them.

I like the way that this app implements it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dimowner.audiorecorder&hl=en_US&gl=US
In that app, the visualization itself can be slid/panned left and right to move through the track. That feels much nicer than trying to move the little circle on the line.

I have tried the new app and I have seen that the files are recorded with the .mp3 extension but MediaInfo says that they are in AAC format.
I also notice that the sound is a bit metallic, is there any noise reduction applied to the recordings?
Thanks for this new app.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open list of recordings
2. Start playback of one of the recordings
3. Rotate a device horizontally

Result:
Screen rotates and playback stops

Expected results:
Screen rotates and playbacks continues uninterrupted.

Please add record phone calls by default option. To switch if you want to record all the phone calls that you have. It is a Xiaomi MIUI option and it is pretty good.

Hi!
I can record my voice in m4a and mp3 but not in ogg. Each time I try (even when trying with different bitrates) I get this error:

An error occurred.
java.lang.RuntimeException: start failed

I'm using a custom rom (Resurrection Remix), have no google services and I'm also facing this problem: element-hq/element-android#3904 (comment) but I'm not sure if these are related.

It would be nice to be able to rename the file that just has been recorded (instead of opening the file manager app > find file > rename it) as it would ease finding the recorded content when looking for it later.

Thanks for this great app 👍

It is misplaced at screenshot from Michael on November 24

Hello there,
anyone also having sound problems with their Android or even Pixel 5 with the recording app?
It records cracks and does not sound clear. Reinstallation did not solve it. The onboard Google Recorder app sounds just fine ;) So it's not Microphone.

Kind regards, Tobias

When I plug in my Bluetooth headset, Simple Voice Record still records phone microphone instead of headset's microphone.

Could you add a feature to change the recording input?

I've tried several different settings, extension m4a or mp3, with bitrate at 128 (default) or 320 kbps, but all output are at 96 kbps. MP3 files recorded don't report the bitrate in Windows (probably because it isn't real mp3, but that is another issue #62). The M4a files report correctly, but show only around 96 kbps.

Listening the files back on my computer with headphones, I can clearly hear that high frequency tones are missing. This is a clear sign of a low bitrate. Looking at the Frequency Analyzer in Adobe Audition for example, it's clearly showing that there is no audio above around 16khz.

I did some testing in other recording apps, like https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.media.bestrecorder.audiorecorder
That app has advertisements and isn't as user friendly, but the mp3 recording is a correct mp3 file at 128 kbps, which has noticeable higher quality than the recordings from your app (speaking of: the wav recordings from that app are absolutely horrible with a lot of static).

I'm using a OnePlus 5T running on the latest update from OnePlus.

Oi! Seria interessante adicionar uma função onde você pode aumentar a velocidade e também adicionar uma função onde é possível editar o áudio no celular Android do jeito que a pessoa deseja!

Sometimes it would be very nice to the a possibility to adjust the microphone sensitivity for trying better or clearer records.
Please maybe this can be added?

Hello, Please add the support marker feature. (like windows 10 voice recorder app).

Markers embedded on the recorded file: (in comments tag)

Thanks.

Hi,

When I select in the options to have an MP3 file instead of M4A, it's still M4A but with different extension. It's wrong, because MP3 and M4A are two different containers that can have audio encoded differently, so we can't just change the extension.

I've seen issues #1, #19, and #21 but despite they are closed, MP3 files created by the app are still just M4A files with manually changed extension. It's a problem since not every media player can handle M4A files when they can play MP3.

I know that MediaRecorder can't encode files to MP3, so maybe some external solution for conversion should be used instead, e.g. https://github.com/cmeng-git/ffmpeg-android.

Please add setting allowing saving recordings in a uncompressed PCM (wav) file.

as titel says :-)

Thanks for all your effort

Please add record whatsapp or telegram option. it could be huge favor :)
huawei nova 7i

Tapping the record button constantly brings up this error:

"Es ist ein Fehler aufgetreten: java.io.FileNotFoundException: /storage/emulated/0/Schlichtes Diktiergerät/2022_01_02_18_25_20.m4a: open failed: EACESS (Permission denied)"

Device: SHIFT6m
OS: ShiftOS-L - based on Android 8.0.0
App: Version 5.6.2

At launch, permission was granted for the app to both record audio and access photos, media and files.
The error continues to occur after deinstalling and reinstalling the app.

It seems that app is using wrong filecontainer (.mp3), saves audio to file by using FAAC codec, which is good codec to use, but filecontainer should be (.m4a). Sure (.aac) would also work but for good id3 tag support better choose (.m4a).

Sound works ok with android device and also at laptop with .mp3 container too, but...

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:02 -t 00:00:04 -i test.mp3 -acodec copy clip.mp3

[mp3 @ 0x55c041a5eac0] Invalid audio stream. Exactly one MP3 audio stream is required.
Could not write header for output file #0 (incorrect codec parameters ?): Invalid argument

As an result there is clip.mp3 which obviously doesn't work

After manually renamed to .m4a

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:02 -t 00:00:04 -i test.m4a -acodec copy clip.m4a

ffmpeg copies clip without any error and results working audioclip.

So luckily there's easy solution to fix this, change container to .m4a

v5.1.3

List recordings

Select one

Tap "record" tab

The navigation panel stays as when selecting recordings. Should reset to default.

Sometimes the recording is a little bit sooner or too long so please add the trimming feature. Thank you!

I am a human rights activist in a country with broken laws. I am using this app from the F-Droid store to record my human rights protests while the smartphone screen is locked and protected with a long password.
I need this app to save the recorded audio automaticly every few minutes. When the police get me, the first thing that they do is to turn off the phone by long holding the power button, remove the simcard and write down the IMEI of the phone.
So when the voice recording is running and the battery is been removed or on phones with non removable battery the power button is been pressed long time, i loose the COMPLETE recording.
This have happened last week. I was been hold down in the police station while they took my phone and turned it off. The voice recording of police officers hitting people and much other things are now lost because the recording was running for about 2 hours and when they shut down the smartphone and removed the simcard the complete recording was deleted.

Its critical for this usecase to have autosave functionality. PLEASE add the autosave functionality to this app.