To record your story, you’ll need a mobile phone, computer or other device with recording capabilities. Basically anything that can capture sound and save it as an MP3.
Using a mobile phone
Modern mobile phones are great for recording sound, because they have fantastic inbuilt microphones – transmitting speech is what they were originally designed for, after all.
Top tip: If you have a selfie stick, you can use your phone to record a friend’s story while maintaining social distancing.
Android phones
Most Android phones have a built-in voice recorder app called Recorder. If your phone is set up with an App Drawer, look inside that. If it is not, then it might be within a folder called Tools. If you can’t find it, the free app Smart Recorder is a good alternative.
Once you have the app open, recording is very simple. Simply tap the red button to start recording and click the red square to stop.
If you want to edit the recording, you can do that by clicking the recording and tapping “Edit”. Then you can use “Trim” to remove portions of the recording. But don’t worry too much about editing – we will edit your story if we use it.
iPhones
First open the Voice Memos app or ask Siri to open it. To record, tap or click the red button. To stop, tap the red square.
When you tap. , your memo is saved automatically with your current location as the title. On your iPad or Mac, click Done when you’re finished recording.
Zoom
If you want to help a friend or relative record a story, you might find it easier to record via the video conferencing software Zoom. To do this, you will need to be using a computer to connect to Zoom at your end (the other person can be on a mobile device).
Please follow these instructions to record your conversation (meeting): making a local recording of your Zoom meeting.
Submitting your story
Please make sure you have saved your story as an MP3 and that it is not longer than 10 minutes. Then pop over to our submission page to send it in to us.