# Aiko — user reviews > 308 indexed App Store user reviews of Aiko by Sindre Sorhus, rated 4.70/5 from 325 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/aiko/id1672085276/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/aiko/id1672085276.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 285 · 4★ 16 · 3★ 5 · 2★ 1 · 1★ 18 ## What do users think of Aiko? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 🔒 Privacy-focused transcription - 🚀 Accurate transcription - 👍 Easy to use - 🎉 Free and open-source - 💪 Powerful AI model (Whisper) **Cons** - 🐛 Crashes and stability issues - ⏱️ Slow transcription speed - 🔋 Resource-intensive - 🤔 Inconsistent formatting **Commonly reported bugs** - Repeated sentences - Incorrect language detection - Transcription loss on app exit **Most requested features** - Support for multiple speakers - Ability to select transcription model - Export options for timestamps and speaker labels - Background transcription mode ## Newest reviews (16 of 308) ### 2/5 — Confusing *2026-05-18, version 1.10.0* I paid, I downloaded, I opened it, and I'm confused about how to use it. You capture one note, you don't know where it went, then you start to record another thing, and you don't know where the first note went. It's so confusing. I really regret paying for this thing. Never pay for something you cannot try ever again. ### 3/5 — Tooooo expensive *2026-03-03* It's free model Pay 20$ to get complete mess, no summarization, nothing! It's too expensive and I won't use it because of quality. No trial period. Nothing.:. **Developer response:** Aiko is a one-time purchase, not a subscription. You pay once and get unlimited transcriptions, with no monthly fees or usage limits. Unlike many transcription apps, Aiko runs locally on your device. Your audio is not uploaded to a server, which is better for privacy but also means quality and speed depend more on the device and the audio quality. A trial is available from the app website. ### 4/5 — Aiko Icon *2026-03-03* The new icon appears quite dull and resembles many other app icons. I initially chose to try your app because of the cute icon that caught my attention and made me click. Please consider restoring the previous icon or designing a new one. Thank you! ### 4/5 — Preferred the old icon *2026-02-20, version 1.10.0* Not a big deal but preferred the old robot icon instead of this boring bar icon that looks like 5000 other apps with bar icons and looks designed by a toddler with crayons. Apple is busy nerfing and making their own icons horrible and boring, no need for 3rd party developers to follow Apple’s lead, Apple’s “design” has been leading only on the frontiers of the ugly over the past year. ### 3/5 — Translation issues *2025-12-27* I downloaded and tested the AICO app and see strong potential, but there are some critical language-handling issues that need urgent attention. 1. **Gujarati Translation Issue** When translating to Gujarati, the app outputs text in the **Hindi (Devanagari) script instead of the Gujarati script**. This makes the translation practically unusable and appears to be a core reason for the inaccuracies. Gujarati must be rendered strictly in its native script. 2. **Single-Language Limitation** The app currently allows selection of only one language, or it auto-detects and locks onto a single language. This is a major limitation for real-world conversations, especially in environments like ours where **mixed-language speech (e.g., Gujarati + English)** is very common. 3. **Technical Capability Exists** This limitation is surprising because AICO uses the **Whisper model**, which is clearly capable of handling mixed-language conversations. On ChatGPT, using the same Whisper model, mixed Gujarati–English speech works reasonably well. This suggests the issue is not with the model itself but with **implementation, language routing, or post-processing logic** in the app. These issues significantly affect usability. If fixed, AICO could fit very well into our workflow. I strongly urge the development team to **prioritize fixing Gujarati script handling and enabling proper mixed-language detection/support ASAP**. ### 4/5 — Geniale App, aber fehlende Weiterentwicklung *2025-12-15* Ich kann jedem Aiko empfehlen, der eine Transkriptionsapp sucht, die lokal - ohne Verarbeitung der Aufnahmen im Netz - funktioniert. Leider habe ich jedoch das Gefühl, dass die App nicht mehr weiterentwickelt wird, bzw. dem Entwickler die Ressourcen dafür fehlen. Das letzte Update im Rahmen von ios26 war nur der Hinweis auf einen Bug und ein Work Around wie man ihn umgehen kann. Behoben worden ist er nicht. Weiterhin würde ich mir für potentere Hardware - wie neuere Ipad Pros - das Large Model wünschen und ggf. auch eine Erkennung der sprechenden Personen. Aber ich befürchte, dass das noch sehr lange dauert bzw. nie kommen wird. Ansonsten eine absolute Top App. Vielen Dank dafür. ### 5/5 — Superb. *2025-11-11, version 1.9.1* Best transciption app I’ve come across. Does just what it says on the tin, locally, privately. ### 5/5 — Price = 0$ / Quality = Top *2025-11-09* Vielen Dank für diese super App. Hier bekommt man eine vollwertige Transkriptionsapp mit einem der trancript Topmodel „whisper v3“ von OpenAI unter der Haube. App funktioniert tadellos und andere kostenpflichtige Apps hinken hinterher. Außerdem findet der gesamte Workflow lokal auf ihrem Telefon statt und dies bietet ihnen Max Sicherheit beim verarbeiten ihrer Aufnahmen. ### 5/5 — Aiko *2025-10-06, version 1.9.1* Amazingly accurate transcription ### 3/5 — Works very well but only for English *2025-10-01* Hindi transcription is completely off! Also, has no features to input the commonly used words which may be jargons/technical words. ### 5/5 — Love this App! Used everyday *2025-09-27, version 1.9.1* I do lots of dictation, I am a bit of a perfectionist and have tried lots of transcription apps. This is the best. Thank you ### 2/5 — Not for Intel Macs *2025-09-23, version 1.9.1* Just be forewarned, it isn’t until after you purchase the app that you’re notified that it doesn’t work well with Intel Macs. It’s terribly slow (10 hours to transcribe an hour meeting) ### 5/5 — Richtig gut *2025-09-19* Einfach nur gut. Die App funktioniert einwandfrei und das auch über mehrere Stunden am Stück. Was mir persönlich aber am besten gefällt ist das sie komplett offline funktioniert und man so nicht auf eine Netzwerk Verbindung angewiesen ist. ### 5/5 — Simple but mighty *2025-09-05, version 1.9.1* I like this app for its simplicity in use ### 5/5 — Needs an update *2025-08-23, version 1.9.1* Aiko is great and I use it all the time, however time has marched on and it could be updated to the Whisper Large v3 Turbo MLX and thereby save several gigs of memory! ### 5/5 — Excellent tool for transcribing dictation recorder *2025-08-20, version 1.9.1* I use this primarily with an Olympus DM-720 dictation recorder. So far it has worked perfectly and pretty fast (MacBook Pro M4 Max). I use the recorder when walking/hiking with my dog, so at times there is background noise, and it hasn’t had a problem. (the recorder is designed to do this which also helps). I am disappointed it does not have an AppleScript dictionary although it does have an Actions palette. I’m a long time coder in many languages and have used AppleScript for many tasks including a full interface with Apple Mail using Clojure and PostgreSQL as the backend. It can be done by calling shortcuts from AppleScript but that’s a kludge. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Doesn’t Work *2026-05-02, version 1.10.1* I tried using this app instead of Otter.AI, but the tool got stuck transcribing the first few words in my recording over and over. I adjusted the settings to prevent the error, but doing so had no effect. Wish I could get a refund! In Otter, the transcription worked just fine with the same audio clip. ### 1/5 — Décevante et peu pratique *2026-04-27* Je déconseille fortement cette application. Je l’ai achetée en pensant obtenir un vrai outil de transcription, mais l’expérience a été très décevante. Points négatifs : - Impossible de transcrire correctement certains audios. - Interface peu intuitive et désagréable à utiliser. - Aucun résumé automatique, alors que c’est une fonctionnalité attendue aujourd’hui. - Transcription très lente. - Obligation de laisser l’application ouverte pendant tout le traitement. - Si on ferme l’application, la transcription peut être perdue. Au final j’ai payé pour une application qui me fait perdre du temps au lieu de m’en faire gagner. Je recommande de regarder d’autres alternatives avant d’acheter. **Developer response:** Merci pour votre retour. Aiko est conçu pour la confidentialité, pas pour la vitesse à tout prix : vos fichiers audio restent sur votre appareil et ne sont jamais envoyés à un serveur. C’est très différent de la plupart des applications de transcription, qui peuvent être plus rapides parce qu’elles traitent vos fichiers audio dans le cloud. En contrepartie, la transcription peut prendre plus de temps, surtout sur iPhone/iPad, et iOS oblige Aiko à rester ouvert pendant le traitement. C’est une limitation du système. Aiko est un achat unique avec des transcriptions illimitées. La plupart des alternatives basées sur le cloud fonctionnent par abonnement, ont des limites d’utilisation, ou les deux. Elles ne sont donc pas directement comparables. --- Thanks for the feedback. Aiko is built for privacy, not speed at any cost: your audio stays on your device and is never uploaded to a server. That is very different from most transcription apps, which can be faster because they process your audio in the cloud. The tradeoff is that transcription can take longer, especially on iPhone/iPad, and iOS requires Aiko to stay open while processing. That is a system limitation. Aiko is a one-time purchase with unlimited transcriptions. Most cloud-based alternatives are subscriptions, have usage limits, or both, so they are not directly comparable. ### 1/5 — What a disappointment *2025-10-09, version 1.9.1* I’ve purchased the app for an important event when I needed a transcribing service urgently. And it failed me completely. All I would get was a repeat first sentence under a different time stamp. What a disappointment. Paid disappointment ### 1/5 — Application not responding *2025-10-06, version 1.9.1* It used to work properly, but recently it fails to even start on my computer. I constantly see Application not responding the from the moment I try to open the app. Quitting, restarting my computer all don’t work so the app is basically unusable at the moment ### 1/5 — Dommage *2025-08-08* Elle a fonctionné une fois et depuis elle bug et je n’en tire rien… elle me met la même phrase en boucle et qui n’a pas de rapport avec l’audio que je lui demande de transcrire … ### 1/5 — Useless *2025-03-22, version 1.8.2* Out of six hours conversation got the first phrase repeated all over again and again. Until the app is not fixed it deserves - 1 star. ### 1/5 — Doesn’t work anymore *2025-03-06, version 1.8.2* No matter what, it just transcribes the word “you” over and over. It used to work okay, while it still repeated words or phrases if the recording was too long, but now it does not work at all. Hoping this is fixed because I used to enjoy this app. ### 1/5 — Slow, inaccurate, overpriced *2025-02-23, version 1.8.2* This app is slow to transcribe, have to leave the screen on to wait for it to finish transcribing slowly. A lot of words got transcribed wrong while the audio quality is fine. Way overpriced for this result and for an app using open source AI model. It used to be free and now this quality for 22 bucks? Disappointed. ### 1/5 — A bunch of dots *2025-02-13, version 1.8.2* Gave it audio to transcribe and all it did was post a bunch of … … …. and nothing else. ### 1/5 — Price raising too fast *2025-02-10, version 1.8.2* Been watching the price going up way too fast, was $20 last month and now it’s up again. Used to recommend it to all my friends / coworker around but now nobody wanna pay for it any more. It’s not the problem with charging a price for a useful app but it’s the problem with raising price in this pace. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Excellent app easy to use. *2026-07-11, version 1.11.0* I absolutely love this app! Very clear and simple to use and you can copy and paste to anywhere. Definitely worth all the money I paid! ### 5/5 — A fantastic app for language learners! *2026-07-10, version 1.11.0* Aiko helps me create subtitles from Chinese videos without captions, making it much easier to study and understand native speech. Simple, accurate, and extremely useful. Thank you for this wonderful tool! 🙏 ### 5/5 — Great App - Thank You *2026-06-23, version 1.10.0* For me it’s a great app. I have a bit of a problem remembering an entire conversation. This app has helped me quite a bit in recalling them. It is nice to have an instant replay to job my memory! ### 5/5 — Fantastic! *2026-06-22, version 1.10.0* Aiko is one of the most useful apps I’ve added to my workflow. The interface is clean, intuitive, and refreshingly minimal—there’s no clutter, just a tool that does exactly what it promises. What sets Aiko apart for me is its commitment to local processing. Being able to keep both my audio recordings and transcriptions on-device provides a level of privacy and control that is increasingly rare. The transcription quality is excellent, setup is effortless, and the app stays out of the way so I can focus on my work. Simple, fast, reliable, and privacy-focused. Highly recommended. ### 5/5 — Simply awesome *2026-05-29, version 1.10.0* The app works great and it respects user’s privacy by not collecting data. It’s also the only app I’ve found where one can drag an audio from iMessage and drop it in the app to get a transcription, which is useful for users that use the phone in multiple languages. ### 5/5 — Wizardry *2026-04-29, version 1.10.1* I’m convinced there is some kind of dark art at work here. I record interviews with people around a table. It’s a challenging environment with people cross talking, but Aiko captures the conversations accurately so I can then organise them with AI and write my documents with it. Brilliant. ### 5/5 — Merci 🙏 *2026-03-07* C’est une des rares applications qui coche toutes les cases ! Un second merci au développeur pour sa participation active, la communauté des développeurs indépendants est vraiment formidable :) __________________________________ This is one of the few applications that ticks all the boxes! A second thanks to the developer for his active participation, the community of independent developers is really great :) ### 5/5 — Amazing app *2026-03-06, version 1.10.1* Honestly one of my only reviews. Your app is very good and the fact that you provide shortcuts to batch multiple files is a nice touch. ### 5/5 — Just works! (And works well!) *2026-03-04, version 1.10.1* Very happy with how well it works on my Mac mini M1. ### 5/5 — Nice App *2026-01-15, version 1.9.2* Does an excellent job and has never failed. Kudos --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-31.*