AP-7 user guide

Two screens

The Fold 8's cover screen has nearly the proportions of a real pocket recorder, so closed, it's just the recorder. Open it and the same recorder sits beside your tapes.

Closed: the recorder

The cover screen shows the face alone, held upright. The tape list opens over it when you ask for it (the M key, or a tap on the display) and closes with ✕ or Back.

Open: the recorder and your tapes

The inner screen splits at the crease. Your tapes and the settings are on the left page, always there; the recorder is on the right, the same size and shape as on the cover. Here the M key and the display don't need to open anything.

Reading the display

A 64×32 dot screen, read from the top: one big word for what's happening, the time, the tape number, then the level meter and the tape line.

• The time reads hours.minutes.seconds: 0.00.40 is forty seconds in. While recording, it's the length of the take so far.
• The number in the box is the tape: 06 is the sixth tape in the list. While recording it's the number the new take will get.
• The level meter under the time shows how loud it is, with a dot that holds the latest peak for a moment.
• The tape line at the very bottom fills in as the tape plays. While recording, a dot runs along it.

Playing and finding your place

The tape behaves like tape: it spins up when you press play, slows to a stop, and you hear it move when you wind or scrub.

• Play and pause: ▶. At the end the tape stops; press ▶ again to play it from the top.
• Stop: ■. Press ■ a second time to go back to the top.
• Another tape: − and + load the previous and next tape. If one was playing, the next one plays too.

The lever

Hold the slider on the left edge toward ︽ to wind forward or toward ︾ to rewind, both at 8×. The display says FWD or REW and you hear the tape go by. Let go and it goes back to what it was doing: playing, or stopped.

The reel

• Touch it to hold the tape where it is. The display says SCRUB.
• Turn it to move through the tape: clockwise is forward, and one full turn is 3 seconds. You hear it, slowed or sped up like a real reel under your finger, and feel a click every few degrees.
• Let go and a playing tape carries on from there.

To find one sentence in a long tape: wind with the lever until you're close, then turn the reel to land on it exactly.

Tape to text

AP-7 can send a tape to a transcription service and keep the text with the tape. It's off until you set it up, and a tape only leaves your phone when you press transcribe on it.

1. Pick a service

   Open the settings tab. Under cloud transcription, pick gemini flash, elevenlabs scribe, openai whisper, openai gpt-4o or your server.

2. Give it your key

   Paste your own API key for that service and tap save. The setting tells you where to get one. The saved key shows as its last four characters, with remove beside it. For your server, type its address instead, such as http://my-pc:8080, save, then test.

3. Transcribe a tape

   Open a tape's keys in the list and press transcribe. AP-7 converts the tape to 16 kHz mono and uploads it. When the text comes back, the tape is marked txt and the first lines show under its keys.

• You can leave AP-7 while it works: a notification shows the progress and, if you're elsewhere, says when the transcript is ready. Tap it to open the transcript.
• If something goes wrong, the reason shows in red under the tape's keys, such as no connection; check the network and try again. Tap it to clear it.
• transcribe on a tape that already has a transcript makes a new one in its place.
• Your keys stay on this phone and are left out of backups.

The transcript

• The line under the title says which tape it is and which service wrote it.
• Copy puts the whole text on the clipboard; share sends it to another app. To take only part, press and hold on the text to select it.
• ✦ opens brain AI.
• ✕ or Back closes it.

Your own server

Rather keep every word at home? AP-7 can send tapes to a whisper.cpp server on your own computer, for example a PC with an NVIDIA GPU that your phone reaches over Tailscale. The AP-7 page shows how to set one up. Plain http:// is fine inside Tailscale, which is already encrypted; use https for anything outside your home network.

Quick memos

Two ways to be recording before you've finished the thought, without finding the app first.

From the home screen

Press and hold the AP-7 icon and pick memo. AP-7 opens already recording. You can drag memo onto your home screen as its own icon.

From the side button

1. Turn it on

   In the settings tab, turn on side button memo. An app called ap–7 memo appears in your app list.

2. Point the side button at it

   On a Galaxy, open Settings › Advanced features › Side button › Double press › Open app and choose ap–7 memo.

3. Double-press

   Double-press the side button, even with the phone locked: AP-7 opens over the lock screen and starts recording.

• Over the lock screen, the inner screen shows the recorder alone: your tapes, transcripts and settings wait until the phone is unlocked. Once you stop, AP-7 goes back behind the lock screen.
• Android doesn't let any app use press-and-hold of the side button, so it's a double press.

Where your tapes live

Every tape is a plain WAV file you can take anywhere.

• Tapes are kept in AP-7's own folder, Android/data/com.appxygen.ap7/files/Recordings.
• A tape's file is named after when it was made, such as ap7_20261024_190212.wav. Renaming adds the title after it (ap7_20261024_190212_saturday rehearsal.wav), so the title travels with shares and exports and the tapes stay in the order you made them.
• A transcript is saved beside its tape as ….transcript.json, with the latest brain AI result of each kind. It's renamed and deleted with the tape.
• Export copies a tape to Recordings/AP-7, where My Files, other apps and a computer over USB can reach it.

Before you uninstall AP-7, export the tapes you want to keep. Android deletes an app's own folder with the app.

All controls at a glance