A Place Recalled is intentionally small. Most questions are answered in the FAQ below. If you don't find what you need, send a note.
Tap the plus button in the library. Set the phone down — the instruction reads "capture the room, not the people in it." Tap the big circle to begin recording. The app records up to 30 seconds of ambient sound, or you can tap again to stop earlier. After the recording ends, the app finds a clean loop point and plays it back so you can listen before deciding whether to keep it.
Before each capture, the app briefly listens for human voices using Apple's on-device sound classifier. If voices are detected, you'll see a quiet prompt — Wait or Continue. The captured loop is much more interesting when it's the room's own sound: a dishwasher, distant traffic, a fan, the building settling. Voices in the loop tend to feel intrusive on playback. The check runs only in memory; nothing is stored.
If the first loop the app finds doesn't quite match your taste, Try another reruns the loop-finder with different parameters and shows you a fresh candidate. Your captured audio stays in memory the whole time — nothing is saved until you tap Keep.
The chosen loop is encoded as a small audio file and saved on your device. If location is on, the coordinate is saved with the memory and a paperback-styled map snapshot is rendered locally. Everything syncs to your private iCloud account if you're signed in.
After Keep, if the new capture is within ~20 meters of an existing memory, you'll see a quiet prompt: Add to {place} or Save as new. Adding stacks the new visit under the existing memory, sharing its name and map. Several visits to the same coffee shop over months become one growing record of that place.
Open a memory. Tap the title at the top. Free-form text — the date is the fallback when there's no name.
Tap the map icon in the top-left of the library. Memories with location appear as paperback-styled bookmark pins. Pins with multiple visits show a small visit count. Tap a pin to open that memory.
Long-press the play button. A sheet offers 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 1 hour. The loop fades out smoothly when the timer fires. Useful for falling asleep to the sound of a remembered place.
No. Captures work fine without it; the memory just won't have a map or appear in the map browse view. You can toggle location in Settings inside the app, or never grant the system permission.
Yes, if you're signed into iCloud. Memories, audio loops, locations, and map snapshots sync across your iPhone and iPad through your private CloudKit container. Apple encrypts it; sthreelabs has no access.
No. The app explicitly prefers the phone's built-in microphone for capture, even with a Bluetooth headset connected. The phone's mic is what should hear the room — a headset mic moves with your head, which would be the wrong input for ambient place-tied capture.
Swipe left on a row in the library. Deleting a memory removes its audio file, map snapshot, and the iCloud copy.
Not in this version. Both are on the roadmap — a lock-screen widget that plays your last memory or an "on this day" card, and a small Watch complication for one-tap recall.
Bug reports, feature requests, or questions: [email protected]
We try to respond within a few days.
Made quietly by sthreelabs.