The widget nobody asked for (until they did)
It was 11pm on a Tuesday when I received a Slack message from one of our beta testers. She'd been in back-to-back client calls all day, and by the time she needed to record a voice note about a contract amendment, she'd fumbled through three app switches, missed her thought, and given up. 'Why can't I just press a button from my lock screen?' she wrote. That message changed how we thought about Scribr.
The problem was friction, not features
When we first built Scribr, we thought about all the obvious moments: sitting down for a scheduled meeting, dialling into a conference call, settling in to record a voice memo. Real life doesn't work that way.
Our users were catching conversations in corridors, jotting down thoughts in the middle of emails, taking notes on client calls while driving (safely, parked). The fastest path to record a note often meant opening the app, navigating to the right screen, and hitting record. By then, half the thought was gone. Or worse, they'd reach for their phone's voice memo app instead of Scribr, and that conversation vanished from their meeting history entirely.
We were adding features nobody needed because we weren't solving the feature that mattered most: speed. Getting to the record button in under a second.
Widgets and Siri shortcuts weren't trendy. They were necessary.
The Quick Record Widget lets you tap once from your lock screen and start recording. A Siri shortcut does the same with your voice. No opening the app. No navigation. The audio files land in Scribr automatically, ready to transcribe on your device (if you're on the Free tier) or in the cloud (if you're on Pro or above).
We didn't choose these because iOS widgets were fashionable. We chose them because the people using Scribr weren't sitting at desks. They were therapists between sessions, sales reps after calls, researchers in the field, freelancers in coffee shops. Their phones needed to work like a dictaphone first and a note-taking app second.
One of our early users, a consultant who does client interviews, told us the widget cut her friction from 'I should record this' to 'I recorded this' by about 20 seconds. In a day of back-to-back meetings, that's a difference in whether you actually use the tool or revert to muscle memory and habits.
Privacy had to come first, or it didn't matter at all
The Quick Record Widget ships free because we wanted zero barriers to using it. But there was a catch: if someone's phone is stolen, or if they hand it to a colleague, that record button is sitting right there. We built biometric lock across the entire app, from lock screen to the Vault. You can't open a recording, read your notes, or access your contact history without Face ID or Touch ID.
For anyone handling sensitive information (and that's most of our users), this wasn't a nice-to-have. It was the difference between a tool they'd actually use and one they'd worry about using.
We also made sure the free tier transcribes on your device, using Apple's Speech Recognition engine. That audio never touches our servers. If you move to Pro and use cloud transcription, you're consenting explicitly. We tell you what's happening. The notes you write get encrypted with AES-GCM in Vault Mode if you turn it on. This wasn't a marketing angle; it was table stakes for people whose job is to listen and remember.
Why this matters more than it sounds
What we learned by building the widget and Siri shortcut is that the fastest meeting recorder isn't the one with the most features. It's the one that gets out of your way.
A lot of note-taking tools are built around the idea of a scheduled meeting. You open your calendar, find the meeting, click 'record.' But Scribr is built for the moments that don't show up in a calendar: the phone call you take from your car, the conversation with a colleague at lunch, the interview you're running in someone else's office, the therapy session that just started.
The widget and Siri shortcut are still free because they're not a feature we're trying to monetise. They're the entry point. Once someone starts using Scribr for the small, quick moments, they stay. They upgrade to Pro to get AI summaries of their calls, or to use the Action Items Widget so they remember what they promised to do. But they start with the lock screen button, because that's where the friction was.
What we got wrong (and what we fixed)
Shipping the widget revealed something we hadn't expected. On the free tier, people were recording calls at a volume we didn't anticipate. The on-device transcription was keeping up, but just barely. We had to optimise how Whisper and Apple Speech worked on older iPhones. We also added better file management, because suddenly people weren't opening the app for days but they were generating recordings constantly.
The Pro tier needed a middle ground too. We built the Action Items Widget so people could see their to-dos from their home screen without opening the app at all. The same philosophy: get the information you need without the app.
This is what I'd tell other founders building tools for busy people: design for the interruption, not the ritual. Your users won't have a quiet moment to sit down with your app. They'll be in motion, half listening to something else, trying to remember one thing before they forget it. If your tool adds steps, they won't use it.
The question we're still asking is simple: what's the next friction point we're missing? If you use Scribr, or if you've wanted to but found something got in the way, I'd genuinely like to know what it was.