Transcribe and Summarize Podcasts with iOS 18 Apple Notes + Shortcuts

One of the most-requested Shortcuts from my audience has been the ability to transcribe and summarize a podcast. While there is a transcribe audio action available in Shortcuts, it was unreliable and only worked on short audio clips.

Tested with all podcasts included in the menu

Now with iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, Apple Notes has the ability to transcribe any audio file you attach to a note, which is possible in Shortcuts. Plus, with Apple Intelligence summaries, you can automatically get a full transcript and summary of your favorite podcast all on-device and with first-party apps.

I recently showed this process in a Shortcuts video on YouTube, and it’s also embedded below, but I’ve since improved on the Shortcut to include some of my favorite tech shows as a built-in menu option. Plus, it won’t have to save the audio file to iCloud anymore. Rather it will work out-of-the-box and attach the file to Apple Notes.

The Shortcut

Keep in mind some shows take longer to process than others, but I’ve tested each and they all work. Give Apple Notes some time to transcribe, and sometimes it did require me to prompt generating a summary, but just run this Shortcut to get a full transcription, and summary, of some of your favorite podcasts.

Note: You may encounter this error message when running the Shortcut. It’s a bug, and often it will create the note with audio file attached anyway. The Shortcut seems to run consistently on macOS 15.1, but iOS 18.1 and betas are flaky.

Try running the Shortcut again if it appears to have failed, but double check your Apple Notes folder first before inadvertently creating dozens of notes thinking it failed (like I did).