How to Turn a Voice Note Into a To-Do List
To turn a voice note into a to-do list, send it to Olive (witholive.app) on WhatsApp or record it in the web app. She transcribes what you said and sorts the individual pieces into tasks, reminders, and lists on her own — you don't type anything or pick a category first. Free during beta.
Last updated: October 6, 2026
Step 1: Say it the way you’d actually say it
Don’t rehearse a voice note like you’re dictating a memo. The reason this works at all is that you talk the way you’d talk to a person standing next to you — out loud, in whatever order the thoughts come, including the parts that aren’t tasks. “Okay so I need to call the dentist tomorrow, also remind me to pick up dry cleaning before Friday, and — oh — we’re almost out of coffee” is a normal 15-second ramble, not a structured list, and that’s the point. You’re not writing a to-do list before you send it. You’re thinking out loud and letting Olive do the writing part afterward. People who try to over-organize the voice note first usually end up typing it instead, which defeats the reason to use voice at all: it’s faster to say three unrelated things than to stop and sort them in your head first.
Step 2: Send it to Olive
From WhatsApp, record a voice note the same way you’d send one to a friend and send it to Olive (witholive.app) directly — no group chat, no special command, just a normal voice message in your 1:1 thread with her. If you’re in the web app instead, tap the microphone icon on the capture box and talk; it works the same way. Either channel reaches the same place: Olive listens to the whole thing before deciding what’s in it, so a single voice note covering three different things doesn’t need to be split into three separate messages.
Step 3: Olive transcribes and sorts it — you don’t
This is the step that replaces the to-do list app entirely. Olive transcribes the voice note into text, then reads that text the way you’d read a note someone left you, pulling out the separate pieces: “call the dentist tomorrow” becomes a task with a rough due date attached; “remind me to pick up dry cleaning before Friday” becomes a reminder tied to that day; “we’re almost out of coffee” lands on your running grocery list instead of becoming a task you have to remember to check off. You never chose a category, typed a title, or decided which list something belonged on. The sorting happens because Olive read what you actually said, not because you filled out a form first.
Step 4: Check the result, not your memory
Once it’s processed, open the web app or ask Olive directly to see what she pulled out of the voice note. If something landed in the wrong place — she filed something as a reminder that you meant as a one-off task, say — you can move or edit it the same way you’d edit anything else in Olive; the transcription doesn’t lock you into her first read of it. The habit that actually changes is where you look afterward: instead of trying to recall everything you said in the car or on a walk, you check the list Olive built from it. The voice note did the remembering so you don’t have to replay the conversation in your head later.
Does Olive actually understand what I’m saying, or just transcribe it?
Both, in sequence. The voice note is transcribed into text first — a literal record of what you said — and then that text is read for what it means: which parts are tasks, which are reminders tied to a day, which are just items for a list. You can hear or read the raw transcription if you want to double-check it, but the useful output is the sorted version, not the transcript itself. If the transcription gets a word wrong — background noise, an unusual name — you can correct the resulting task or note directly; you don’t have to re-record the whole thing.
What if I ramble and include things that aren’t tasks at all?
That’s fine, and expected. Say the voice note before this one ran four minutes and included a work complaint, a task, and a plan for the weekend — Olive doesn’t force everything into a to-do item. The parts that are actionable — a task, a reminder, a date — get sorted into the relevant list. The parts that are just thinking out loud don’t get forced into a fake task; they’re captured as a note you can still find later if you go looking, but they don’t clutter your task list with things that were never meant to be checked off.
How is this different from just texting myself a reminder?
Texting yourself puts the words somewhere, but you’re still the one who has to notice it later, remember what it meant, and decide what to do with it — which is exactly the pattern that makes self-texted reminders disappear into the scroll. Sending the same thought to Olive as a voice note gets it transcribed and sorted the moment you send it: a task with a due date, a reminder set for the right day, an item on the list it actually belongs to. You’re not reading your own back-catalogue of texts to reconstruct what you meant three weeks ago — the sorting already happened.
If you’d rather type than talk, 5 Notion Alternatives for ADHD Brains covers the same brain-dump idea without voice. For the bigger picture of ditching manual sorting altogether, Olive for ADHD brain dumps goes deeper on that use case, and What Is a Shared Memory App? explains the category this sits in.
Try Olive free during beta — say it once, and let her do the sorting.