Apple is shutting down its Music Memos recording app

Anytime you download an app, there’s a chance the developer that created it will one day sunset one of your favorite experiences. Unfortunately, that’s to be the fate of Apple’s Music Memos software. This week, the company updated the app to version 1.0.7. Coincidently, this is the first time Apple has updated Music Memos in more than a year, and the sole purpose of this new version is to facilitate the app’s shutdown.

Music Memos, if you need a refresher, is free recording software Apple released in 2016. At the time, the company positioned it as a more robust alternative to Voice Memos tailored to musicians’ needs. It came with handy features like a built-in tuner and didn’t compress audio files in the way that Voice Memos is known to do. That made it perfect for quickly and easily recording snippets of songs when you got a flash of inspiration.

When you open the updated Music Memos, a notification will prompt you to export your recordings to Voice Memos. If you dismiss the pop-up, it will appear in another seven days. Once you complete the process, you’ll find all your recordings in a folder titled “Music Memos.” Provided you have iOS 14 or iPadOS 14 installed on your device, you’ll still be able to use Music Memos. However, after March 1st, 2021, you won’t be able to download Music Memos if it isn’t already in your App Store purchase history.

Apple didn’t say why it’s shutting down Music Memos, but it’s likely that not that many people were using the software. As 9to5Mac points out, the irony of all this is that Apple introduced Music Memos so that musicians wouldn’t have to use Voice Memos. Now it’s pushing those same users back to Voice Memos.