Remember when you could record calls on your mobile phone in excellent quality? It’s been a long time since Android 9 Pie started limiting recording apps, and we’ve finally gotten used to poor microphone recording quality. Today, the bar for call recording is even lower: It works very poorly and configuring them is a challenge.

Google wanted to put an end to call recording apps, and although it wasn’t 100% successful, it put an end to this practice. The process is so difficult that many people give up.. I was able to verify this firsthand after trying four search apps that had some degree of survival on Google Play.

There are fewer and fewer apps for recording calls

Today on Google Play we find several applications for recording hundreds of calls that existed a few years ago. There are outdated applications that will only work on mobile phones with older versions of Android and adapted to meet all the requirements of Google Play. The latter is the only one that continues to work on a modern mobile phone and These are a real pain to engage..

To check the current status of call recording apps on Android, we tested:Four of the most popular survivors on Google Play: Cube ACR, ACR Phone, Speaker ACR and Call Recorder. The first three continue to work and the last one does not record anything.

Four calling apps I’ve tried: Cube ACR, ACR Phone, Talker ACR and Call Recorder

The journey into the wilds of call recording apps began in Android 9 Pie, when Google began limiting access to undocumented APIs like the one developers use to record call audio. Since then, call recording apps, record sound with microphonelower quality using accessibility permission.

More bad news came around the time of Android 10, when Google decided that accessibility services, at least in the app store, were for accessibility, not for recording calls. As a result, call recording apps had to remove accessibility permissions to remain on Google Play. They can’t work without them.

This change caused many call recording apps to give up. Those who continued were forced use a lot of imagination to keep it running. The problem is that these creative ways of doing things require tons of extra steps for users and an experience that leaves a lot to be desired.

Terrible experience

An app on Google Play cannot use accessibility permissions to record searches and cannot record searches without these permissions. The solution found by apps like Cube ACR or ACR Phone is to keep a clean version on Google Play and use a companion app that you must download and install separately. This second app is the one that contains the accessibility services needed to record calls.

This means that launching a call recording app today is a much more traumatic experience than it was a few years ago. Besides giving a lot of permission, there comes a point when you need to install the companion app from an external locationfor example from an APK on the official website or another app store.

This is frustrating enough, but it comes with an added complication. Apps installed from APK since Android 13 Accessibility permissions are restricted sherry. Therefore, you cannot grant accessibility permission directly but you must unlock its restricted permissions first.

You either allow restricted settings (to enable accessibility services) or you have to install your own app store

ACR Phone uses APH as a companion app and found a way to avoid having to unlock permissions: Install APH from your own app store, called NLL Store. Apps installed from a store like the NLL Store do not have restricted accessibility permissions, but in return, to install one app, you must install another app. No solution is truly optimal. The configuration process generally looks like this:

• You are installing the Google Play application.
• You open it and grant a bunch of permissions.
• It says it needs an external app to work.
• You download the secondary app from the official website and open it.
• You grant the helper a set of permissions.
• You unlock limited permissions via the help app in phone settings.
• In mobile settings, enable accessibility permissions in the help app.
• You can now record calls.

And a result that can be improved

So sad for a low quality recording

The good news is that those 10 minutes you spend setting up the call recording app will leave it running forever without you having to touch anything else. The bad news is the recording is still poor qualityusing the mobile microphone to record both your voice and the other person’s voice.

This means you can’t record calls if you’re using a Bluetooth headset (you can, but you won’t hear much), and you’ll often hear yourself much louder than the other person. The only way to record calls in good quality Nowadays, your phone is either rooted or has a call recording feature as standard.

Google doesn’t need to police what can and can’t be done on mobile

Google has cornered its call recording apps so much that the security measures included in recent versions of Android are no longer effective. Users are forced to install apps outside of Google Play, unlock their restricted permissions, and turn on accessibility permissions. is combination of the three most dangerous actions can be performed on a mobile device.

While it is true that call recording is illegal or may have its nuances in many countries, It’s not Google’s job to actively prevent its use. After all, many other functions of a mobile phone can be used for illegal purposes (such as recording or taking photos in prohibited places) and this does not mean that their use is blocked.

Users they will continue to record calls If it plays it can be recorded (e.g. with another mobile phone or a recording device), so getting users into disabling security measures in apps installed from external sources seems like a bad idea.

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