First published February 2, 2018.
Google can save short audio recordings of your voice when you talk to its services, such as saying "Hey Google" to the Assistant or tapping the microphone in Search or Maps. It does not record every conversation you have. Those clips, when saved, sit in your Google Account under Web & App Activity, where you can play them back, delete them one by one or all at once, and switch the saving off. According to Google's own help page, the setting that keeps voice and audio is now off unless you choose to turn it on. Here is how to check what your account holds and what each control does.
What Google saves, and what it does not
A voice clip is created when a device detects what Google calls an activation. That can be the wake phrase "Hey Google" or "OK Google", a quick phrase, a continued conversation with the Assistant, or a press of a microphone button. Google says some devices also capture a few seconds of audio from just before the activation, so the request is not cut off.
If the voice and audio setting is on, that recording is stored on Google's servers and linked to your account, next to a text transcript of what you said. Google says it uses these recordings to improve its speech recognition.
What it is not: a microphone that runs into the cloud all day. The phone or speaker listens locally for the wake phrase and only starts sending audio once it thinks it heard one. That said, false triggers happen. A television line, a similar-sounding word or a pocket press can wake a device, and Google itself warns that accidental activations may be saved too.
Why this became a privacy story
When this topic went viral in 2017 and 2018, many readers were shocked to find months or years of their own voice searches stored in their account. At that time, saving was often switched on as part of Google's general activity settings, and many people had never looked.
The concern grew in July 2019. The Belgian broadcaster VRT NWS reported that contractors transcribing Google Assistant clips could hear names, addresses and private conversations. Of more than 1,000 recordings it examined, it said 153 had been captured without anyone saying "OK Google". Google confirmed that language experts reviewed around 0.2 percent of audio clips and paused those reviews in Europe while it investigated; a German data protection authority in Hamburg also opened proceedings.
The lesson is not that every word is recorded. It is that the clips which are saved are real, personal and sometimes captured by mistake, so it is worth knowing where they are.
How to find your saved voice recordings
Menus change over time, so treat these steps as a guide and check Google's help page if a label looks different.
- Sign in to your Google Account on a computer or phone and open Data & privacy.
- Under History settings, choose Web & App Activity.
- Select Manage activity. Entries that include a recording show an audio icon.
- Open an entry's Details and choose View recording to play it.
Older links to "history.google.com" now redirect to Google's activity pages, which is why some screenshots in past articles look nothing like the screen you see today.
How to delete recordings
You have three main choices:
- Delete a single item. In Manage activity, open the menu next to the entry and choose Delete.
- Delete everything. Choose Delete above your activity list and select All time. Be aware that this clears all Web & App Activity, including searches and app use, not only the audio.
- Delete automatically. Under Manage activity, use the option to keep activity for a set period, for example 3, 18 or 36 months, then confirm. Older items are removed on a rolling basis.
Google also says it may delete audio sooner once it is no longer needed for improving its technology, but you do not have to rely on that.
How to stop new recordings being saved
Go back to Data & privacy, open Web & App Activity and untick Include voice and audio activity. From that point, new voice requests should not be stored as recordings in your account.
Two things trip people up here:
- Turning the setting off does not delete old audio. You need to remove past recordings separately, using the steps above.
- It is not the same as removing microphone access. Your phone's own permission settings decide which apps can use the microphone at all. You can turn off "Hey Google" detection in the Assistant settings, or deny microphone permission to the Google app, if you would rather not use voice features.
On iPhones and iPads, the same account settings apply if you use the Google app or Assistant there, because the recordings belong to your Google Account rather than to the device.
The trade-off
Switching voice features off has a cost. Voice search, hands-free directions while driving and Assistant routines are the reasons many people turn them on in the first place. Saved recordings can also help speech recognition handle your accent or way of speaking.
A sensible middle ground for many people is to keep voice features if they find them useful, leave audio saving off, and set auto-delete for the rest of their activity. Whatever you choose, the right check is a quick visit to your own activity page every so often rather than relying on viral posts or old screenshots.
Myths worth clearing up
- "Google records everything you say." Saved audio comes from activations, including accidental ones, not from continuous recording.
- "Your history page shows everything Google knows." It shows the activity linked to your account controls. Google's privacy policy describes other kinds of data that are handled separately.
- "Deleting one setting solves it." Saving, deleting and microphone permission are three separate switches.
Sources: Google Help: Manage your voice and audio activity; Wikipedia: Google Assistant (privacy and the 2019 VRT NWS report); The Free Thought Project.
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