Meet Apprent — The trade. From the master's voice

Education

Apprent

The trade. From the master's voice.

Every feature, from the first launch.

No account, no login, no cloud. Everything runs on your device and works fully offline — nothing in this post is hidden behind a wall.

What Apprent does

Apprent is the pocket apprenticeship journal — a structured place to record the master craftsman next to you (electrician, plumber, woodworker, mason, welder, mechanic, HVAC tech, machinist, carpenter) explaining the why behind the work. It is the field notebook your boss wishes the apprentices kept five years ago.

75% of US manufacturers report a critical skills gap. The journeyman class that learned the trade in the 1970s is retiring. The apprentice next to them has 20 minutes between jobs to capture a technique that took 40 years to learn. Pencil and paper falls behind. Voice memos pile up unsearchable. There is no calm app structured around the apprenticeship.

Apprent is that journal. Record the master speaking; Apple's on-device SFSpeechRecognizer transcribes; tag the entry by trade, technique category, and tool; review later by tag. No account. No cloud. No social feed.

What ships in v1:

— Mentor register: every journeyman you've worked under. Trade, years of experience, shop / employer, signature techniques. — Recording: one-tap voice capture with live on-device transcription (SFSpeechRecognizer, requiresOnDeviceRecognition=true). No upload, no third-party transcription. — Technique card: each recording becomes a card with title, mentor, trade, tool, technique category (joinery, soldering, pulling wire, layout, fitting, finishing, troubleshooting), and the full transcript. — Tool log: every tool you encountered with brand, model, year, and the technique cards that reference it. — Trade reference: bundled glossary of ~100 trade terms per major trade (electrical, plumbing, framing, HVAC, machining, welding) — common terms apprentices ask about in the first year. — Code corner: bundled summary of the most-cited code references — NEC chapters apprentice electricians actually look up; UPC fixture units; IRC stud spacing — pointers, not the codes themselves (always check the latest published edition). — Search: full-text across transcripts. Find every time a mentor mentioned 'wire pull tension' or 'soldering flux.' — No 'Pro,' no in-app purchases. Yours.

Apprent is for the first-year apprentice, the journeyman who wants to leave a record before they retire, and the union local that wants its apprentices to learn from the most-experienced JATC instructors.

Apprent is record-keeping software. The code references are general pointers; always consult the latest published code edition for the work you're doing.

A look inside

Tap any screenshot to open the full-resolution version.

What's inside

Recordings — On-device transcribed mentor interviews.
Mentors — The journeymen you've worked under.
Tools — Every tool with its technique cards.
Reference — Trade glossary + code pointers.
Settings — Privacy + about.

Why we built it

Trade knowledge transfers face-to-face, master-to-apprentice, in real time at the worksite. There is no calm iOS app that structures the apprentice's notes — by mentor, by trade, by technique category, with on-device speech transcription. Voice memos in iOS Voice Memos accumulate unsearchable.

What makes it different

Apprent is the only iOS app structured around the trades apprenticeship — mentor register, on-device SFSpeechRecognizer with requiresOnDeviceRecognition=true, technique cards tagged by trade/tool/category, tool log, bundled trade glossary, and code-reference pointers. Voice Memos has no structure. Notion is too heavy.…

Who it's for

Students, parents helping with homework, and adults who just want a fast answer without an upsell.

In one line: The trade. From the master's voice.

Try it

See the Apprent app page for the full feature list, the info table, and support links.

Use Apprent, found a bug, or have a feature request? Comments are open below — anonymous is fine.