Is a recording admissible in court? Here is what actually decides it.

There is no general answer, and anyone giving you one is describing a single jurisdiction without saying so, or guessing. It is decided by the court, under its own rules of evidence, on the facts in front of it, and in many systems as a discretion rather than a rule. What can be said usefully is what the decision turns on: how the recording was obtained, whether anyone can account for where it has been, whether it is complete, whether the voices can be identified, and what the court's own procedural rules require. This tool sets those out for your situation instead of pretending to resolve them.

Recording without telling people is the answer that changes the most, in every forum, everywhere — but it does not settle the question by itself in most places. In some jurisdictions there is a specific provision about unlawfully intercepted communications being put before a decision-maker. In others, including England and Wales in criminal proceedings, the court has a discretion and weighs how the recording was obtained against the fairness of the proceedings. And separately from what happens to the recording, making it may have been unlawful in its own right, which is a problem for the person who made it rather than for the case. Take that combination to a lawyer rather than to a search engine.

An internal workplace process is not a court and is not decided by the rules of evidence. It runs under your employer's policy and procedure, and the process decides for itself what it will consider. Two things follow. Producing a recording may or may not help, depending on that policy. And covert recording is treated as misconduct under a great many workplace policies, sometimes gross misconduct, assessed on its own terms regardless of what is on the recording. Read the grievance and disciplinary policy and your contract before you produce anything, and take advice — from a union representative if you have one — about whether to mention the recording at this stage at all.

Usually yes, though how differently varies enormously. Where the recording breached the local recording or surveillance law, some jurisdictions have written a provision dealing specifically with that recording being put before a decision-maker, and some make using or passing on the recording a separate offence in its own right. Elsewhere, how it was obtained is one of the circumstances weighed rather than a rule with a fixed answer. The consistent part is the bit people miss: the person who made the recording may have their own exposure, separate from anything that happens to the recording, and that does not go away because the recording turns out to be useful.

It matters, and not because anyone assumes bad faith. A clip raises the immediate question of what sits either side of it, and 'I only kept the important part' is a weak answer even when it is completely true. Trimming also usually writes a new file, which can drop the labels the original carried about when it was made and what recorded it. The practical position: keep the full-length original, and if you need a short version for convenience make it a separate file that sits alongside the full one rather than replacing it. If you have already trimmed and deleted, go back to the recording device and check whether the original is still there.

It does, and it is one of the most common ways a good recording gets weakened by accident. WhatsApp and most messaging apps re-compress audio when they send it, so the file that arrives is a new one: put through a second round of lossy compression, and usually stripped of the metadata the original carried. If you can, go back to the device that made the recording and export the original as a file — copied, not sent through a chat app — and keep it alongside whatever version has been circulating. If the only copy you have is the one that came out of the chat app, say so plainly rather than presenting it as the original.

Carefully, and with less certainty than you would like. A file may carry a creation timestamp written by the recording app, and that is the most useful single thing it can contain — but it is ordinary data that any program can write, so it is a strong hint rather than proof. The date your computer shows in a file listing is worse: that is filesystem metadata describing when this copy appeared on this device, and copying, downloading or syncing rewrites it. What actually helps is the combination: the file's own timestamp, your written note made at the time, anything the recording itself captures about when it is, and corroboration from messages or call logs around it.

No, and neither can any other tool that reads metadata — including the ones that say they can. Editing software and software that only re-saved a file untouched leave the same traces, which is frequently none at all. What the file check on this page does is report what is in the file: whether it carries a creation time, what software has named itself inside it, whether the stated length matches the audio, whether it is carrying location data. Every one of those is an observation with an ordinary explanation attached. If authenticity is genuinely in issue, that is work for a qualified forensic audio examiner, who works from the audio signal itself and can be questioned on their method.

Not before taking advice, and this is one of the few places where the general answer is fairly firm. Sending a recording is a separate act from making one, with its own consequences — some jurisdictions treat passing on or publishing a recorded conversation under a distinct provision with its own penalties. It also changes the shape of what happens next in ways that are hard to reverse. If you have already sent it, that is not a catastrophe: write down exactly who received it and when, stop sending it anywhere else, and raise it early with whoever is advising you.

Then more than one set of rules may be relevant, and which one applies is itself a question that gets decided rather than looked up. The law of the place the conversation happened is usually where the question of whether recording it was lawful starts. The rules of the forum are what govern how a recording is put before it. Those can be different jurisdictions with different answers, and recorded phone calls are the common case — the two people on the call may not have been in the same country. This tool asks where the recording was made and is explicit about it not answering which law a decision-maker would apply.

Because the honest answer does not exist in a form a web page can deliver, and the dishonest one does real damage. Somebody who reads a confident yes on a website, walks into a hearing on the strength of it and finds out otherwise is in a materially worse position than somebody who arrived knowing it was an open question. The factors on this page are not a hedge — they are what the argument will actually be about, and knowing them is what lets you prepare for it and brief a lawyer efficiently. If certainty is what you need, that comes from a qualified lawyer looking at your specific facts, and it is worth the appointment.

For anything that matters, yes, and this tool is designed to make that appointment cheaper rather than to replace it. The questions it generates are specific to your answers, which means a first meeting can be spent on your situation instead of on background. Bring the recording, bring your written note of when it was made and who has had it, and bring the questions. If you cannot afford a lawyer, many places have free advice services, legal aid, union representation, community law centres or a citizens' advice equivalent — and an employment matter often has a route through a union that a general lawyer does not.

Your answers and any file you check stay in this browser. There is no API route behind this tool, no upload endpoint and no server-side handling of either — your answers live in the page's own storage so a refresh does not lose them, and a file you drop in is read on your device the same way a music player reads it. To be exact about the rest: the site around the tool loads Vercel Analytics for aggregate page traffic, plus Google Analytics and Ads tags if you accepted the consent prompt, and this tool sends the same kind of funnel events the other tools do. Those carry your country and which path you took, never your answers about the recording and never anything from a file.