How to Save Voicemails to Your Computer
For many people, voicemails are but fleeting bits of communication, teeming with sweet nothings and disposable dispatches. But for some, they are conveyors of important pieces of information that happen to be prone to accidental deletion and data loss. They must, therefore, be preserved for retrieval in the foreseeable future, whether for legal purposes (e.g., as evidence in disputes) or for reasons sentimental, nostalgic, or humorous in nature. If you’re so inclined, you’re probably wondering how to pull that off. It’s one thing to want to save voicemails, but it’s another to actually get the deed done. Given the relative lack of automation on this front, you’re going to have to do much virtual legwork, initially at least, to save your precious voicemails. And the best way to do that is to save voicemails to your computer — and probably the best way to learn how to do just that is by reading this AppAdvice guide.
First things first. To be able to obtain recordings of your voicemails for saving, your iPhone needs to have a carrier-dependent feature called Visual Voicemail. To know if your iPhone has it, just open the Phone app and tap the Voicemail tab. If you see a list of recordings, you have Visual Voicemail. But if your iPhone calls a voice mail server instead, your carrier does not support Visual Voicemail, and you will not be able to save your voicemails elsewhere.
You can choose from three ways of saving voicemails: the simplest method, the iTunes method, and the iCloud Drive method. All three methods are detailed below for your perusal and to help you decide which one is best for you.
The simplest method
Let’s begin with the simplest method, which simply has you sending the voicemails you’d like to save via text, email, or AirDrop, or adding them to your notes in the Notes app.
Here are the simple steps to sharing your voicemail messages.
How to share voicemails
Open the Phone app on your iPhone.
Tap the Voicemail tab.
Tap the voicemail message that you’d like to save.
Tap the share icon.
Tap the AirDrop, Message, Mail, or Notes icon.
The voicemail message is then shared via the corresponding app or service:
- AirDrop lets you share the voicemail with a nearby iOS or Mac device.
- Message lets you share the voicemail via text.
- Mail lets you share the voicemail via email.
- Notes lets you add the voicemail to a new or existing note.
It’s then up to you to access the shared voicemails according to the sharing method you used for archiving purposes on your computer:
- AirDrop works directly with a Mac computer.
- Message works with iMessage on a Mac.
- Mail of course work with email clients on any computer.
- Notes works with a synced iCloud account on a Mac.
The iTunes method
Of course, simplest doesn’t always mean best. If you want a more systematic approach to archiving your voicemails, try this one. This method entails saving your voicemails as voice memos and then syncing them with iTunes on your computer, so it’s imperative that you know how to do both.
Here are the simple steps to saving voicemail messages as voice memos.
How to save voicemails as voice memos
Open the Phone app on your iPhone.
Tap the Voicemail tab.
Tap the voicemail message that you’d like to save.
Tap the share icon.
Tap the Voice Memos icon.
The voicemail message is then saved as a voice memo that you can access in the Voice Memos app.
Once you’ve saved voicemails as voice memos, you’re ready to sync them with iTunes, thereby exporting them to your computer.
How to sync voice memos with iTunes
Open iTunes on your computer.
Connect your iPhone to your computer via USB.
Wait for your computer to detect your iPhone.
Once it’s detected, an iPhone will appear on at the top left portion of iTunes.
Click the iPhone icon.
Click Music in the sidebar menu.
Click to check the box for Sync Music.
Click to check the box for “Include music videos.”
Click Apply at the bottom.
iTunes will then sync with your iPhone and in the process copy the voice memos, including your saved voicemails as well as other recordings in the Voice Memos app, from your iPhone into your computer.
Now that you have your voicemail messages copied into your computer, the next important thing to know is how to access them on your computer. And to do that, since your saved voicemails take the form of voice memos, you need to know where to find your synced voice memos on your computer. And then you also need to know how to copy the voice memos (i.e., voicemails) that you’d like archive into a computer folder.
Below are the steps for all that.
How to access voice memos on your computer
Open iTunes on your computer.
Choose Music in the media type selector at the top right portion of iTunes.
Scroll down the sidebar and select Voice Memos from the list of playlists.
The main pane of iTunes will then show a list of your voice memos.
From the list of voice memos, find the voicemail messages you’d like to archive. Then, right-click on them and select Copy to copy and paste them into a folder you wish to use an archive location.
Alternatively, you can just drag the item from iTunes and drop it into the folder.
To find out where all of the synced voice memos are located, select a voice memo in iTunes and click “Show in Finder” if you’re on a Mac or “Show in Explorer” if you’re on a PC. A window will then open showing the file location of the selected voice memo and other voice memos on your computer. On a Mac, this location is at Macintosh HD > Users > [your Mac username] > Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > Voice Memos. On a PC, it’s at C:\Users\[your username]\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Voice Memos.
The iCloud Drive method
Now if you want a more systematic yet less involved way of archiving your voicemails, this one is for you. This method requires file storage and syncing via iCloud Drive, so you should be using the same iCloud account on your iPhone and on your Mac or PC and have already set up iCloud Drive on both your phone and your computer.
With this method, you need to save voicemail messages to iCloud Drive. Here’s how.
How to save voicemails to iCloud Drive
Open the Phone app on your iPhone.
Tap the Voicemail tab.
Tap the voicemail message that you’d like to save.
Tap the share icon.
Tap the “Add to iCloud Drive” icon.
Choose the folder to add the voicemail to.
The voicemail is then saved to iCloud Drive in the chosen folder.
Then, the rest of this method is just a matter of accessing the location of your saved voicemails in your computer — a cinch, as evidenced by the following steps.
How to access voicemails saved in iCloud Drive
If you’re on a Mac, open a Finder window and click iCloud Drive in the sidebar menu. If you’re on a PC, open a File Explorer window and select the iCloud Drive folder.
Go to the folder where you saved your voicemails.
There you’ll see the files corresponding to your saved voicemails.
