How to save a voicemail forever
On an iPhone: open Phone, tap Voicemail, tap the message, tap share, choose Save to Files. On Android: open the Voicemail tab, tap the message, open the three-dot menu, choose Save. Then copy it to three places. MemoriesBox is for the recordings that come after; this one is free.
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Read this first if you are in a hurry
If the voicemail is still in your phone, it is not about to vanish this minute. Take four minutes and do it properly. If it has already been deleted, go straight to if it has already been deleted and do that today, because the recovery windows are measured in days.
The whole job is three parts. Get it out of the phone as a file. Check the file plays. Put copies in three places. Nothing on this page costs money and nothing on it requires an account.
Which kind of voicemail do you have
This decides everything, and it takes ten seconds to check.
| What you see in the Phone app | What you have | Can you export a file directly? |
|---|---|---|
| A list of messages with names, dates and a play button | Visual voicemail. The audio is on the phone or in an app. | Yes |
| A keypad and a "Call Voicemail" button, or holding 1 dials a number | Carrier voicemail. The audio sits on the network. | No — you record the playback |
| A separate app from your network operator | Carrier visual voicemail | Usually yes, from the message menu |
| A Google Voice number | Google Voice | Yes, and it is the cleanest route |
iPhone: save a voicemail as a file
- Open the Phone app and tap Voicemail, bottom right.
- If you see a list of messages, you have visual voicemail and the audio is already on the phone. If you only see a keypad, skip to no visual voicemail.
- Tap the message once to open it.
- Tap the share button — the square with an arrow pointing up.
- Choose Save to Files.
- Choose On My iPhone, pick or make a folder, give the file a real name, and tap Save. You now have an
.m4afile that plays on any computer. - Open the Files app, find it, press and hold, tap Share, and send it to your email, a cloud drive, or your computer.
If the share sheet does not offer Save to Files, use Mail and email it to yourself. The attachment is the same file.
Also do this: connect the iPhone to a computer and make a local backup in Finder (macOS) or iTunes (Windows). Voicemail is included in a local backup, so it becomes a second copy even if you never open it.
iPhone Voice Memos, for anything that is not a voicemail
Voice Memos is the right tool for recording a call on speaker, or for recording a person in a room. Open Voice Memos, press the red button, press it again to stop. Tap the recording, tap the three dots, then Save to Files or Share. Before anything that matters, go to Settings → Voice Memos → Audio Quality and set it to Lossless. The file is bigger and much closer to what the microphone actually heard.
Android: save a voicemail as a file
Android varies by handset and by network, so check which of these you have.
Google's Phone app, with visual voicemail:
- Open the Phone app and tap the Voicemail tab.
- Tap the message to open it.
- Tap the three-dot menu, or press and hold the message.
- Tap Save, Download or Share.
- Saving usually puts the file in Downloads on internal storage. Open Files by Google → Downloads to find it. Depending on the network the file will be
.amr,.3gpor.mp3. - Share it to a cloud drive or email, or plug the phone into a computer with a USB cable, pull down the notification, choose File Transfer, and copy the file across.
Your network operator's own voicemail app (Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, Vodafone, O2, Orange, Telekom and most others): open the message, open its menu, and look for Save, Share, Forward or Send as email. Several operators will email the message to you as an attachment, which is the easiest possible outcome.
Google Voice, which is the cleanest route of all: go to voice.google.com on a computer, open Voicemail, open the message, click the three dots, and click Download. You get an .mp3.
No visual voicemail: record the playback
Carrier voicemail has no file to export. You record it playing. This works on every phone, on every network, and it is what most people end up doing.
- Find a second device: another phone, a laptop, or a handheld recorder.
- Quiet room. Unplug the fridge, shut the windows, silence both devices' notifications.
- Put the phone with the voicemail on speaker, about three-quarters volume, face up on a folded towel.
- Start the recorder first, and place it about 20 cm from the speaker. Not touching it. Do not cover the microphone with a finger or a case.
- Play the message from the very beginning, including the automated "received Tuesday at 4:12 pm". That timestamp is part of the record.
- Play and record it twice. The second take costs thirty seconds and saves you from a fridge cycling on.
- Listen back on headphones before you delete anything.
While you are on the phone to your network, ask them to switch on voicemail-to-email if they offer it. It will not retrieve old messages, but every future one arrives as an attachment.
If it has already been deleted
Move today. These windows are short.
- iPhone: Phone → Voicemail → scroll to the very bottom → Deleted Messages → tap the message → Undelete. How long they stay is set by your network, commonly around 30 days.
- Google Voice: voice.google.com → Trash. Items generally stay about 30 days.
- Android carrier apps: many have a Deleted or Trash folder inside the same three-dot menu.
- Carrier voicemail: call your network operator today and ask for voicemail recovery, or ask them to check the deleted store on the mailbox. Some can restore within a few days. Many cannot restore at all. Ask early rather than accurately.
- An old iPhone backup: if you have a Finder or iTunes backup made before the deletion, the voicemail may be inside it. Do not restore the whole phone over your current data without making a fresh backup of the current phone first.
And the honest part: once the network's window has closed, there is usually nothing left to recover, and no paid tool changes that. Anyone advertising guaranteed voicemail recovery after that point is selling you something. If it is gone, what you can still do is record yourself, today, saying what the message said and what their voice sounded like. That is a real artefact and it needs nobody's permission.
Keep it in three places
One copy is not a backup. A copy on a phone is not a backup either — phones are lost, dropped and wiped more often than any other thing you own.
| Copy | Where | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The computer you actually use | Easy to find, easy to play |
| 2 | A USB stick or external drive in the same house | Survives a hard drive failure |
| 3 | A cloud account, and emailed to a relative in a different house | Survives a fire, a theft and a forgotten password |
Then two small habits that decide whether this file means anything in 2060:
Name it properly. 2019-04-12-mum-voicemail-happy-birthday.m4a. Date first, in that order, so files sort themselves.
Write a text file next to it. Three lines: who is speaking, when it was recorded, what it was about. Metadata inside audio files gets stripped by the first service that touches it. A .txt file beside the audio does not.
Never convert a compressed file into another compressed format. Keep the original exactly as it came off the phone, forever. If you want a safer copy for the long term, make a WAV or FLAC copy alongside it and leave the original alone.
If they are still here, get more than a voicemail
A voicemail is thirty seconds of someone being practical. It is worth keeping, and it is not much of a voice. If the person is still alive, call them this week, put it on speaker, record the room, and ask six things. The second column is the part that gets a real answer.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Say your name and where you were born, for the recording. | And your mother's name, and how it was spelled at home? |
| How do you answer the phone when you don't know who it is? | Where did you pick that up from? |
| What did the kitchen smell like on a Sunday? | Who was doing the cooking? |
| What was the first thing you bought with your own money? | What did it cost? |
| Who taught you to do the thing you are best at? | What did they say while they were teaching you? |
| Is there anything you have been waiting for someone to ask you? | (Say nothing. Count to five.) |
More at the first twenty minutes and questions to ask before it's too late.
What usually goes wrong
The share button is missing. You do not have visual voicemail. Record the playback instead.
The saved file is silent. Almost always a finger or a phone case over the microphone, or the recorder started after the message. Check by playing it on headphones before you delete anything.
A call comes in halfway through. Put the recording device on airplane mode before you start.
Someone tidies the phone. After a death, a phone gets handed round, wiped, restored or given back to the network. Get the file off the device in the first week. 47% of Americans regret not recording or documenting a conversation with someone who has since died, and 59% have never done it at all (YouGov, June 2022, n=6,090).
You save it and never listen again. Play it once a year. That is also how you find out a file has quietly gone bad.
Questions people ask
How do I save a voicemail on an iPhone forever?
Open Phone, tap Voicemail, tap the message, tap the share button and choose Save to Files. That gives you an .m4a on the phone. Then copy it to a computer, a drive, and a cloud account or a relative's inbox, because a file that only exists on one phone is one dropped phone away from gone.
Can I get back a voicemail I already deleted?
Sometimes. On an iPhone, scroll to Deleted Messages at the bottom of the Voicemail list and tap Undelete — networks typically hold them around 30 days. Google Voice keeps a Trash folder for a similar period. For dial-in carrier voicemail, call the operator today and ask; some can restore, many cannot, and the window is measured in days.
Do voicemails get deleted automatically?
Yes. Most networks delete listened messages after a set period, often 14 to 30 days, and some delete unheard ones too. Nothing warns you first. That is the actual reason this page exists.
What file format should I keep a voicemail in?
Keep the original exactly as it came off the phone, whatever it is. Then make one extra copy as WAV or FLAC, because both are open, uncompressed and simple enough that any computer in forty years will still open them. Avoid re-encoding a compressed file — every pass makes it worse.
Related: All the guides · How to record a phone call with a parent, including the consent rules by country · Getting clean audio in an ordinary room · What to do with the recordings afterwards · Take everything with you, whenever you like
Nothing on this page needs MemoriesBox, and it is written so it never will. If you want the rest of the voice rather than one message, MemoriesBox records a long guided interview, keeps the person's own voice, and lets your family ask it questions later. $139 a year, first 14 days free, hosted in the EU.