Exporting iPhone Voicemail

You can export your voicemail on your iPhone to standard audio files that can be send via email or message, saved to your iCloud Drive, or used in other apps. This can be handy if you want to archive and backup potentially important messages while also keeping your voicemail list clean.

Video Transcript: I was recently asked if it was possible to save a voicemail on your iPhone. I thought well, it's got to be because that would be incredibly useful. It turns out it is! It's very useful and easy to do.  
So let me go into my phone app here and I'm going to switch to voicemail by tapping voicemail at the bottom right and there I have a voicemail message that I've recorded. If I tap on that I can see the message. I have the play button at the bottom. I also have a transcript which is something new that Apple's experimenting with which is very useful and I have a Share button at the upper right. There is a little box with an up arrow. I can tap that and I get a variety of ways to share this message. Which is really cool.
So I can send it over a text message. I can send it via email. I can add some notes. Do all these different things. Even at the bottom I have the ability to just send it to my iCloud Drive. What happens in almost all of these cases is the voicemail is converted to a standard audio file format and exported as a file which I can then use. 
This can be really handy. Like, for instance, if somebody were to record something for you and you want to use it in something you're creating in iMovie or GarageBand. If it's a meaningful message you want to save. If it's an important message like maybe directions or information that you might need and you want to kind of save it and archive it while keeping your list of voicemail clean inside your iPhone. All sorts of interesting ways to do this.
So let's take a look at testing this out. An easy way to do this might be to do the Add To Notes. You can see I can Choose Notes. I can hit New Note here and it's exported as an m4a so I can now play it there inside of the Notes app.
I go back to the message there. Let's Share it again. Let's do iCloud Drive. That's a really just a good way to just get it onto your Mac. I'm going to put it in a folder here that I've called MacMost Temp. Now if I look on my Mac I can see that I've got that file sitting there in that folder. 
It looks like any app that can handle audio input is included here in this list just as any standard share sheet there. You can even use AirDrop there just to kind of send a one time file thing. I think it would be useful to actually create a voicemail archive on your iCloud Drive and then save out voicemails that might have important information but you probably won't need but you just want to archive just in case. That's a good way.
Also, Messages, Mail. They're good ways to maybe forward messages on to people if you want them to be able to handle it or get that information. That's kind of handy. It's kind of a handy function there. 
Also the transcript allows you to, you know, tap and then copy. Then you can copy it and paste it into something else or you can hit the Share button there and then actually share the text. So if Apple has done a really good job of the  transcription and you got the directions some place in there or information or phone number or name, whatever, you can just copy and send it somewhere and kind of get out of using an audio file to save that information.

Comments: 8 Responses to “Exporting iPhone Voicemail”

lauren eisen

7 years ago

gary, i don't receive text translations. i checked settings and didn't see a way to enable them. i am on an iPhone 6+ 10.2.1
can you please tell me how i can see them. thank you

Gary Rosenzweig

lauren: It says it is in testing, so perhaps not everyone gets them. Perhaps it also depends on your carrier.

Ricky

I'm with Virgin Canada and there is no way to do anything with the voice mail other than saving it for 3 days. No info button like you showed appears on my screen. Are other carriers as lame as Virgin Canada when it comes to voicemail?

Paul

This is so helpful, Gary! Your videos are just fantastic, btw.

George

Hi Gary,
I am with Rogers in Canada using an IPhone 7 plus with the latest updated software and mine acts the same as Paul mentioned above. Is this a feature I can expect to see soon in Canada? We seem to be the last to get most updates from Apple.

George: It may never be available with your carrier, or it could be at some point in the future. No way to know until they announce it.

Hi Gary, I really like the sound of visual voicemail. In the UK only one supplier ( EE) have Visual Voicemail for iPhones. After several, frustrating, contacts with EE I am told that it does not work on Pay As You Go accounts. So effectively ( as yet) The only way to use VV ( in the UK)is to get a contract with EE on your iPhone.
Keep up the GREAT work with Macmost. Love the Video's G

Hi Gary, Currently the only way to get Visual Voicemail in the UK is to get a CONTRACT with EE network. It does NOT work on their PAYG . No other networks allow VV on iPhone.
G

Comments Closed.

Exporting iPhone Voicemail

Comments: 8 Responses to “Exporting iPhone Voicemail”

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