Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, have a tradition on their wedding anniversary: listening to an awkward voicemail that Emhoff left Harris years ago.
Emhoff had called Harris at 8:30 a.m. after getting her number to set up a blind date, and the call went to voicemail, he told crowds during a speech at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday.
“I just started rambling,” Emhoff said. “‘Hey, it’s Doug. I’m on my way to an early meeting. Again, it’s Doug.’”
It’s a relatable tidbit for anyone who has felt the cold panic of unexpectedly hitting an answering machine — or who’s received a voice message they’ll cherish forever. But not all cute-voicemail stories have happy endings. Plenty of precious recordings get lost when people clear their inboxes, reinstall a voicemail app or get a new phone.
If you’re one of the many people who have treasured voicemails locked away on your phone, please: Take a few moments to save them elsewhere, just in case. Here’s how to do it:
On an iPhone
- Open the Phone app and tap voicemail.
- Find the voicemail you want to save and click it.
- Tap the square share icon in the top-right corner.
- Send a copy of the recording via email, AirDrop, iCloud Drive upload — whatever you prefer.
On an Android phone
- Open the Phone app and select your voicemail. If your phone has a separate voicemail app, open that instead.
- Find the voicemail you want to preserve and tap it.
- Tap the share icon, which looks like three dots connected by two lines.
- Send a copy of the recording via email, Google Drive — whatever you prefer.
Note: Because Android phone makers customize their devices differently, the process for yours may vary from these instructions. If that’s the case for you, let us know.
On a basic phone
The software running on more basic devices, such as flip phones and the rugged devices that often get used on job sites, doesn’t allow you to easily share those audio files. The same is true of smartphones that don’t have a visual voicemail feature. If you dial in and listen to your messages, saving them somewhere more secure is a little trickier — but far from impossible.
The easy way: Turn on your speakerphone, play the voicemail and record it on another device. Many smartphones or tablets have built-in voice memo or recorder apps that you can use free, should you have access to one of those devices. As for laptops, they almost certainly have a built-in microphone; you just need the right software. We recommend using the free app Audacity for Windows or Mac’s built-in QuickTime Player to record the audio.
This method will do in a pinch, and it’s certainly better than nothing. But if you want to capture those voicemails in the best quality possible — as many readers told us after we first published this story — you’ll need some extra equipment.
The most important bit you’ll need is a cable to connect your old phone and your computer. Depending on your phone’s age, you may need a cable with a smaller 2.5mm end to fit into the tiny headset jacks used by classic flip phones and the like. The other end should look like a standard headphone connector. Plug that into the jack on your computer with the small microphone icon or pink trim.
Now, about that software: Fire up your recording app of choice and pick your phone as the “input”; it will probably be referred to as an external microphone, and it may take some trial and error to find it.
In Audacity, your phone (possibly with a different name) should appear in the drop-down menu next to the microphone icon. If you’re using QuickTime on a Mac, click File, then New Audio Recording, then click the small down-facing arrow icon next to the record button, and select your phone.
Finally, start the recording by clicking the big red button in your app of choice, then press play on the voicemail on your phone. If everything came together correctly, you’ll now have a high-quality copy of your precious voice message.
Once you’ve recorded the voicemail on the device of your choice, save it (sometimes this happens automatically) and put it somewhere for safekeeping. No matter how you save a copy of those voicemails, we recommend putting them in more than one place — say, your computer, an external drive and in cloud storage — just to be safe.