Voice Memo won't play

I have the same problem as the person above. I recorded a voice memo on my iPhone. It says that it is 55:04 long, but when I press play, it sits on zero for a few seconds and then goes back to the play button. When I drag it, it does not play, either. I have other voice memos, including a second one at this same meeting that I had to record after I stopped the initial recording. I also have other voice memos listed on my phone and all of them play. Help! I really need this recording.

Has anyone solved this problem. I notice that 45 others have had the same issue.

ok, i have solved the problem and I am not exactley sure which action truly fixed it, but here is what I did.

First, I signed into to my icloud and looked for recent back up on my mac to find the voice memos and whilst i did this...I was also prompted for an update on the new iphone XR through iTunes. I found the VM backed up on icloud and then once th eupdate was complete on my iPhone

all VM are working also on the iPhone.

I just found this other thread that is helpful: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250086379

It in turn pointed me to here: https://sound.stackexchange.com/questions/27182/how-to-recover-audio-from-an-incomplete-or-corrupted-aac-m4a-file

When I went to online diagnostic tool referred to by the OP in that second discussion, after uploading my file I got this message:

That's very disappointing since the recording was supposed to be over two hours. So I'm not even going to bother with recovery.

iOS 12.2 is supposed to fix a couple of Voice Memo bugs, though there is no specific mention of corrupted files. Maybe the app got more robust? But if the message above is right, it's too late for this file.

I have the same problem as Gina Louise: the app worked just fine old iPhone 5s, but just now I bought a new iPhone XS and on that device all my recordings won’t play. I can record new ones and play those, but the old ones don’t work. I’d hate to have lost them... Has anyone found a solution?

It’s both atrocious and unacceptable for Apple to be not responding to over 200 complaints regarding the voice memo problem.

I had 5 years worth of voice memos in my Apple ID. Realising that my voice memos are huge in size and beyond 5GB, I expanded iCloud storage plan to 50GB to accommodate all my voice memos and store it in iCloud. If I knew iCloud storage is so deceptive and can not be relied upon, I would have opted the old school way of keeping it all in a hard drive. I opted for iCloud storage to suit my professional life of 16 hours in-office and out-of-office work a day. I am sure many of us are on the same boat. I am a social theorist of science and technology, currently pursuing my PhD and all the 5 years worth of interview could have been useful towards writing my PhD thesis. I have an assignment due this Monday and for which I need the voice memos I recorded earlier this year. I spent nearly $500-1000 to visit my field and gather the interview. For a student who is on financial aid, this is too much of a cost to incur.

I could have very well stored in on my laptop or stored it on google drive or in me e-mail account or hardrive. But what’s the credibility that they all won’t fail (my laptop just got resurrected), if iCloud and Apple could. I read the message on the following photograph from a third party app to view backup files while trying to read my voice memo.

Apple should just disable voice memos in itself because they are not equipped to serve their customers reliant on their service: voice memo.

Indeed, people are more vulnerable in technological cultures. Thanks for making me feel vulnerable, Apple.

I have a very similar problem, so I'm bumping this thread to keep it alive.

Today I recorded a long meeting in two parts. One file works fine, but the other one behaves more or less as you describe above, except that the files size seems larger than expected rather than shorter, so perhaps that's a red herring.

If I press play, nothing happens, and after a few seconds it gives up and pauses. I can scrub along the timeline but it won't play. If I download both files to a windows computer the good one plays in Windows' built-in player, but the one that won't play on my iPhone also won't play on my desktop. I enabled iCloud syncing and tried playing the copy that appeared on my iPad, but that won't play either. Also, on the iPad, the UI shows the wave form for the file that works, but nothing for the one that doesn't. It's like it can't even open the file. I'm also on iOS 12.1.4, but now that iOS 12.2 has dropped, I'm tempted to update the OS to see if it fixes a file-system issue or something. I doubt that will work, though; I suspect the corruption is in the file itself.

I feel like it got corrupted during the recording or saving process, and it's probably not fixable without a hex editor and an intimate knowledge of the file structure (and lots of time to mess with it).

Has anyone out there has success with these corrupt voice memo files?

I had this issue and I just resolved it. I had a playlist in my itunes named "Voice Memos" and I transferred the playlist back to the iphone; now all the memos are working correctly (it did duplicate some of them, but at least they all work now).

Ditto on all above, however I didn’t have this problem 2 hours ago before I bought a brand new iPhone XR. I had a 7plus and never had a problem. Two hours and into my new iPhone and all voice memos , press play and nothing, same troubles press play and nothing . My gut said don’t buy a new phone and **** if I didn’t listen.

Voice memos are important to me. I can see them all, but there appears to be nothing there. This was discovered on a device update from iphone X to iphone XS. After backing up the X to my pc and icloud the voice memos became silent on the X and could not be migrated to the XS.

..I regularly use voice memos, synced with mac, and after spending an hour recording a memo, the memo is still visible [on my mac and iphone, showing the correct recorded length in minutes and seconds], but the screen showing the waveform of the recording, is an horizontal flat line as though it didnt record, and yet, it was the usual oscillating wave when i was recording it.

When I press play. Nothing happens. It's there but it's not there.

Apple. This is highly highly highly irritating.

All that time spent and nothing to show for it, because your app does not work. I should throw this bloody expensive thing out of the window and go buy a cheap dictaphone from the 1980's and it would outperform Apple!!!!

Not happy.

I tried the approach mentioned in the link (Hxd, faad, faac..). it helped me received certain portion of recording. but not all. it seemed that Voice Memo some how did not do a good job.

in my case, the recording was about 35 minutes. the above process managed to recover the first 9:30 minutes

I used a YouTube video and it worked perfectly! Following this tutorial I was able to restore a 1:49 min voice memo file. I’m one happy camper! Thanks to Liv4IT. You’re a life saver!!

https://youtu.be/Zy4LDk_Tszo

Same problem. Had my iPhone XS for a month, just realized all my voice memos are corrupted / won’t play.

Thanks for the “improved” voice memo app. Wonderful. I had a year’s worth of recordings of my daughter. Synced with iCloud since forever. Now buggered.

I have the same problem. Was troubleshooting my battery and did a full reset of my iPhone + restore from backup. Since restoring from backup, I can no longer access my old voice memos.

I can access new voice memos recorded since the reset, but any older files seem to be corrupted now. I wonder if there will ever be a fix for this. It's a shame because I record music ideas on my iPhone a lot.

I know. I am very disappointed with voice memo. I barely slept for 2 hours last night trying to fix things. But it worked out for me a little after I made the comment. On June 15th, in order to change to XS, I backed up my data from 6S and restored it to my new phone. Two days back when I tried to play my voice memo recorded before the 15th, I couldn't play it. All the voice memos that I recorded after the 15th was fine.

I called the apple customer care and they advised me that I could try to restore my June 15th backup again on my phone if I still have it and see if it works. I didn't know I had the Jun 15th backup. But I fortunately had it in the Users folder of Windows.

After trying a lot of third party backup extractors/viewers (few comment on this thread have the sources to them), as a final step I did the following.

1) So I backed up my current data on iTunes. (!!!)

2) Reset-ted my another iPhone 6/7 (This is not the 6S from where I made the back up--its display broke).

3) Restored the June 15th back up onto my Iphone 6/7.

(Then it still didn't play)

4) I chose one of my voice memo -> from the more option (...) --> selected edit recording.

5) I was so desperate that I kept sliding the waveform playbar to move it forward along the time line.

6) After doing that, I tried playing the audio (again out of desperation)

AND IT WORKED! All my voice memos between 2014 and Jun 15, 2019 started playing just fine.

I was very surprised and did't know how it happened. Just letting you know what I did. Try to meddle with the options in the voice memo. Duplicate, trim (but don't trim, just select the trimming option), slide across the time bar (like I did) you may actually get it to playing and back in action. But remember, I also restored my June 15th back up onto my iPhone 6/7 before the meddling with voice memos actually worked. That's my story.

Generally when you take a back up on iTunes, your backup is saved in the Users folder of Windows. My June 15th back up was in Users folder on my PC. You may try iBackup viewer and run it on the computer in which you have the backup taken. iBackup viewer have the steps illustrated on their website for how to view your back up. So try that. However, iBackup viewer didn't read my voice memos as my memos were corrupted probably. This is all I know. Thanks!