Voice memo stuck downloading

About six months ago I switched from IPhone 6 to XR. All of my voice memos stopped working after I did the iTunes transfer. I gave up but decided to take another kick at this today. I toggled iCloud on and off and now they all work again!

I have an iphone 8 plus. Most of my memos got stuck downloading after the update from iOS12 to iOS13. I've always primarily used iPhones and I have a lot of love for Apple but it's absolutely pathetic they have not released official information on how to deal with this and a definite fix.

Thanks to the users on here I was able to get my memos back though- I backed up my phone via iTunes to my computer (not icloud), deleted the voice memos app, shut my phone down, booted it back up, made sure I was on wifi, re-downloaded the voice memo app, recorded a 3 sec voice memo, within an hour all my memos were back on my phone.

Thanks y'all! (not you Apple)

Hey, my voice memo's were stuck Downloading on my new iPhone 11.

But something told me to record a new voice memo, so I did.

As soon as I did that, all of my old voice memo's popped up automatically,

and were no longer stuck in the "DOWNLOADING" phase.

VOILA!!!

So, try simply recording a new voice memo, and see what happens, guys and gals... Good Luck!

Yes, you have to buy a program called iMazing. they have super good customer service and can do all kinds of things with your backups that somehow Apple doesn't have the capability to do. Apple's solution is always to "nuke everything and start over". I suspect this iPhone look-alike, powerful iMazing app is run by Apple employees secretly to yank more money out of us. but it should work

I spoke with a senior advisor who told me that "engineers are investigating this issue and could potentially be resolved on a future update" aka SOL -- if anyone has any troubleshooting ideas, would love some. I've lost a month and a half of voice memos that still show as Downloading on my iphone, but don't show on my mac anymore.

that doesn't mean SOL. they have a record of under promising and over delivering, for the most part. and they want people to like their products, so they actually do things that make that happen. They don't get everything, but this is a huge problem affecting the thing they advertised. They surely will fix such a crippling bug. This isn't annoying, but critical.

it just means massive inconvenience for you and others. maybe we should keep backups of everything we trust Apple with. that's the takeaway i'm focusing on

Here's the workaround I found --

I got ahold of an old iphone 7 that I had upgraded from to an iphone X. I setup as new and backed up the iphone 7 from an iCloud backup that I had made right before I switched. Luckily the backup was still there. After setting up from the old backup, I went into voice memos, found my "downloading" memos that matched on my iphone X, and then I shared them to my dropbox / airdropped them to my new phone. That managed to recover all of the missing forever-downloading items.

I guess this problem is still ongoing. I had the same problem when migrating from iPhone 6 to X recently. Now after more than a month I tried deleting and reinstalling the voice memo app. It loaded only those voice memos that were created on my new phone. Those from the old phone seem to be lost. It looks like I have to air drop several years of voice memos to my new phone or buy one of those iffy-looking iCloud recovery apps.

I was able to access my voice memos after updating my ios while it says downloading. Swipe left on the recording you want to play then press the three dots then edit recording, and you’ll be able to play it.

In response to Karentheunicorn FIX

I have important voice memos stuck on downloading after iOS 13.3 upgrade. on iphone 6S plus. I need them back urgently. Apple really need to fix this Will post back if I have any success as Apple don!t seem to be able to help. Any further help on this is welcomed as I need the voice memos back.

I just upgraded from an iPhone SE (basically a 6) to an iPhone 8. Had the same problem. I left it for a day and then this morning I took the advice from above and recorded a short new voice memo. After a few minutes all of the old memos were corrected from "downloading" to having the date underneath them. It appears that they all are working again.

Thanks to Karentheunicorn for the FIX and confirmed by Mirabils12 as it worked on her iphone. I am so pleased to say all my voice memos are back ; no longer stuck on downloading. A complete success it works. I can now enjoy my phone; cheers apple.

I only have one device too. IF you have the same problem as I did. I backed up on itunes and unistalled and reinstalled the Voice memo app from the app store. Be sure to do a short voice memo. Left it for 1 hour approx and when I came back ALL my voice memos returned back which I had lost when I did a ios 13.3. update. I used Karenthe unicorn step by step fix.

Peace and Greetings,

In the past I posted a comment stating how I got mines back. The solution was simple.

1.) I uninstall the voice memo app;

2.) Re-install the app;

3.) Record for about 3 seconds and stop.

After that all the voice memos returned...... This seems to be the best solution that was discovered by accident. Hope this help.

**Note make sure you are on wifi and for safety precaution you may want to backup any recent ones.**

I tried your recent suggestion muring are all

gone now can’t get them back on my phone. I don’t know if I would try this honestly obviously it’s not a given it will work. I had memos from when my kids were 1-2 years old.