Buckup

Hello janamoha,

Thanks for posting in Apple Support Communities!

We see that you are wondering how to backup Voice Memos.

We’d be happy to help you!

You can refer to Backup methods for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch to see where Voice Memos can be backed up.

If you are trying to recover Voice Memos, you may be able to restore an older backup. Keep in mind that the backup will not include any newer information that is not stored in iCloud.

Take care.

janamoha,

Thanks for the follow up.

To save your voice memos only, you can use the steps in Share a recording in Voice Memos on iPhone to email, message, or save to the Files app to name a few.

You can also sync the voice memos with iCloud and view them on other devices per See your recordings on all your devices.

Cheers!

Best method I've found is save them one-at-a-time. Go to your Voice Memos app on your phone, select a voice memo, select the triple-dots menu, select "Save to Files" then select "iCloud Drive" and "Save." This will save it to your iCloud drive. Next, open a browser, and login to your iCloud account. Go to iCloud drive and you should see the voice memo there. Save each voice memo using these steps. You can download the voice memos from iCloud to another device like a laptop, etc. It will save as an ".m4a" file type.

Apple made working with Voice Notes unnecessarily complex and mysterious:

1. If you do a full iphone backup to iCloud, including Voice Notes, the Voice Notes "should" be in your iCloud account but there's no way to confirm that. When you log into iCloud, you won't see the Voice Notes backup data anywhere. It seems the Voice Notes are specific to the device they were recorded on. So if you restore the same device from backup, you "should" get the Voice Notes back. If you get a new device and restore a backup from another device, you probably won't get the Voice Notes back, even though you can see all the contacts, photos, etc. I also noticed if you upgrade the iphone OS, some or all of your Voice Notes may disappear. This happened to me.
2. For some reason the Voice Memos app on my laptop won't play the .m4a files downloaded from the Voice Memos app on my phone. Apple, seriously?
3. Also, if you have multiple iCloud accounts, make sure you're logging into the same iCloud account your phone is logged into.