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How can I apply Voice Memo "Titles" to the actual .m4a files as Tags?

I'm kind of a musician, and I use Voice Memo as a tool to jot down musical ideas I have throughout my workday, so I can flesh them later. The iPhone's Voice Memo app is extremely handy for such a purpose. I can pull out my phone, open the app, record my idea, and name the file something meaningful to me, all with a minimum of fuss.



Unfortunately, the convenience of working this way is offset by a nagging problem -- which is the fact that there doesn't seem to be any way to apply the titles I've assigned to each Voice Memo on my phone to the actual Voice Memo files themselves. I know how to sync my Voice Memos to my computer using iTunes; that works fine. But both iOS and iTunes seem to store the title of each Voice Memo in a "manifest" file that's separate from the actual .m4a which contains the audio-recording. It's a silly thing to do, since ID3 tags and other tagging formats have been ubiquitous since the late-1990s. At any rate, because the titles of Voice Memos are stored separate from the actual files themselves, I lose them anytime I, say, copy all my Voice Memos to a thumbdrive to listen to them in my car's audio player, or copy them to a drive to use them on my recording computer.



This is quite frustrating. I give each of these recordings a title because it helps me to remember what each recording contains. But once I move these recordings outside of iTunes, those titles are gone, because iTunes doesn't seem to have the ability to apply those titles as tags to the files themselves. This makes it stupidly difficult for me to tell what files I'm dealing with when, say, I'm looking at an archive of several hundred Voice Memo recordings on my PC, and each one has a filename like "20140621 211325.m4a," and all I wanna do is find which files have to do with a certain song I've been working on. Without any other information to go on, such as a title, such a task becomes extremely time-consuming.



It's not a solution to always use iTunes as my interface for dealing with these files. There are too many other places I need/want to be able to use them or listen to them. Without being able to apply each Voice Memo's title directly to its .m4a file as a tag, Voice Memo's usefulness as an app is drastically reduced.



Anyone know a fix for this, either directly through iTunes or through a 3rd-party app?



I use an iPhone 5s with iOS8.1.3,

I sync to a PC using iTunes 12.1.2.27, which is the newest version as of this writing.

But the version of iTunes is immaterial, given that this has been a problem ever since I got my phone, many versions of iTunes ago.

Posted on May 11, 2015 9:42 AM

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4 replies

Feb 20, 2017 1:46 AM in response to albinorhyno

I have the exact issue and actually it's not funny anymore. Also I seemed to figured out in the past since I have hundreds of recordings on my HD accurately titled also. I maybe have used iExplorer or similar. Anyway... I remember having a simple Creative mp3 player that you hook up, showes up as any HD, and just drag what ever file where ever while maintaining proper title. How can this possibly be so hard with iPhone+iTunes? Yes you can drag the file from iTunes but the title becomes this sequence of numbers. incredible i have to say :/

Oct 10, 2017 7:46 PM in response to albinorhyno

I read this elsewhere on the forum, and I just tried it and it worked!


"You can change your voice memos to 'Music' instead. This works great and I have just been able to drag and drop all of my voice memos into a folder on my desktop, keeping their original name!


The process is, highlight all your voice memos, (hold shift and click the top one, then hold shift again when you're clicking the last one and that will highlight them all) then hit cmd button and letter 'i' together. Click 'edit items'. Then a box should come up. Click on Options and change the Media Kind to 'Music' instead of Voice memos. Then press 'Okay' and now you'll be able to drag and drop them all into a folder that will keep their unique names.


I hope this works for you! Ive had the same problem for so long now and I feel like I've just cracked it! Woo!



S"

How can I apply Voice Memo "Titles" to the actual .m4a files as Tags?

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