How to save voicemails
from a loved one.

Because voicemail is usually held by your phone network, not by you. Networks limit how many messages a mailbox holds and how long they keep them, and when a message passes that limit, it goes. Apple adds that changing your SIM card may delete voice messages too.

Here is what BT and EE say about their home phone voicemail:

BT is plain about what happens after that: once a message has been deleted, there’s no way of retrieving it. Opening a message can shorten its life, too: on BT’s standard service, an unopened message is kept for 6 months, but a saved one for 30 days.

If you have Visual Voicemail, where your messages appear as a list in the Phone app, you can save each one as an audio file:

Deleted one by mistake? Tap Deleted Messages, tap the message, then tap Undelete. Apple warns that in some regions your carrier may already have erased it, so check today rather than later.

It depends on your phone and your network, because Android phones come with different phone apps. On phones that use Google’s own Phone app, such as Pixel phones, Google’s help page gives these steps:

Samsung and other makers have their own phone apps, and some networks have their own voicemail app: open the message and look for Share, Save or Export. If there’s no such option, record it as it plays (see below).

Audio messages sent in a chat aren’t voicemail, and they follow their own rules.

Our guide to saving text and WhatsApp messages from a loved one covers chat exports and their limits in full.

Record it as it plays. It isn’t elegant, but it works with any voicemail, any phone and any answerphone.

If an old answering machine still holds a message, record it in the same way, and keep the machine or its tape as well. If the voicemails are on your loved one’s phone rather than yours, read what happens to photos and accounts when someone dies for the routes Apple and Google offer families.

Somewhere other than the phone it came from. US-CERT’s 3-2-1 rule works for a voicemail just as it does for photos: three copies, on two different kinds of storage, with one kept away from home. Our guide to backing up family photos explains how to set that up.

Converting the file is a false saving. The Oral History Society notes that compressed files, such as MP3, can audibly degrade when they are converted to another format. If you are recording someone new, it recommends uncompressed PCM WAV files at 44.1kHz or 48kHz, 16-bit.

Don’t rely on the phone’s own backup, either: Apple’s iCloud terms let it delete a device’s backups if it hasn’t backed up for 180 days. And write a line about each recording: who left it, when, and why it matters.

Once you have the file, you can upload it to Ancestorii as a voice note on an album photo, a timeline moment, a capsule or a private family memory, so the birthday message sits with the photo from that birthday. Relatives can add their own voice notes and replies, each showing who recorded it and when.

Every new voice note is converted to M4A (AAC audio) automatically, so it plays on any phone. That conversion compresses the sound, so keep your original file in your own backups as well. Files can be up to 20 MB each on the Free plan and 10 GB on Premium, which costs £3.99 a month for the whole family.

My Family is private to the people you invite, and nothing in it becomes public unless you choose to publish a story on Our Stories. See how voice notes work, or, if the person is still with you, read our guide to capturing family voices while you can.