Would you like to travel back in time to hear a departed family member say they love you one more time? To relive the moment you heard your lab results came back clear, or the offer on your home was accepted?
You can leap back to those magnificent moments. I’ll show you how with your iPhone and a little bit of tech know how.
Walk through the steps with me and you’ll be able to recover memories and replay them whenever you choose.

Much of our digital lives is short lived.
We see a notification, and then it disappears. A meme catches our eye. Maybe we share it. Then there’s another, and we forget the last one.
I save smartphone voice mails. It’s become a way for me to hold onto the messages people leave for me so I can hear what they sound like years later.
Every voice mail is a time capsule. It’s a record of what was on a person’s mind on a specific day and time when they called you.
Maybe you saw they were calling and, because you were eating or in a loud place or maybe there were emotions involved, you didn’t take the call.
Regardless, your iPhone captured their message and saved it for you. In the simple Phone app you use every time you make a call with your smartphone, it captured a moment in their life and yours.

Time in a WAV clip

Why save a voice mail somewhere aside from your phone?
Because, as Vincent Gardenia says in the movie “Moonstruck,” “Everything is temporary. That don’t excuse nothin’.”
Your smartphone contains a finite amount of memory. When it begins to get full, one of the things you’re prompted to delete to free up space is old voice mails.
Don’t do it. They’re records of a moment in the lives of you and the caller.
Before you delete an important voice mail, move it from your smartphone to hold onto it for safe keeping.
I save my voice mails in Microsoft OneDrive. It works well with an iPhone, but you can use iCloud or Dropbox or whichever cloud-based system you prefer. The process will be the same for each.

Step by Step

Here’s how I save voice mails:

1. Open the Phone app, then select “Voicemail” in the bottom right corner of the screen

2. Select the message you want to save

3. Select the share icon. It’s the square in the top right corner with the arrow sticking up straight out of the top.

4. A menu of options will slide up from the bottom of the screen. Select “Save to Files”

5. Browse to the folder you want to save the recording. My folder is named, simply, “Voice Mails”

6. To help me find the file later, I change the file name. You can see it in the dialog box at the bottom of the screen. Tap into the box and the system name will be selected.

7. Type the new file name. I use the name of the person and the date of the call.

8. Select “Save” in the top right of the screen.

To verify the file saved before you delete it, you’ll need to open the folder where you saved it. Because I use OneDrive, I open that app, go to the Voice Mails folder, find the file I saved and select it. When it begins to play, I know it’s saved.

Why do this?

The way your friends and loved ones sound today is not the way they will sound in a year or maybe ever. One day you may no longer be able hear their voices again.
You received a gift of their voice mail. Treasure it. Put it in a safe place because, one day, you will want to hear them say anything at all.
Follow these simple steps and you’ll be able to hear their voices again. It will be almost like traveling back in time.