You get an important voice message from your boss on your iPhone. You listen to it once and realize that you need to refer back to it later. But when you return later, ‘poof,’ the voice message is no longer there. Or you accidentally deleted the voicemails from your iPhone.

Don’t panic! There are a few ways to find and recover those deleted voice messages, and there are ways to ensure those messages are not automatically deleted in the future.

Though voice messages and voicemails are similar in nature, they are stored differently on your iPhone. The voice messages are typically stored within a messaging app like the Messages app, while voicemails are stored within the phone’s voicemail system.

It is important to understand this distinction in order to know where to look for and recover deleted voice messages. So, in this guide, we will show you how to find voice messages on iPhone and how to keep them forever!

How to find voice messages on iPhone?

As mentioned above, voice messages are stored within a messaging app like the Messages app. However, remember that if you have set audio messages to expire after 2 minutes on your iPhone, they may be automatically deleted and cannot be recovered.

Similarly, if you’ve set it to keep your messages for 30 days or 1 year, then after that time period, the voice messages may also be deleted and cannot be retrieved. We will also explain the steps on how to stop your voice messages from expiring after a few minutes and keep them on your iPhone forever.

Here’s how to find the voice messages from the Messages app on your iPhone:

Launch the Messages app on your iPhone.
Head over to the conversation where the voice message was sent or received.
After that, look for a small microphone icon within the conversation thread, indicating the presence of a voice message.
Now tap on it to listen to the message.

The same is true for other messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, etc. So, to find voice messages in other messaging apps like WhatsApp, follow a similar process.

Here’s how to find voicemails on your iPhone:

Voicemails are also a kind of voice message, but they are found in your iPhone’s Phone app. Here are the steps for accessing your iPhone’s Voicemails:

Open the Phone app.
Tap on the Voicemail tab. It is located in the bottom right corner.
Here, you’ll find the list of all the voicemails on your iPhone.
But if you’ve deleted a voicemail and want to restore, then you need to tap on the Deleted Messages option.
This will open a list of all your deleted voicemails. Tap on the voicemail you want back and tap on Undelete. In some iPhone versions, you’ll find a red trash icon with a line through it.
Now tap on Voicemail from the top left to head back to Voicemail’s main screen. There, you’ll find the undelete voicemail.

How to save voice messages on iPhone?

Now you got a voice message on your iPhone’s Messages app, and you want to save it for future reference. Fortunately, you get the option “Keep” the voice message. Here’s how:

Open the Messages app
Head over to the conversation with the voice message
Under the audio message, you’ll see the Keep option
You can save the message by tapping on it.
This action will ensure that the voice message will remain visible as long as you have that conversation.

Unfortunately, they are too small, and people often forget or miss to use the “Keep” feature.

How to keep voice messages from expiring on iPhone?

Voice messages are set to expire two minutes after you listen to them. And there is no way to recover them once they have done so.

It is really easy to forget to save the voice messages within 2 minutes. Other than banging your head on the wall later, make a simple precautionary change! Here’s how:

Open the Settings app.
Scroll below to find the ‘Messages‘ option. Tap on Messages.
Next, scroll down to the Audio Messages section and tap on the Expire option.
Now change the expiration option from After 2 Minutes to Never.

Let us summarise again what these steps can do for you. Be aware that what has gone once has gone forever. The voice text from your boss that you lost? That is never coming back! These steps would do nothing to help you in this case. But from now on, you shall not lose the voice messages due to this step you took.

However, there is one setback. The permanent audio messages will eat up a lot of space from your iPhone’s memory. The ‘2 minutes’ feature was to help you save up space and the labor of deleting unnecessary voice messages manually.

How do you store messages on your iPhone forever?

Let’s say you want to return to an old message, but you can no longer find it as you’ve set the “Keep Messages” option to 30 days or 1 year. Meaning that your iPhone automatically deletes messages after a certain period of time. Though this feature is offered to save space on your iPhone by removing unwanted messages, it can be frustrating if you need to access an important message later on.

So, in that case, go to Settings > Messages. Next, under Message History, tap on Keep Messages. After that, tap on Forever. Now, all your messages will forever stored on your iPhone.

How to listen and reply to audio messages on iPhone?

In case you’re an absolute newbie with the iOS 12, we don’t want you to take the pain of another Google search. The iPhone possesses a default feature called ‘Raise to listen‘ for listening to audio messages. This feature is very straightforward in terms of use. Walk the steps below for listening and replying to voice messages on iPhone:

Raising the iPhone to listen to audio text:

In order to play and listen to the audio text, raise the iPhone up to your ear. The audio text will be played automatically when you do so! What a cool feature, isn’t it?

Here’s how to enable the Raise to Listen feature for voice messages:

Go to ‘Settings‘ app
Tap on the ‘Messages‘ app.
Toggle on the option that says: ‘Raise to Listen.’

Method to reply with audio texts

There are a few steps you need to follow in order to reply to someone with an audio text. We arrayed them up for you here:

Step 1: To reply to your audio message (or any message) with another audio message, you have to lower your iPhone and then raise it to your ear again.
Step 2: You shall hear a tone that is basically a cue for you to record your reply.
Step 3: Having recorded the response, lower your phone.
Step 4: Now tap to send the audio text.

Few things to keep in mind

You don’t want to get lost in the features associated with audio messages in the iPhone. This is why we’ve shared a few important tips for you to remember.

So, allow us to guide you with a few tricks below:

A little reminder: Do save your audio messages within 2 minutes of listening to prevent automatic deletion. If you don’t want your audio to ever expire, you can always disable this feature in ‘Settings’, which we will cover in the last part of the article.

Shifting Audio messages to other apps: The process of saving your audio messages in a different app on iPhone than Messages is to copy and paste it into the Files or Notes apps.

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve learned the ways to find voice messages on your iPhone. Also, we’ve made it clear that voice messages don’t only mean the one you get from the Messages app but also the voicemail that you get on your iPhone’s Phone app. We’ve shared the methods on how you can access them on your iPhone. Also, we’ve shared a bunch of other methods and tips.

Furthermore, if you’ve liked this article, then you should also check out our articles on sending audio messages from iPhone to Android or leaving a voicemail without calling.