iOS: How To Back Up Voice Memos To iCloud

Voice Memos is a default Apple app available for iPhone and iPad. It’s one of those apps that come in handy for musicians, writers, journalists, and recording mysterious sounds. For other people, they quickly remove it, now that Apple enabled this in iOS 10. I don’t use the app very often, but when I do I wish there was a way to back up Voice Memos to iCloud.

There is no Voice Memo folder in iCloud Drive, and although I assume memos are part of your iPhone backup, it’s great to have manual control. Luckily, we can make use of the share sheet. Here’s how to back up Voice Memos.

Back Up Voice Memos In a Variety of Ways

There are many ways you can go about backing up voice memos. You could do as I’ve done, and create a folder in iCloud Drive (or your cloud provider of choice) for audio clips. Another option is to create a note or folder in Apple Notes dedicated to voice memos. It’s also possible to access voice memos through iTunes and save them to your Mac.

Backing Up In iCloud Drive and Notes

You can go into the Voice Memos app, tap on a recording and hit the share button. From here, you can select “Add to iCloud Drive” or “Add to Notes.”

Back up voice memos in notes and iCloud Drive.
Voice Memo archives in Notes and iCloud Drive

Backing Up To Your Mac

There are two ways to back up voice memos to your Mac. The first way is to AirDrop them over. As we did in the previous section, tap on a recording and then the share button. Make sure Bluetooth is enabled on your iPhone and Mac, and you can look for your Mac’s account photo under AirDrop.

Accessing the share sheet to back up voice memos.
Accessing the share sheet to back up voice memos

However, if your audio recordings are large in file size, using iTunes is the second way to share. Connect your iPhone to your Mac, and click the phone symbol on the upper left. Next, click on Apps in the sidebar, and scroll all the way to the bottom until you see Voice Memos. You can drag and drop your audio clips to any location in your Mac.

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