How to Save Voicemail Forever on Your Mac

Posted on January 18, 2009 by Richard K Miller

With a combo of free Mac applications, you can record and save voicemails from your mobile phone.

You’ll need to install the following Mac applications:

Skype. You’ll use Skype to make a call to your mobile phone and listen to your voicemail. Though the app is free, you’ll need to buy Skype Credit to make a “Skype Out” call to your mobile phone.

Audacity. You’ll use this free application to record your phone call.

Soundflower and Soundflowerbed. This free system extension will connect Skype to Audacity. It’s like a laundry chute for audio; you can direct audio from any application to another. It does this by adding a pseudo “device” to your list of audio devices in System Preferences.

Instructions:

Open Audacity, then Audacity Preferences. In the Audio I/O section, change the Recording device to Core Audio: Soundflower (2ch).
Open Skype, then Skype Preferences. Under the Audio tab, change Audio Output to Soundflower (2ch).
Open Soundflowerbed in your menu bar, then under Soundflower (2ch), select Built-in Output. Soundflowerbed allows you to monitor the audio passing through Soundflower, like having a window into the laundry shoot to watch clothes that fall past.
Back in Audacity, click the Record button to begin recording.
In Skype, make a call to your cell phone. When your greeting begins playing, press the sequence of keys that accesses your voicemail (probably the asterisk key followed by your password.) Listen to your voicemail as you normally would. Then hang up.
Switch back to Audacity and click the Stop button. You should see the zig-zaggy waveform of the message you just recorded.
Click the Audacity cursor directly before your message. (You can find out where this is by using the Play and Stop buttons.) From the Edit menu, choose Select then Track Start to Cursor. Push the Delete key on your keyboard. This will remove extraneous audio before your message.
Click the Audacity cursor directly after your message. From the Edit menu, choose Select then Cursor to Track End. Push the Delete key. This will remove extraneous audio after your message.
Choose Export from the File menu and save your voicemail. You can email it to a friend or save it in iTunes.

40 thoughts on “How to Save Voicemail Forever on Your Mac”

Justin Carmony on January 18, 2009 at 1:51 pm said:

Awesome! I’ve been wanting to know how to do this for awhile. I didn’t know about Sunflower, so thank you!

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- Richard K Miller on January 19, 2009 at 10:02 am said:
  
  @Justin Carmony: Hey Justin, thanks for the comment. Nice to meet you at UPHPU last month.
  
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Kevin Miller on January 18, 2009 at 9:39 pm said:

Richard,
Thank you for putting these instructions together. This is a great tip for that occasional important voicemail that needs to be saved.

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ida e on February 21, 2009 at 12:58 pm said:

Thank you so much for posting this. This will help me keep my memories off the limited space on my phone, and onto my mac!

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Sam on March 5, 2009 at 4:33 pm said:

Hi Richard
I have question. I feel I followed your instructions however the export stage (#9) for me appears unsuccessful. I went to file then my only choices where to “export wav” or “export mp3″. I saved it twice (once in wav and mp3) in to Itunes. I created a folder in ‘music’ and ‘pressed save’ for each voice mail (one in wav and one in Mp3 form). However I can not retrieve this folder. I did a search as well but it appears undetectable. I must admit I am a novice Macbook user but able to follow the instructions that you provided. Please help me. I would like to save my voice mails from audacity to Itune then unto a CD for playability.

Thank you in advance for your help.

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Richard K Miller on March 6, 2009 at 1:55 pm said:

@Sam, when I did this, I saved the MP3 file to my desktop, so I could make sure it was there. Then I dragged the MP3 file into iTunes. Does that work?

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DoNaCo on August 3, 2009 at 1:28 pm said:

HELP!! i followed your directions…soundflower will not open as an active app, yet i am able to choose it as audio input and output for Skype and Audacity. now that i have done a test call, it looks like it recorded, but i can not hear sound, nor can i save it to an MP3 file!

my Father has passed away, and i have a message on a cell carrier’s voicemail storage…desperately trying to copy the only recording i have of his voice…a wonderful last message to me.

what do i do next?

thanks for making this option available!

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- PDH on March 18, 2011 at 6:44 pm said:
  
  I had this problem initially too. I hope you solved it (and I know it was a while ago), but just in case anyone else is having this problem… Initially the soundflower folder was locked. Eventually I just went in through Finder and changed the options under “Get Info” so that everyone could read & write. I was then able to open the folder and then the program.
  
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Richard K Miller on August 6, 2009 at 10:44 pm said:

@DoNaCo: Soundflower doesn’t open as a separate app, so things may be okay. Did you see the wave form of the recording? If it recorded okay, you’ll probably need to switch your audio settings back to “built-in” so you can hear the audio. Once you can hear the audio in Audacity, you should be able to export it. To export it as MP3, you’ll need to install the “Lame encoder” (see the Audacity website.) Alternatively, you can export it as a WAV file; it will just be larger in size.

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JC on August 9, 2009 at 3:57 am said:

I cannot thank you enough for providing this terrific information. Like others, have been trying to save very dear voicemails and was having no luck. Your solution worked perfectly. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

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Jeff on August 21, 2009 at 2:24 pm said:

Any ideas how you can create ‘canned’ vmails and then play them while leaving a message using skyp?

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Richard K Miller on August 23, 2009 at 3:17 pm said:

@Jeff, if I understand your question correctly, you could probably do this by reversing the settings above. I.e., set the Playback channel on Audacity (or wherever your messages are) to Soundflower. Set the Record channel on Skype to Soundflower. Then you can play the message from Audacity to Skype, and the person (or mailbox) on the other side of the line will hear it.

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Ken on October 16, 2009 at 8:32 am said:

Great post. This worked for me, but if you don’t mind paying a few bucks, Call Recorder is a Skype plug-in that records Skype voicemails automatically.

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Caitlin Kelk on February 24, 2010 at 7:16 pm said:

Hi

I tried doing this as well. In Audacity I am unable to change my preferences to the soundflower, as well as in my skype preferences. I only have the first 2 drop down options available. Please help! I only have 2 days before I lose these messages and they are harrassment messages that need to be kept!

Thank you!

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Richard K Miller on March 5, 2010 at 11:03 am said:

@Caitlin, did you find a solution? It sounds like you didn’t have Soundflower installed. You should see it as an audio device, both in Audacity and in System Preferences “Sound”.

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Li L on September 16, 2010 at 11:50 am said:

Thank you very much, works great!!!!!

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Roy on October 12, 2010 at 10:51 pm said:

Thank you VERY much for posting these instructions!!! I have 2 years of messages left by my daughter from age 1-3 years old that I was hoping to save before getting a new phone, they are saved!!! I can not thank you enough. I simply followed your instructions and have the information stored although I did not realize (or think about it) that noise I was making during the process was also being recorded, oops. I am going to record them again BUT I was curious if there was a setting to keep the audio ‘internal’. Regardless, I am incredibly happy. Thanks again!

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Danjarous on October 25, 2010 at 4:20 pm said:

Richard – everything seems to be working fine…except after I dial “#” to enter voicemail retrieval, I then press my password on Skpe Dial Pad (and tried using keyboard) however the voicemail is not picking up the password numbers dialed.

Suggestions?

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Danjarous on October 25, 2010 at 5:14 pm said:

Figured it out! Thanks for your efforts Richard!

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- Richard K Miller on November 11, 2010 at 9:08 am said:
  
  @Danjarous, glad you got it figured out! I was going to say, it sometimes helps if I mute Skype when I’m pressing the dial pad buttons, or if I hang up and call back.
  
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- Tricia on November 28, 2010 at 1:55 pm said:
  
  Danjarous — I’m having this problem, too. What did you end up doing?
  
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  - Chuck on January 25, 2011 at 6:28 pm said:
    
    Ditto Danjerous…would love to know what you did.
    
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- Chuck on January 25, 2011 at 9:17 pm said:
  
  Please let us know what you did to solve SKYPE not picking up the voicemail commands. Thanks!
  
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aybaggsch on February 6, 2011 at 9:11 pm said:

Thanks for the great tips and instructions! I was able to save my vm messages before switching to the iphone and save a few bucks along the way.
Keep sharing!

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Susan on February 12, 2011 at 10:45 am said:

Richard,
I am able to get up to step 5 and call my cell phone from Skype and then key in my password for voicemail but it does not pick up the voicemail. The message is that the password is not valid. The password works fine on the cell phone just not from Skype.
Do you have any suggestions?

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- Richard K Miller on February 12, 2011 at 1:46 pm said:
  
  This has happened to me too, and I believe it’s a matter of the quality of the Skype connection not allowing the tones to be heard. Some things that have helped me are 1. to mute Skype; 2. try using the number keys on my keyboard, or (alternatively) try using the number keys on the Skype interface with the mouse; 3. make sure that when you’re entering your password, the key presses (and tones) are nice and long; 4. make sure there’s adequate space (silence) between each digit in your password, especially if your password includes repeated digits.
  
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Buck on February 14, 2011 at 3:41 pm said:

Thanks a bunch. I feel you need to have more details in the process through your step by step on how to open soundflowerbed. It’s pretty important in the process. I figured it out on my computer and hope this works for everyone. Go to the upper level search icon(magnifying glass) click on it. Type soundflowerbed. It should come up in writing. Click on it. The black flower should appear in the upper left corner by the wifi signal. Click on it built- in output. Should work. Also everything else you listed is amazing and has really helped me out. Thanks again.

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clobird on March 16, 2011 at 10:31 am said:

Hi there,

So, I am sure I am doing something wrong, but seem to have done everything you’ve said, step-by-step, and the audio doesn’t seem to be recording. It’s moving, but doesn’t seem to be picking up the audio from Skype. No squiggles, just a flat line down the center. Any ideas on what I could be doing incorrectly? Thanks!

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Julie D on May 1, 2011 at 12:18 pm said:

Hi there!
Please help! My mailbox is full of my daughter’s messages and I can’t accept any more. I have followed the directions on saving voicemail on my Mac but haven’t quite figured it out. I downloaded Audacity, Soundflower and Skype.
On your instructions for Audacity, I cannot find anywhere to select Soundflower as the recording device. I don’t know if this is my problem or not.
When I call my cell phone from Skype and the greeting begins playing, I am unsure how to put in the sequence to access my voicemail. If I do it on the Skype keypad, it says it is not a valid phone number. On my phone (Verizon Droid) at that point, it just shows the incoming phone number, but the phone is no longer active. If I answer before the greeting, I don’t think I would be able to access voicemail as I would just be talking to myself through Skype, correct???
I truly appreciate any help you can give me. I’ve been trying to figure out how to save these voicemails for months! Grrr! Thanks and have a nice week!

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- Richard K Miller on June 4, 2011 at 4:21 pm said:
  
  Hi Julie, I was in the middle of a move and wasn’t able to answer this sooner. Hopefully you figured it out?
  
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avgjoe on June 26, 2011 at 6:54 pm said:

I tried to save my wife’s phone messages to her new MacBook Air so that she could upgrade to an iPhone without losing all her old message. My Skype couldn’t connect to Verizon voicemail correctly due to Skype DTFM issues (touch tone issues). I eventually had to use a paid service instead. So, for those who hit the same brick wall, consider http://www.savethatcall.com. It ended up costing me just a couple bucks which was worth it after wasting 3 hours trying to get around Skype’s DTFM problems.

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Tricia on October 5, 2011 at 7:49 pm said:

After extensive issues with the Skype dialpad, I tried Google Talk. I downloaded it for free and used pretty much the same steps listed above, substituting Google Talk for Skype. Google Talk has free calls (at least right now) in the US, and it worked perfectly!

Let me know if you have any questions — I know how important voicemails can be!

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- Richard K Miller on October 5, 2011 at 9:12 pm said:
  
  Thanks Tricia! Great idea to try Google Talk instead of Skype.
  
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  - Tricia on October 5, 2011 at 9:25 pm said:
    
    Thank you for posting the instructions!
    
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dana on October 15, 2011 at 7:09 am said:

dear richard
thank you so so much. i had a voicemail from my grandma who passed away and i could not figure out how to save it when i switched phones. thanks to your instructions i can have it forever. god bless
dana

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paul rich on October 25, 2011 at 6:01 am said:

this was unbelievably easy to follow and helpful. thank you so much

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Shawn Beatty on November 2, 2011 at 9:31 pm said:

Thanks for posting this!
I too was having troubles with Skype dialpad, but after upgrading to a newer version of Skype (5.3.0), everything seemed to work fine.
It seemed like I got a lot of background noise from the internal microphone? (laptop fan humming) but I was able to filter out the background noise using audacity. Maybe there is a better way to record without the noise… Tried muting skype which didn’t seem to do anything different, and turning off internal mic, which killed the audio completely.

Great tip! Glad I saved my $30 for rush processing and audio recording by doing it myself.

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Google Voice User on November 18, 2011 at 8:20 pm said:

Since Google Voice calls are free (for all US domestic calls), and Skype costs money to use when calling a phone instead of a Skype user, anyone know how to get this working to Google Voice?

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- Tricia on November 19, 2011 at 11:34 am said:
  
  Skype wasn’t working for me because of extensive dialpad issues, so I used Google and was SO RELIEVED to finally get the voicemails saved.
  
  Follow instructions #1 and 3 above to set up Audacity and Soundflower.
  
  In place of step #2:
  
  (I believe I have both Google Talk and Google Voice installed — not sure which I’m technically using. Also, I’m in the “New Look” for Gmail, by the way.)
  
  Scroll over the “Chat” button on the left side of your screen in Gmail. Click the little arrow that pops up on the right next to Chat and click on “Chat Settings” at the bottom.
  
  On the screen that pops up, I have both microphone and speakers set to Soundflower (2ch).
  
  Substitute Google for Skype in Step 5 — Click “Call Phone” on the left side of the screen in Gmail to get the Google dialpad.
  
  I think that’s all I did differently. Let me know if this works!
  
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Joe Ryan on January 3, 2012 at 6:41 pm said:

thanks for the help was greatly appreciated…

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40 thoughts on “How to Save Voicemail Forever on Your Mac”

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