Comments on: How to Save Voicemail Forever on Your Mac

By: Richard K Miller

Richard K Miller — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:03:18 +0000

@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”.

By: Caitlin Kelk

Caitlin Kelk — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:16:29 +0000

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!

By: Ken

Ken — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:32:59 +0000

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.

By: Richard K Miller

Richard K Miller — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:17:21 +0000

@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.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:24:19 +0000

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

By: JC

JC — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 10:57:40 +0000

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!!!!

By: Richard K Miller

Richard K Miller — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 05:44:15 +0000

@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.

By: DoNaCo

DoNaCo — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:28:45 +0000

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!

By: Richard K Miller

Richard K Miller — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:55:59 +0000

@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?

By: Sam

Sam — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:33:26 +0000

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.

By: ida e

ida e — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:58:59 +0000

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!

By: Richard K Miller

Richard K Miller — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:02:33 +0000

@Justin Carmony: Hey Justin, thanks for the comment. Nice to meet you at UPHPU last month.

By: Kevin Miller

Kevin Miller — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 03:39:15 +0000

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

By: Justin Carmony

Justin Carmony — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:51:08 +0000

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