Guide · iPhone

How to move voice memos from iPhone to Mac

Voice Memos on iPhone has no export button for a whole library, so moving a few hundred recordings looks harder than it is. iCloud does most of the work. Here is the fast route, and two others for when iCloud is off.

The fast route: iCloud

1. Turn on iCloud for Voice Memos

On the iPhone open Settings, tap your name at the top, then iCloud, then Show All (or See All), and make sure Voice Memos is on. Do the same on the Mac in System Settings, your name, iCloud.

2. Give it a minute

Open Voice Memos on the Mac and wait. New recordings appear in the sidebar on their own. A big library can take a while the first time, and it needs the Mac awake and online.

3. Select everything you want to move

In Voice Memos on the Mac, click one recording and press Cmd+A to select them all, or hold Cmd and click the ones you want.

4. Drag them into a folder

Make a new folder on the Desktop, then drag the selected recordings into it. The Mac saves each one as an .m4a file named after the recording.

5. Bring the folder into songdrafts

Open songdrafts in the browser, go to the Songwriting board, and drag the folder onto it. Anything that is not audio is ignored. Each recording becomes a card in the Inbox, named as it was in Voice Memos.

If iCloud is off: AirDrop

On the iPhone open Voice Memos, tap Edit, tick the recordings, tap Share, then AirDrop and choose the Mac. They land in the Mac's Downloads folder as .m4a files. AirDrop handles a few dozen at a time comfortably; for hundreds, use iCloud.

If you only have the phone: Save to Files

Tap Edit, tick the recordings, tap Share, then Save to Files. Pick a folder in iCloud Drive and they appear on the Mac in Finder under iCloud Drive. This is also the way to bring recordings into songdrafts on the phone itself: open songdrafts, tap Import audio and pick them from Files.

Keep the originals

Nothing here deletes anything. Leave your recordings in Voice Memos. The copies are what you sort, name and finish. songdrafts remembers the last recording you brought in, so next time you only bring in what is newer.