Unable to Share/Export Call Recordings from Notes App

Hey friend - exactly! - I'm journalist, too. I hate obstructing an interview, for an example, by cutting every 20 mins and reintroducing the "this phone is being recorded" audio. It's enough of a break of trust to have the statement uttered in the beginning of the call. I understand the legal need for apple to include the prompt but if it repeats with new files, it completely breaks the flow of conversation into being much more self-aware in terms of what's said.

A simple SLICE button making a new file without an alert would be a good fix, perhaps, if devs are reading — could that be implemented? Or allowing post-editing to generate new files at a trim point, similar to how Quicktime allows, which could maybe be transcribed and separately exported.

Easy fix would be a twenty minute new file creation, which is common in most voice recorders.

(or just take this feedback as a widespread bug that a small percentage is reporting)

Thanks Apple - We appreciate this feature! Right now it's obviously needing to be more dependable at lengths exceeding twenty minutes.

I've upgraded to the latest iOS 18.3.1 on my iPohne 16 pro as well. I do counseling and just got rid of my landline (late to the party I know) and just recorded and saved the

session in NOTES and yes call recording was ON. I cannot for the life of me forward this call which was 1 hour long to my client. I cannot find anywhere to SHARE or even transcript it. I also get the little clock that never moves supposedly to save it. Any help appreciated.

So i am a college student and i have been taking interviews from my research and i took a 47 minute interview on call!!! ans im facing the same issue. but i found a way. the call recording is available for playing in the notes app, but just not getting exported. so what you can do is, open that note, start screen recording, and play the audio. you can switch the auto-lock of the screen off so the recording doesnt stop and keep your phone aside and that way youll have the audio as a video now. then you can use any online platform to extract the audio from the video and ta-da! you dont even need to keep the volume on, because when you screen record even if your phone's speaker volume is off, the audio on the screen automatically gets recorded. so you wont get disturbed, you can just do your daily work as usual and keep the recording aside. i needed to put the audio for transcription, which is why i needed the audio to get exported. i hope this helps!

I started having the same problem. I’ve been recording phone interviews since mid-Jan for a research project. I no longer can play back audio or see transcripts for two of the longer calls (each over 1hr). I also can’t save, duplicate, or share those call audio files, even after trying the renaming trick.

12 other recordings, each under 1hr, work properly with audio playback and transcripts.

I attached two screenshots.

• One shows how a proper call recording (with playback and transcript) looks in my Notes app.
• The other screenshot shows that the call was recorded and included in the Notes app, but doesn’t provide access to playback audio or to read the call transcript.

I called Apple Support. The team lead was nice and said she had to write a “ticket” for the engineers because she didn’t have any material from Apple about this issue. Crossing my fingers that Apple has a solution!

Hi! I specifically made an account to reply to this. IT WORKS PERFECTLY.

Thank you so much for this contribution, Ninastr. For anyone else, please keep in mind you need a Macbook/laptop or Mac desktop to do this method.

Also, sometimes there are hundreds of files (as mentioned) but if you know you have a very large file you can sort by size to make it one of the first few at the top. Mine was a 1.5 hour call recording.

(Pro tip: once you open the folder, you can click the file and tap spacebar to preview it so that you can hear what the file is all about and move through them quick.)

Good luck everyone (until this is fixed in a future update). And thanks again so much for contributing this answer Ninastr. Worked like a charm.

Your crazy back door solution literally saved me from a full adult meltdown. I'm in a UX program and need to record my interviews. This was ridiculously, unnecessarily tedious to figure out. Don't get me started on video compression.

I'm shocked Apple doesn't have a quicker work around for this.

This problem (Call Recordings not able to Save to Files or to Share) is also happening on my iPhone 13Pro, running iOS 18.3.2, with a 1.5 hour recording, as well as two 15 second recordings ... so it is NOT limited to just long recordings.

It DID work once with one of the two 15 second Call Recordings ... but it stopped working even with that one.

Would somebody here please explain Ninastr's step #1?

How does one sync notes from iPhone to computer?

Thanks!

Ted

The Ultimate, Easy Solution:

1. Open notes app
2. Tap the specific notes / audio note
3. Click the share icon in the top right (upward arrow from box)
4. Share to "voice memos" app (you may have to click More to see it)
5. Once in voice memos, share (via three dots menu) from voice memos app to anywhere else.

You are very welcome in advance,

A fellow researcher

omklm,

Regarding your "Ultimate, Easy Solution" post earlier today:

You rephrased the things that the author of this thread/post already said does NOT work, and that people have commented here also saying doesn't work.

The whole point of this thread is to say that the steps that are supposed to work are not working (and then you went and just restated the things that are supposed to work, even though this post is about how they're not working all the time).

omklm wrote:

The Ultimate, Easy Solution:

1. Open notes app

2. Tap the specific notes / audio note

3. Click the share icon in the top right (upward arrow from box)

4. Share to "voice memos" app (you may have to click More to see it)

5. Once in voice memos, share (via three dots menu) from voice memos app to anywhere else.

Apple really needs to fix this issue!

It doesn’t matter how long or short the call recording is, the issue still persists.

I have a recording that’s under 30 seconds long, and the “Preparing box” to save the audio to my Files, is frozen!

You mean to tell me iMovie (for iPhone), can export “extra large; storage hungry” video projects smoothly, but Notes can’t export simple short audio files, smh?!

btw I’m on iOS 18.4.1

[Edited by Moderator]

I just experienced a similar issue. I recorded a message from an automated phone line last night. Right after I was done recording, the audio was able to be played from its note in the Notes app (there WAS a play/pause button on the right) and there was a transcript generated and shown in the same box.

When I checked it at 8:30 am this morning, the play/pause button was gone and instead just showing that generic waveform icon that does not react to any touch/press, AND the transcript was gone.

I opened the Notes app on my Mac and the play/pause button was showing there, so I could listen to the audio - but still no transcript.

A similar solution to ninastr’s worked for me to save the audio file that didn’t require hunting through the Group Containers folder, so I thought I’d mention it in case it helps anyone else:

1. Open the note with the audio on Notes on your Mac

2. Click on the box with the audio recording and drag it to the desktop (you should get the green dot with the plus symbol in it)

3. Let go and you should get an m4a audio file

You can also right-click (or control-click) on the box with the audio in the note and select “Open Attachment” from the menu and it will open in your default audio program.

Had to transcribe it myself though!

Pretty annoying - hope Apple can fix this some day…

[Edited by Moderator]

I have iPhone 16 Pro and a PC not a MAC. While in a Zoom Call I selected record on the phone so I can get a transcript. This works for shorter calls, I was able to get some larger calls to save to the phone. I do not have the option to share to Voice Recorder. Again, no MAC so Airdrop is out, I really need to transcribe calls, cannot help that some calls are long... I cannot stop the call, start a new recording every 20 minutes, PLEASE HELP!! The recording ended up being over 2 hours... now I can only play it. I tried to play aloud for WORD Dictate, but that was a horrible output. The phone will not transcribe the call... APPLE SUPPORT PLEASE HELP

Thanks for the tip on keeping calls short! I'll try that.

as soon as this dialog window open you know you’re screwed.

[Edited by Moderator]

Can confirm that's my exact experience, too.