How to save WhatsApp voice notes
A voice note can matter more than any text: a laugh, a birthday message, the way someone says your name. WhatsApp keeps them inside the app, but you can save them as ordinary audio files that play on any phone or computer. Here is how, one at a time or all at once.
Save a voice note on iPhone
The voice note is saved as an audio file you can open from the Files app, back up with the rest of your files, or move to a computer.
- Open the chat and find the voice note.
- Touch and hold the voice note, then tap Forward.
- Tap the share icon in the bottom corner instead of choosing a chat.
- Choose Save to Files, pick a folder such as iCloud Drive or On My iPhone, and tap Save.
Save a voice note on Android
You can also copy the file straight from your phone’s storage. Android keeps every voice note WhatsApp has downloaded in a folder, covered next.
- Open the chat and touch and hold the voice note to select it.
- Tap the share option in the top bar, or tap the three-dot menu and then Share.
- Choose where to save it, such as Google Drive or Files, or send it to your email.
Where Android keeps WhatsApp voice notes
Open your phone’s Files app and go to Internal storage, then Android, then media, then com.whatsapp, then WhatsApp, then Media, then WhatsApp Voice Notes. On older phones the WhatsApp folder sits directly in Internal storage.
Inside are numbered folders, one for each week, and the voice notes in them are .opus files. To keep a whole batch, copy the folders to a computer or to cloud storage. The names do not say who sent each note, so play them to find the one you want.
Save every voice note in a chat at once
The export holds the voice notes as audio files next to the transcript, and the transcript names the file at the point in the conversation where each one was sent, so you can tell who sent it and when. WhatsApp limits how much media an export carries, so in a long chat the oldest voice notes may not be included. Save the ones that matter one by one as well.
- Open the chat and choose Export chat (on Android, three-dot menu, More, Export chat; on iPhone, tap the name, then Export Chat).
- Choose Include media.
- Save the export to cloud storage or your computer and unzip it if it is a ZIP.
Play or convert .opus files
WhatsApp voice notes use the Opus audio format. VLC plays them on every platform, and most up-to-date browsers do too: drag the file into a browser tab. If a car stereo, an older phone, or a video editor will not open them, convert them to MP3 with an audio converter. Keep the original .opus files as well; converting can only lose quality, never add it.
Voice notes you cannot save
- View once voice messages are deliberately unsaveable. They play once and cannot be forwarded, exported, or kept.
- A voice note that was deleted for everyone, or that disappeared under disappearing messages, is gone from the chat.
- A WhatsApp backup in Google Drive or iCloud includes voice notes, but only to restore into WhatsApp. It is not a folder of audio files you can open.
Keeping the voice of someone who has died
If you are saving voice notes from someone you have lost, save the ones that matter most one by one first, then export the whole chat with media as a second copy. Keep the files in two places, such as your computer and cloud storage, and do not rely on the phone alone.