How to Transfer iPhone Voicemail to Your Computer

When your five-year-old nephew sings "Happy Birthday" to you on your voicemail, you want to keep that message to play back to his friends when he's in college. If you've got an iPhone, there are a few ways to save voicemail audio files to your computer. If you've jailbroken your iPhone, you can SFTP into it and transfer the files to your local hard drive. If not, you can use your computer's line in and free recording software to manually record the message. Here's how.

File Transfer

1. First, if you haven't already,

jailbreak your iPhone 2.0 (here's the Windows method). This will install an OpenSSH server on your device that lets you transfer files from it to your computer.

On the iPhone, under Settings->Wi-Fi, select the network you have joined to view connection details. Write down the phone's IP address.

Fire up your favorite FTP client.

Using your FTP program, connect to the device's IP address with username root and password alpine (unless you've changed your password). You'll need to use SFTP (secure FTP), not plain FTP.

Once you're connected to the device, browse to /private/var/mobile/Library/Voicemail/ to view the list of VM files. They're saved as .AMR files, which QuickTime can play. Transfer them to your computer and you're done.

Manual Record

If you're not rockin' a jailbroken iPhone (or an iPhone at all), you can also utilize your phone's headphone jack and your computer's line in. Connect the phone to the computer using an audio line and fire up recording software like Audacity. Play the voicemail and record the result with Audacity.

Note, however, that not all phones have standard headphone jacks out—the first generation iPhone has the recessed jack, and other phones often use non-standard headset jacks, too.