If someone you love has died and you are searching for a way to hear their voice again, this guide is for you.
It is one of the most common experiences in grief: the desperate search through phones, videos, and old messages looking for any recording — even a few seconds — of someone's voice. And it is one of the reasons families who have recordings describe them as their most treasured possessions.
Here is a practical guide to finding recordings that may exist, preserving what you find, and understanding your options.
Start Here: Where Recordings Often Hide
Before turning to technology solutions, search these places thoroughly.
Voicemail
Your own phone is the most likely place to start. Check:
- Current voicemails from the person
- Deleted voicemails (some carriers retain them briefly)
- Old phones you haven't used in years
- Other family members' voicemails
Act quickly on carrier voicemails — they are typically deleted automatically after 14-30 days, sometimes sooner.
Their Phone
If you have access to the deceased person's phone:
- Their sent voicemails (some phones save outgoing messages)
- Voice memos or voice recorder apps
- Siri or Google Assistant interaction history (sometimes saves audio snippets)
- Video messages in iMessage or WhatsApp
Video Calls and Online Platforms
This is increasingly rich territory:
- Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams recordings (check the deceased's account and your own)
- FaceTime — not recorded automatically, but you may have taken screen recordings during calls
- Facebook or Instagram Live videos they hosted
- YouTube videos they appeared in or created
- TikTok or other social video
Home Videos
- DVDs or tapes from family occasions
- Phone videos taken by family members at events
- Video at weddings, graduations, birthdays, holidays
- Home movies transferred to digital (check USB drives and old computers)
Messaging Apps
- WhatsApp voice messages (these are often saved locally on the phone)
- iMessage audio messages (check if they were saved before auto-deletion)
- Marco Polo or similar video message apps
- Telegram voice messages
Social Media
- Any video they posted or appeared in
- Facebook Memories may surface old videos
- Instagram stories are typically deleted, but highlights may remain
How to Save What You Find
Once you locate recordings, protect them immediately.
Voicemails: Use a voicemail backup app, or play through speaker and record with a separate device. On iPhone, go to Phone > Voicemail, tap the recording, and use the share button to send it to yourself via email or AirDrop.
Video files: Download or export before the platform archives them. Facebook allows you to download all your data, which includes videos.
WhatsApp audio: These are saved as .opus files on the phone's storage. A backup or file manager app can find them.
Answering machine tapes: If the person had an old answering machine with physical tape, these can still be played. Some audio shops can digitize them.
Services That Help Preserve and Share Recordings
Once you have recordings saved, you will want them somewhere reliable and accessible to family.
LifeEcho was designed specifically for preserving and sharing family voice recordings. It provides secure lifetime storage, private sharing with specific family members, and the ability to download recordings at any time. If you have found recordings after a loss, you can upload them to preserve them in one place accessible to the people who matter.
Cloud storage (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox) is a practical short-term solution for raw files, though it lacks the family-sharing and organization features designed for voice memories.
Memorial websites like Ever Loved or GatheringUs allow families to share photos and videos as part of a memorial, which can include voice recordings.
If You Cannot Find Any Recordings
This is the painful reality for many families. The voice is simply not there. It was never recorded, or the recordings have been lost.
If this is your situation:
- Keep searching — family members often have videos or voicemails they don't think to mention
- Accept that grief without recordings is still grief, and it heals on its own terms
- Consider what you can still preserve: photos, handwriting, stories told by others
And for the people still in your life — the ones whose voices you will one day want to have — this is the clearest possible argument for recording them now.
LifeEcho makes recording simple for any family, regardless of technology comfort. Any phone works — including landlines and flip phones. No app, no download, nothing to learn. Just a phone call that becomes a permanent recording.
The search you are doing right now is the reason families who have used LifeEcho are grateful. They have something to find.