In this tutorial, we will help you set the Voice Memos app on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac to automatically empty the recently deleted voice recordings immediately, after a few days, or never!
You may or may not realize it, but when you delete a Voice Memo, it doesn’t go away. Similar to Photos and Notes, recordings that you delete in Voice Memos go to a Recently Deleted folder. This is convenient if you accidentally delete a recording or discover that you still need one. But those deleted Voice Memos can build up over time.
You can go into the Recently Deleted folder and manually remove recordings. But if you don’t want to worry about remembering to do that or simply prefer to remove them automatically, we’ll show you how.
Automatically remove deleted Voice Memos
Here are the steps for iOS and macOS.
On iPhone and iPad
- Open the Settings app, scroll down, and select Voice Memos.
- Tap Clear Deleted.
- Choose when to remove deleted recordings. You can choose Immediately or hold onto your recordings for a while just in case and pick After 1, 7, or 30 Days. There’s also a Never option if you never want deleted recordings removed.
On Mac
Different than on iOS, you’ll adjust this setting in the Voice Memos app directly on Mac.
- Open the Voice Memos app and click Voice Memos > Settings or Preferences from the top menu bar.
- Select when you want to remove the deleted recordings using the Clear Deleted drop-down list. You have the same options as on iPhone and iPad.
You can close the Voice Memos Preferences window when you finish.
Manually remove Voice Memos
If you decide later that you prefer to remove your deleted Voice Memos manually, just go back to one of the spots above and pick Never for Clear Deleted. Then, open Voice Memos, select the Recently Deleted folder, tap Edit if you’re on iOS, and pick Delete All.
Using a handy feature to automatically remove items that you delete saves you time and prevents you from forgetting to do it regularly. So keep this in mind if you have a lot of recordings in Voice Memos that you only hold onto for a short time before deleting.
What are your thoughts on the Voice Memos app? Is it one that you take advantage of and use often?
Other tips for Voice Memos: