How to Download Voicemail from an iPhone

You can copy voicemail and other files from an iTunes backup just by renaming some files.

No jailbreaking or re-recording required!

This does require some familiarity with the command prompt (aka. command shell).

I was thinking of writing a small program or script to automate this but I am not sure what language to write it in.

I also don't really know how to illustrate this.

Step 1: When you sync your iPhone, iTunes backs up your files

When you sync your iPhone, iTunes backs up your files in:
Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
Windows Vista and Windows 7: \Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

Apple has some more information about iPhone and iTouch backups here.
It doesn't mention voicemail, but voicemail files are indeed included.

Comments

[Flocke]

I've got a problem with saving the SMS files in an arranged way since the extensions are gone. The only way to see the SMS chats (without jailbreaking my iPhone or buying any software) seems to open the backup file with editor, which is nonsense.
Could you help me?


I am using an iPhone 3GS and a Windows Vista PC.

[Richard Owen]

This really helped me. Thanks.
On Windows, I find that all the files have no extension (i.e. no .mddata extension). Here's the command line I used to copy all the voicemails to .amr files:
@for %f in (*.) do @(for /F "usebackq tokens=1,2* delims=; " %g in (`file %f`) do @(if %h==Adaptive copy %g %g.amr))
If you put it in a batch file, you'll need to double up some of the % signs.
The backups seem to include deleted or old voicemails. Next time, I will explore ways to zero in on the ones I want to save.

[Alan Nishioka]

I'm glad you found it useful.
Looks like Apple has changed how it saves files. My latest backups don't have an extension either.