Combine Voice Memos

The Short Answer

The Voice Memos app has no merge button. Apple's own guide lists trimming, replacing part of a recording, adding a second layer and duplicating, but nothing that joins two recordings.

The way around it without installing anything: save the memos to Files, then join them in your browser. It takes about a minute.

Step 1: Save the Memos to Files

A browser can't reach inside the Voice Memos app, so first save a copy of each recording to Files. For each memo:

1. In Voice Memos, tap the recording.
2. Tap the More button (···), then the Share button.
3. Scroll down, tap Save to Files, choose a folder, and tap Save.

Put them all in the same folder so they're easy to select together. Each one is saved as an .m4a file. A layered recording is flattened into a single track when exported this way.

Step 2: Join Them

1. Open the Audio Merger in Safari.
2. Tap the file picker. In the Files browser, go to your folder, tap Select and pick the memos.
3. Check the order in the list. The picker doesn't always keep the order you tapped them in, so use the ↑ and ↓ arrows to fix it.
4. Tap Merge Audio, listen to the result, then tap Download WAV.

Safari asks to download it, and saves merged.wav to the Downloads folder in Files. It plays in Files and can be shared like any other file. The recordings are joined on your phone and never uploaded, which matters for voice notes, interviews and meetings.

Things That Trip People Up

• The merged file is big. WAV is uncompressed, so it's several times larger than the memos it came from. Run it through WAV to MP3 before emailing or messaging it.
• A memo won't decode. If you've set Voice Memos to Lossless (the Audio Quality option in the Voice Memos section of Settings), the files use Apple Lossless inside the .m4a. Safari reads those; some other browsers can't, so do the merge in Safari.
• Mono and stereo together. If one memo is stereo and another mono, the result is stereo and the mono parts play equally in both ears. That's normal.
• A long silence at the start or end. Trim it in Voice Memos first (Edit Recording → trim), or cut it out with the audio splitter. The merger joins files exactly as they are.

If You Just Want to Keep Recording

If what you want is to add new audio to the end of an existing memo, Voice Memos can do that:

1. Open the memo and tap Edit Recording.
2. Drag the waveform so the playhead is at the very end.
3. Tap Replace to record from that point.
4. Tap Done, then Save as New Recording to keep the original as it was.

That only works for new recording. For memos you already have, use the merger.

On a Mac or PC

Voice Memos on the Mac can't merge either. With iCloud sync on, your iPhone memos also appear there. Drag them from Voice Memos into a Finder folder, then open the Audio Merger in any browser and select them.

GarageBand also works on both iPhone and Mac: put each memo on a track, end to end, and export the song. It's the better choice if you also want to fade, overlap or re-balance the recordings. It is more work for a simple join, and GarageBand for iPhone converts imported audio to 44.1 kHz, 16-bit.