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Lampekap

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 28, 2021
28
72
My iPhone 6s with iOS 15.8.2 has 2000 voice memos.
I would like to save these memos on external storage. Recording date must be saved.
iOS is running in the Dutch language.
They range from 2019 to 2024 with some recordings being displayed as New recording and some as Nieuwe opname (that is Dutch for New recording). Over the years I have been transferring some memos from other devices to save space and now the iPhone I use most is completely full.
Before iOS 15.8.2 I could use 3utools, but that is no longer supported.

What I have tried

Airdrop to Mac Mini M1
I tried selecting some voice memos and then airdrop them to my M1 Mac Mini, running Ventura or Sonoma (not sure).
The transfer goes well, as long as there are no other voice memos in the download folder, otherwise the numbering goes wrong, which results in me not being able to check which voice memos are already transferred from iPhone to Mac Mini.
The thing is, after transferring the selection of voice memos, the selection is removed from the iPhone. Not the voice memos themselves, but only the checkmarks (unlike when transferring photos). This way it is not easy to see which voice memos are already transferred.
Airdropping a small selection each time will take a while. Selecting all to transfer is not possible, they are 40 GB and before airdropping such an amount, the iPhone would needs 40 GB of memory or swapping space, which are both not available.

Save to folder in iCloud
This time the recording dates are wrong sometimes. They are not the recording date as displayed on my iPhone and also not the date of saving.
When using the "save a copy" option in iCloud drive, the date is changed to the date of saving. The original recording date cannot be found in File Info.

Does anyone have an idea what to do?
 

rm5

macrumors 68040
Mar 4, 2022
3,003
3,459
United States
For over 2000 voice memos, I reckon you'll have to AirDrop them in smaller batches. If they're all named "New Recording XXX", you can start from 2000 and go backwards. Usually I will AirDrop 100 or so voice memos at once and copy to external storage.
 
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chown33

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 9, 2009
10,998
8,887
A sea of green
Regarding the loss of dates on the files, you could start by creating destination folders on iCloud Drive with names that represent the original dates. I'd probably do it by year & month, e.g. "From-2024-04" for April 2024.

With the folders created and named, you can then "save a copy" into the correctly named folder. This will at least group the files that were created the same month. You can probably copy an entire group from the same original month, assuming they're listable by date. Later, you can organize and rename the files within each folder.

You could use another folder-naming convention, such as Year-Month-Week, or whatever.
 
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