How to record a parent or grandparent telling their stories using the phone in your pocket, keep the recording safe, save precious voicemails and turn the conversation into something they approve.
Last reviewed
In short
Give them the questions a day ahead, record somewhere quiet with the phone in airplane mode, and start by saying who, when and where.
Copy the recording off the phone the same day. A file that only lives on one phone can be lost with it.
Save the voicemails you treasure now, because your phone company can erase them and changing your SIM can too.
The phone in your pocket is a good enough recorder to keep someone’s voice for the grandchildren. What makes a recording last is the care around it, from the questions you share beforehand to the copy you make before the day is out.
This guide walks you through it on an ordinary iPhone or Android phone. It sits alongside our guide to gathering a parent’s stories, which covers how to ask.
Ask them first
Tell them what you’d like to do and why, and who you hope will listen one day. Professional oral historians explain the purpose, how the recording will be made and kept, and who might hear it, and they get the person’s agreement before they begin. The Oral History Association calls this informed consent.
For a family, a relaxed chat over a cup of tea is enough. Let them know they can stop whenever they like, and that they’ll hear the result before anyone else does.
Share the questions a day ahead
People who record life stories in palliative care give the person the questions in advance, so they can think about them first. In the Dignity Therapy protocol developed by Harvey Chochinov and colleagues, the person is given the questions ahead of time and the conversation follows their lead.
Write down five or six questions and leave them with your parent the day before. Ask them to put a mark beside the ones they’d like to start with. Our questions to ask has forty to choose from.
Ordinary memories count. A favourite meal or the walk to school is as worth keeping as the big events.
On an iPhone, the Voice Memos app is in the Utilities folder. On many Android phones there’s a recorder app already installed, such as Recorder on Google Pixel phones. Any of these is fine.
Before you start:
Put the phone in airplane mode. StoryCorps warns that a call coming in can interrupt the recording and take the microphone away from the app.
Check there’s space on the phone and the battery is charged.
Make a short test recording and play it back.
Hold or place the phone about a fist’s width from the mouth of whoever is speaking, which is StoryCorps’ guide for clear voices.
Don’t play music or videos on the phone while you record. Apple notes that if another app starts playing audio, Voice Memos stops recording.
If there’s background noise you can’t avoid, Apple’s guide explains how to switch on Voice Isolation in Voice Memos, which filters out background sounds.
Say who, when and where
Start each recording with a few spoken words, so anyone who finds the file later knows what it is. StoryCorps begins every interview this way: your name, the date, and who you’re talking with and how you’re related.
It can be as short as this: “It’s Sunday the 1st of November. I’m Priya, here at home with my grandmother, Asha, and she’s telling me about coming to the city.”
Then let them talk. Follow their lead, and let silences sit for a moment. The best part of an answer often comes after a pause.
Keep it short
The StoryCorps app records up to 45 minutes at a time, and that’s plenty for one sitting. Stop while they’re still enjoying it, and agree when you’ll do the next one. Several short recordings, each on one topic, are easier to find and to listen to later than one long afternoon.
Copy it the same day
A recording that only lives on one phone can be lost with that phone. Google, for example, says recordings made in its Pixel Recorder app stay on the phone unless you turn on backup, share them or save them somewhere else.
That evening:
Rename the file with the date first and a few plain words, such as “2026-11-01 Nan coming to the city”. Voice Memos saves new files as “New Recording” or the name of your location until you rename them.
Send a copy off the phone. On an iPhone, open the recording in Voice Memos, tap the more button and choose Share, then save it to Files, a computer or a family member. On Android, share it from the recorder app to your computer, a cloud folder or email.
Write a few lines about what was covered and roughly when in the recording each story starts.
The Oral History Association advises moving the original off the recording device and making extra copies straight after each interview. Our guide to three copies in two places shows a simple way to do that, and the family memory index gives each recording a line so everyone knows where it is.
Save the voicemails
A short voicemail saying “It’s only me, love” can become one of the most precious sounds a family has. These messages are easy to lose.
On an iPhone, Apple says voicemails are kept until you delete them, or until your phone company erases them if they aren’t stored in iCloud. Changing your SIM card can also delete them. To keep one, open the Phone app, find the voicemail, tap it and use the Share button to save it to Files or send it to yourself.
On Android phones with visual voicemail in the Phone app, Google says you can expand the voicemail and tap Send to, then choose where to save it. Visual voicemail isn’t offered by every phone company or in every country. Google also notes that turning visual voicemail off deletes the recordings from the Phone app, so save the ones you love first.
If your phone can’t share a voicemail, play it on speaker and record it on a second phone in a quiet room. Say what it is at the start of the new recording.
Read it back to them
This is the step most families skip, and it’s the one that turns a file into a keepsake. In the Dignity Therapy protocol, the conversation is written up, put into time order and read back to the person in full, and they have the final say on every change before copies go to the people they choose.
You can do the same at home. Type up the parts that matter most, read them aloud on your next visit and let them correct names, dates and anything they’d rather leave out. Knowing they’ll hear it first often helps people speak more freely.
Before you press record
A checklist to print and keep with your phone:
They’ve agreed, and they know who it’s for.
They’ve had the questions a day ahead.
The room is quiet, with the television off.
The phone is in airplane mode, charged and has space.
You’ve made a test recording and played it back.
You’ve said who, when and where at the start.
Tonight, you’ll rename it, copy it off the phone and note what was said.
Our family memory method puts asking, recording, keeping and sharing together on one page.
Further help
Our questions to ask Forty questions for a parent or grandparent, with share and print options.
