The Hidden Directory Vector
The native Voice Memos application on macOS is an excellent tool for recording rapid thoughts, lectures, or interviews. However, Apple deliberately obfuscates the physical location of the resulting audio files. Instead of saving them cleanly to your Documents or Music folders, the application buries the raw .m4a files deep within a hidden, cryptically named directory inside the system Library. This makes backing up your recordings or accessing them via third-party editing software incredibly difficult.
How to Locate and Relocate Voice Memos
While Apple prevents you from changing the default save location directly within the app’s preferences, you can easily extract the files or create a permanent shortcut to their hidden directory.
1. Open a new Finder window.
2. In the top menu bar, click Go, then select Go to Folder…
3. Type the exact following path and press Enter:~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.voicememos/Recordings/
4. You will instantly see all your raw audio files. To change how you access them, you can create an alias (a shortcut).
5. Highlight the Recordings folder at the top of the window, right-click it, and select Make Alias.
6. Drag this newly created Alias directly onto your Desktop or into your Documents folder.
Alternatively, if you simply want to move a file, you can literally click and drag any recording directly out of the Voice Memos application window and drop it onto your Desktop to instantly copy the raw audio file to a standard location.