WhatsApp voice messages are very popular. Some people prefer to talk to others rather than write a text message. Moreover, a recorded voice message has the advantage that you can send, receive, and answer at any time of the day. There is no need to initiate a real-time call.
However, voice messages have the same drawbacks as texts or anything you share on WhatsApp: they may disappear, either because the sender decided to delete them or because you did so by mistake. Whatever the reason why an unplayed voice message is no longer available in a chat or conversation, where do deleted WhatsApp voice messages end up?
How to recover WhatsApp voice messages deleted by mistake
You may feel digital messages disappear or are erased more easily than physical ones, but, in reality, everything leaves a trace. If you lose a WhatsApp voice message, there is always a place to look for it. Nothing disappears completely on your smartphone, you just need to know where to look.
Note that, although WhatsApp works thanks to servers located in different parts of the world, the chats, files, and voice messages you see on your smartphone are on your Android device and the smartphone of the receiver. However, inspecting the contents of your smartphone is not always easy, but it is not impossible either. On the other hand, WhatsApp allows you to make backups in the cloud that you can restore in case something unexpected or unwanted happens, such as losing a voice message.
How to recover WhatsApp voice messages with a file explorer
The easiest thing to do if you lose a WhatsApp voice message is to ask the other person to resend it to you. However, this is not always possible. Also, in some rare cases, you can solve this problem by simply replaying the voice message to it again.
But suppose a voice message has disappeared from a chat or group. If so, the audio file may still be on your smartphone.
Searching for WhatsApp voice notes on Android
- Open an application that allows you to view the files on your Android device.
- For example, Google Files.
- Go to Internal Storage.
- Find the WhatsApp folder.
- Go to the Media folder.
- You will see a folder called WhatsApp Audio.
- Or WhatsApp Voice Notes. Just in case, search both.
- Enter those folders and search for the voice message you deleted by mistake.
- It will be inside another folder. They are sorted by date.
- Google Files allows you to play voice messages without leaving the app.
- When you find the voice message, you can save it to another folder, forward it via WhatsApp, or share it in another application.
Recovering WhatsApp voice notes on Android
How to restore WhatsApp voice messages from a backup copy
If you have not found the deleted WhatsApp voice message on your Android smartphone, don't despair. However, the other process is somewhat extreme, so you must weigh whether it is worth pursuing. If the voice message you want to recover is really important, you can try to get it back using a WhatsApp backup. However, it is not 100% certain that the deleted voice message is still there, and you may lose recent messages.
Automatic WhatsApp backups
If you have WhatsApp automatic backup configured, your chats and files are copied to Google Drive every so often. The bad news is that these backups cannot be viewed from the Google Drive app. You can only restore them when you need them. Hence, it is a somewhat drastic solution to recover a voice message. These are the steps to follow:
Restoring a WhatsApp backup
- First, uninstall WhatsApp.
- Then reinstall WhatsApp.
- Open the app.
- You will need to your phone number.
- It will ask you if you want to restore the Google Drive backup.
- Tap on Restore.
- You will see the and restore process.
- When finished, tap on Next.
- Once WhatsApp is restored, find the voice message in the chat where it was.
- You may have to it again.
