Do audio recordings from a voice recording app get backed up by iTunes?

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Do audio recordings from a voice recording app get backed up by iTunes?

I have an old iPod Touch that died due to its battery life expiring. I backed it up, while it was still functional, to my iMac (High Sierra) using iTunes (no synching with iCloud). One of the apps I had on the iPod Touch was a voice recording app, and it had many recordings in it. When I will attempt to restore the iPod Touch’s backup onto a new device, will those audio recordings be able to be restored or have I lost them forever due to their possibly not having ever been backed up in the first place?

Articles and responses to questions regarding what gets backed up are confusing and sometimes seemingly contradictory.

Thank you, in advance, for any responses that might help clarify this for me.

iPod, iOS 9

Posted on Apr 16, 2021 9:45 AM

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Answer 1

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turingtest2

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274,610 points

Apr 17, 2021 4:57 AM in response to angstrom03

The article About backups for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support suggests that Voice Memos are included in iTunes backups. The picture may be different with more recent versions of iOS that store Voice Memos in the cloud as cloud content is generally left out of backups. Given the device was running iOS 9 it should have been storing the data on device and in the backup.

tt2

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Answer 2

angstrom03 Author

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Apr 17, 2021 6:33 AM in response to angstrom03

it just came to me that Voice Memos is an Apple app. The recording app I had on the iPod touch, and which contained the dictations, is not Voice Memos. It’s a recording app I purchased from the Apple store. So, unless you correct me, I expect that I will not be able to recover those recordings when I restore the device backup.

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

274,610 points

Apr 17, 2021 7:18 AM in response to angstrom03

Data that belongs to an app should be included in the device backup and restored to the device when you restore the device. Caveats are that the app still needs to exist in the app store, or you need to have a copy of the .ipa file to copy back to your device. Some apps may also set policies to exclude some data from being included in backups. An example would be a media player app which you might copy GB files to that already exist on your computer and don't need to be duplicated in backup. Recordings ought to have been included.

tt2

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Answer 4

ed2345

Level 9

62,858 points

Apr 16, 2021 5:56 PM in response to angstrom03

Angstrom,

In most cases no. See details in this guide:

What does iCloud back up? - Apple Support

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Answer 5

angstrom03 Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 16, 2021 9:00 PM in response to ed2345

Thank you for your reply.

However, I didn’t backup the iPod touch to iCloud - only to my iMac. So I don’t know if those recordings got backed up or not. Most likely not, I expect.

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