There are many reasons for wanting to record phone calls on your iPhone. If you want to record incoming and outgoing phone calls on your iOS device, there are unfortunately not a lot of options. There are quite a lot of apps on the Apple App Store that promise to record all of your calls, however, according to the reviews and my own experience this is often not the case.

Given for some very specific cases I wanted to record my verbal conversations with others on the phone, I went ahead and tried out multiple ways to have my calls available as an audio file that I could play back afterwards. This is the result of my research for 2-way call recording.

Use Google Voice to record calls (USA only)

The first option that works is the use of Google Voice. This is a completely free service, offered by Google, that is proved to work. The disadvantages are: only available for US numbers, and will only work to record incoming calls.

Simply go to voice.google.com and add your phone number. You will need to verify your number first by entering the the code that you receive via a text message.

Google Voice is a free service from Google. It has an iOS and Android app, as well as a web view on the internet.

Once your number is registered with Google, you can now enable call recording for incoming call which will become available afterwards as downloadable MP3 files.

  1. Go to the settings page in Google Voice
  2. Under the Call section, enable the Incoming call option

Next time you are pick up an incoming call, press '4' to start recording the conversation. The audio recording will be kept under the Recorded calls for playback and download.

Record your calls via a voice recorder device (effective solution)

One of the very best solutions, that simply works and has a high reliability is the use of a hardware voice recorder. These types of devices can be plugged into your iPhone via a 3.5 millimeter audio jack, or connect via Bluetooth. In fact , virtually any other smartphone should be compatible too with this little recorder, such as an Android device. Note that for recent iPhones, you will need a lightening converter that allows to plug in the 3.5 millimeter audio jack into your iPhone's lightening port.

These types of devices will have no issue to clearly record both your voice, and the person at the other side of the telephone conversation.

Prices vary per device, but can be bought for fairly democratic prices.

Suggested devices:

  • Waytronic Bluetooth call Recorder
  • Olympus TP-8
  • Techerfic – Digital voice Recorder

This approach is the most robust solution for call recording.

Use an app for call recording on the iPhone (free apps only)

There are plenty of recording apps out there for the iPhone. Simply searching for 'record call' (or similar keywords) on the App Store will yiel a ton of apps to chose from. They are often very similar looking, but it is not always clear if they cost money, have ads, .. or actually do work.

Call Recording by NoNotes app. This app comes with 20 minutes free call recording per month.

Other free call recording options

Jailbreak your iPhone

If you want total freedom on your iPhone, jailbreaking may be a viable option for you. It requires some technical knowledge to have your iPhone jailbroken, though.

The scope of this article is not to explain how to jailbreak an iPhone. So I assume your phone is jailbroken and you have Cydia installed.

  • Add limneos.net/repo as a repo
  • Search for 'Audio Recorder' and install it
  • Reboot your device

Your answer on how to record phone calls in an iPhone is completely answered with this app – given your phone has had a jailbreak.

Use an Android phone instead to record a call

When you have an Android phone laying around, you may want to start using it (again) for call recording purposes. Android is a much more open platform compared to iOS (the operating system of an iPhone) and allows apps to access calls and keep a record of the conversation.

While there are quite a lot of apps available for Android, the ACR Android app is often mentioned as being the king of call recording for Android phones. This app has a free and paid version: the free version works just fine if you don't mind the advertisements.

ACR is a feature-rich application, and you can for example automatically start recording every call you make. Afterwards, exporting the audio file is a breeze too, and same for saving to the cloud (e.g. Google Drive, DropBox).