Customizing your outgoing message

Instead of settling for a voicemail message recorded through the iPhone's microphone, you can opt to record a custom greeting using your computer, or using a sound file from it instead. The audio format used for cell phone voicemails is AMR, and the resolution of these audio files is extremely low, in our case 12.2 kbps. No matter what you use to record your outgoing message with, it will not have high fidelity audio, so don't expect miraculous results at the end of this tutorial.

This tutorial came from an email I received pointing me to this post at iPhoneAlley.com.

Attention

I will be using Fugu to upload the files in this tutorial. These instructions can be applied to any files you want to add to your iPhone, provided you already have SSH installed. If you have not installed OpenSSH, or used Fugu before, then you must read this tutorial first.


This tutorial is ONLY for those iPhone owners that have access to visual voicemail (i.e. you have a contract with an authorized service provider). It will not work if you don't.

Step 1.

Launch QuickTime (or your favorite audio recorder). Click File and select New Audio Recording.




Click the big red button to record.




Click the big red button again to stop. The recorder will now look like this.




You now have a .mov file. You need to convert this to a .3gp file. Click File, Export...




Name your file Greeting, and set the Export drop down box to Movie to 3G, then click Save. You can now close QuickTime.

Step 2.

Now you need to convert your .3gp file to .amr which is the format used on the iPhone for voicemail messages. I'm not aware of a free, standalone program that does this, but there is a website that will do this: Media-Convert.com Buried between all the ads are the things you need to click on. Click the Browse... button to the right of the word File.




In the pop up window, navigate to where you saved your .3gp file, select it and click Choose.




A pop up alert will appear. You can ignore it. You should now see 3GP in the Input format drop down box. If not, then make sure it is set to 3GP music. Even though you are using a video file, you will not get AMR as a conversion format unless you choose 3GP music.




Scroll down and select amr in the Output format drop down box. Then set the Noise filter to Off, then set the Bitrate to 12.2 kbps. Click the OK button.




A new webpage will load, and you will have to hunt to find the download link for your converted file. Make sure the file you download is renamed to Greeting.amr. If you leave it as greeting.amr it won't work.

Step 3.

Launch Fugu, and navigate to /private/var/mobile/Library/Voicemail   You may or may not see the file Greeting.amr.




Launch the phone application and press the Voicemail button. Press the Greeting button.




You can check your current outgoing message by pressing the Play button. You can even back it up by copying the file Greeting.amr out of your Voicemail folder. Otherwise, press the Custom button, then press the Record button.









Press Record. Let it go for a few seconds.




Press Stop.




Back in Fugu, copy over your custom Greeting.amr file into the Voicemail folder. Confirm the overwrite.




Now press Save. It will say Saving greeting... and display a spinning wheel.




You will get confirmation that the message was saved.




Press the Greeting button again.




Press Play. It will say Retrieving greeting... briefly, then play your new message.