How to Get Your HereAfter AI Recordings Back (and Where to Keep Them)

If you recorded a parent's stories on HereAfter AI, the recordings are almost certainly still on a server somewhere, and the only door to that server, as far as anyone can tell, is an email address. This guide is the order we would do things in, starting with the step most people skip: checking what you already have before you ask for anything.

Last checked: 11 September 2026. We build a competing product; it comes up once, at the end.

Step 1: Check what you already have

Before writing to anyone, spend twenty minutes on your own devices. More of the audio survives outside HereAfter than people assume.

• Your phone's Files / Downloads folder: search for "hereafter" and for .mp3 and .m4a files from the recording period.
• Your email: HereAfter sent shared links and, on some plans, files. Search for the sender domain and the words "recording" and "story".
• Family members who were invited: anyone who listened may have saved or forwarded clips. Ask in the family group, with the specific question: "did anyone download anything?"
• Everything else in that voice: voice notes, videos from gatherings, a voicemail greeting. Not HereAfter material, but the same person, and it is what you will build with if the email goes unanswered. Our guide to gathering it: the WhatsApp guide.

Step 2: Email support@hereafter.ai, the right way

The closing notice that appeared in July 2026 pointed users to support@hereafter.ai and named no deadline. Treat that as "now", not "whenever". Write from the email address on the account, and ask for everything in one message so a single reply can settle it:

• all audio recordings, as files (MP3 or the original format), not as streaming links
• all photos attached to stories
• transcripts, if any were generated
• the list of questions answered, with recording dates, this is how you will label the files
• confirmation of what happens to the data afterwards, and a deletion once you have your copy

Include the account holder's name, the email on the account and, if the person who recorded has since died, say so plainly and state your relationship, it changes how a reasonable person handles the request. Keep it under ten lines. Follow up once after a week. If nothing comes back, go to Step 4 and do not stop at Step 1's inventory, that is what you have.

Step 3: Two copies, named

When files arrive, do this before listening to any of them: save the set to a drive you own and to a cloud folder, and name each file the same way, name_question_date. Ten minutes of naming now is the difference between an archive and a folder called "New folder (3)" that nobody opens in 2040. Our broader rule for every memory file: two places, always.

Step 4: Cancel in the store, then ask for a refund there

Store subscriptions keep renewing until cancelled in the store itself. Then file a refund request with Apple or Google, short, factual, no guarantees. The plans, the "single payment" question and how refunds actually go are in HereAfter AI pricing.

Step 5: Where the recordings live next

Two honest options. The first is to keep them as an archive, two copies, shared with the family, played at the table sometimes. For many families that is enough, and there is no shame in it.

The second is to let them become something the family keeps using. This is where we come in: MemoAgent builds, from recordings like these together with photos and messages, a persona you can talk with in the person's style, and, from a few cumulative minutes of clean audio, their reconstructed voice. HereAfter interview answers are unusually good material for both: one speaker, a quiet room, real stories told in full sentences. Whatever you choose, apply the rule this whole episode taught: export on every plan, in open formats, before you need it. We compared the options, ours included, in HereAfter AI alternatives, and told the story of the closure in What happened to HereAfter AI.

FAQ