Take Control of Your Voicemail With the YouMail App

Just the other day I was reading a thread on a friend's Facebook feed on which she was complaining about how many voicemails she gets. She was also lamenting about how long it takes her to listen to each message and accurately transcribe them. Boy, can I relate to her frustration!

Voicemail had become such a problem for me a couple of years ago that I started to experience actual anxiety about the unlistened-to voicemails filling up my phone. Slowly I would see the number of messages increase day after day, as the older messages got buried further and further in the stack.

Part of my dread stems from the fact that I'm not much of a phone person. Which surprises me considering how many hours I spent with a receiver attached to my ear as a teenager. After all, when your whole world is school gossip and teen drama, the level of priority phone calls are, are infinitely more consequential compared the demands of adult life and responsibility. If ALL I had to do these days was talk on the phone, I'd probably still love it. But that is not the case. Now I have housework, work-work, pet-care work and everything-else-in-between work. Additionally, the ease and prevalence of text messaging has made it so much easier to be able to avoid the phone.

So in a quest of desperation I went to Google, as we all do in times of crisis, and typed in "voicemail to text apps." To my surprise a solution popped up! YouMail! Now, before I go on, you might be thinking, Google has had a free voicemail/email solution for years. Yes, they do. And I even tried it once, many years ago. Basically you connect either your real phone number, or set up a Google phone number, and they will listen to your voicemails, transcribe them, and send you an email.

This time around, however, this was not the solution I was looking for. If you've read some of my previous posts you know that I'm working to get less emails in my life, not more. A means of communication I've really come to enjoy using is text messaging. It's quick, reliable, and easy. "Why can't my voicemails magically turn into text messages?" I wondered.

That is where YouMail comes in. I've been using it for a little two years now and I am STILL LOVING IT. It has a ton of great features to manage your voicemail. It also blocks spam callers, provides me with a "fake number," and best of all, as I've already mentioned, transcribes my voicemails to text messages. It offers a certain number of features for free, but at the time I signed up, the voicemail to text service was a pro feature costing $5 a month. It has been more than a worthwhile investment for me.

Unlike Google, their transcription accuracy is more than 90% in my use of it, and I have found the app to be very stable (knock on wood). I have yet to experience any technical problems.

If you are a person who doesn't like listening to voicemails, or, just needs a tech tool in your life to help you organize and manage your voicemail life, than I highly recommend YouMail. I should add, I am in no way being compensated for this post. It is all my opinion and experience.

Life is too short and time is too precious to be wasting it stressing out on stacked up voicemails. YouMail may not be the only solution out there now, but I think it is one of the best. Once you never have to listen to another voicemail again, I promise, you will wonder why you ever listened to so many in the past.

I made a YouTube video talking about my experience with YouMail shortly after installing the app. You can check it out here: