WhatsApp voice messages are really convenient if you want to say something without typing it out, but recipients can’t always hear them. Perhaps they’re out and about and can’t listen to the message as easily as they could read. Fortunately, WhatsApp is combining the best of both worlds by adding transcripts for voice messages, so you’ll never have to awkwardly listen to a message at a library ever again.
WhatsApp’s Voice Transcription Feature Is Now Rolling Out Worldwide
As announced on the WhatsApp blog, voice message transcriptions are slowly becoming available to everyone starting today. Unfortunately, you may need to wait a few weeks before it arrives on your phone, and it will only support English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian for now. However, WhatsApp does plan to add more languages “over the coming months.”
Once your WhatsApp updates itself, you can enable the feature using these steps:
To get started, go to
Settings
>
Chats
>
Voice message transcripts
to easily turn transcriptions on or off and select your transcript language. You can transcribe a voice message by long pressing on the message and tapping on ‘transcribe’.
While setting up the transcription tool, you’ll need an active internet connection to download the transcript language file, preferably over Wi-Fi to prevent it from making a dent in your mobile data. Once that’s over, it doesn’t seem like you need the internet to transcribe voice messages.
After you transcribe a voice message, the text should appear underneath the audio player. It may throw an error if it cannot understand the language or if there’s too much background noise in the clip, and these tools are always prone to inaccuracies that you’ll need to consider. However, it’s still a handy tool for anyone who prefers to read their messages. And if you want to become a power user, check out these hidden WhatsApp tricks you need to try.
