Voice messages are much easier to send than typing, but for some people they are much more difficult to listen to than to read them. Today, WhatsApp officially introduced a new feature that aims to alleviate the problems faced by people who hate listening to voice messages.
Voice message transcriptions are just that. Voice messages can be converted to text “so you can follow conversations no matter what you’re doing,” WhatsApp says. The transcripts are generated on your device so that no one, not even WhatsApp, can hear or read your private messages.
Currently supported languages for transcriptions are English, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian on Android, while on iOS 16 they will be joined by French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Chinese and Arabic, and on iOS 17 and later you will also get Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Malay, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish and Thai.
To enable voice message transcriptions, go to Settings, tap Chats and find the option. Then to transcribe a voice message, long press on it and tap ‘transcribe’.
The new feature will be rolled out globally “in the coming weeks.” More languages will be added in the future.