WhatsApp has officially announced voice message transcripts, a feature that has been in development since at least 2021. The transcriptions offer written versions of voice messages, which is useful for long voice notes or for when you just can’t be bothered to listen.
According to the platform, the transcripts are generated on-device and are end-to-end encrypted. It is disabled by default so to use it, you have to enable it in the settings under the “Chat” section. Moreover, iPhone users need to have Siri turned on in order to use voice chat transcripts.
As for what languages it supports, that depends on the device you’re using. For Android users, the feature is limited to English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian. On the other hand, iOS 16 users can use the feature in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Chinese, and Arabic, while those on iOS 17 get additional support for Danish, Finish, Hebrew, Malay, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, and Thai.
Once the feature has been enabled, you can use it by tapping and holding on a voice message and then tapping on the “Transcribe” button. Notably though, the language in the voice message must match the transcript language setting, so if you set it to English, it might not work for voice notes in Malay. WhatsApp says that the feature is rolling out globally over the coming weeks and that more languages will be added over the coming months.
(Source: WhatsApp)
