If you’re a bit of a voice-note hater, you’re in luck because WhatsApp has finally launched one of the most requested features by a large portion of its users. It’s the audio transcription, an option with which WhatsApp will convert to text those voice notes you receive in your conversations. Thus, if you prefer reading or simply at that moment can’t stop to listen to what you’ve been sent, with this option there is no need to play the audio to find out what they’ve told you.
Because there are simply people who send you full-on podcasts that you can’t finish even at 2x speed. Perhaps, with this tool it will be more accessible to tackle all that information in certain situations.
WhatsApp voice note transcription can be enabled to “read” the audios sent to you
It should be noted that the transcription is performed locally on your device, that is, it is not sent to any external server, so your conversations do not leave your phone. That will also cause the processing time to vary depending on the power of your smartphone, although generally it should not be a task too demanding for any modern handset, regardless of its tier.
Enable transcription on Android
- Open the WhatsApp app.
- Within the app, go to Settings.
- In the list of settings, tap Chats.
- Enable the Voice message transcriptions option.
- Select your primary language.
WhatsApp will download a language pack because, as we said before, the transcription is carried out locally on the phone. This download can be configured to occur automatically when you connect to a Wi-Fi network. For now, at its launch, this feature is only supported in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian.
Enable transcription on iPhone
- Open WhatsApp.
- Within the app, tap Settings.
- In Settings, tap Chats.
- Turn on the Voice message transcriptions option.
- Select your primary language.
In the case of iOS, you must have Siri enabled on your iPhone for this feature to run. If you enable transcription without Siri enabled, you will need to download the language pack corresponding to the language you chose.
How to transcribe a voice note in WhatsApp
Now that you have transcription enabled, to use it simply:
- Open a WhatsApp chat.
- Long-press a voice note.
- From the options that appear, tap Transcribe.
At that moment, the text of the audio you’ve been sent will be displayed. Keep in mind that there may be cases where the transcription fails because the audio’s language does not match the one you selected, because the voice note has poor quality (background noise, for example), or because it confuses some words for others.
At the time of writing, WhatsApp only supports one transcription language at a time; that is, if you regularly speak more than one language on WhatsApp, you won’t be able to transcribe voice notes in different languages.
