WhatsApp audios are one of the most popular ways to communicate today, but they can sometimes be very annoying. The “hands-free” feature of the Meta app has made it easy to send long voice notes that can last 4, 5, or even more minutes. This can be especially frustrating when you’re working, studying, or in a noisy environment where it’s hard to listen to them. Thankfully, Mark Zuckerberg’s team has listened to user complaints and announced that the app will now be able to transcribe voice messages.
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If this feature sounds familiar, it’s because WhatsApp has been testing it for almost two years on both iOS and Android. However, the company has now confirmed that it will be rolled out globally to all platform users in the coming weeks.
The audio transcription feature will work just as you’d expect. Once activated, the app will “listen” to the voice notes and convert them into text, displaying the transcription within the same chat bubble. This is a real lifesaver for those who want to stay in the loop of a conversation but can’t listen to long voice messages.
An important point to note is that WhatsApp audio transcription will be turned off by default. This means each user will need to manually enable it in the app’s settings. Regarding security, Meta assures that the voice-to-text conversion happens directly on the device, and the company does not have access to the content. Additionally, the feature does not affect the end-to-end encryption of messages, and transcriptions are only visible to the recipients of the messages.
How to Activate and Use WhatsApp Audio Transcription
As mentioned earlier, WhatsApp audio transcription will be turned off by default. Another important point is that the feature supports multiple languages, making it very useful for communicating with people who speak a different language.
On Android, voice note transcription will be available in English, Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese. On iPhone, the supported languages will vary depending on your iOS version. For iOS 16 or later, the feature supports English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic. If you’re using iOS 17 or newer, additional languages like Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Hebrew, Thai, and Malay will also be supported.
To activate WhatsApp audio transcription, follow these simple steps:
For Android:
- Go to Settings > Chats and enable Voicemail Transcriptions.
- Select the language you want to use for audio-to-text conversion. The app will download the required language pack.
For iOS:
- The process is the same as on Android. However, for transcription to work, “Hey Siri” must be activated.
- If “Hey Siri” is turned off, you’ll need to manually download the language pack for voice-to-text conversion.
How to Use the Transcription Feature:
Once transcription is enabled, using it is straightforward:
- Long-press on a WhatsApp audio message.
- Tap the “Transcribe” option that appears on the screen.
Meta has noted that the tool is not 100% accurate and may have some limitations. Errors might occur if there is excessive background noise, if the language of the audio isn’t supported, or if the audio language doesn’t match the selected language in the app settings.
