WhatsApp: Voice messages can now be transcribed

According to a WhatsApp blog post, voice messages make communication with friends and family even more personal. However, it can always happen that you are in a very noisy environment or cannot or do not want to listen to a message for other reasons – but would like to know its content. That's why WhatsApp has now introduced a transcription function. Initially, however, only in selected languages.

This allows voice messages to be converted into classic text messages. "So you're always up to date, no matter what you're doing." As voice messages tend to get out of hand in terms of type and length, it can of course take some time to read several minutes of voice message podcast as transcribed text. WhatsApp has not announced a time or character limit in the blog post.

Activate transcripts on WhatsApp

The transcripts are created on your own device. This means that the messages cannot be heard or read by other people, not even by WhatsApp. WhatsApp voice messages are always end-to-end encrypted. To use this function, you need to go to the settings and then to the "Chats" menu item. Under this you will find the selection "Transcription of voice messages". There you can switch the transcriptions on and off and you can also specify the language. To convert a voice message, press and hold it for a long time. The "Transcription" selection appears.

WhatsApp will make the function available worldwide in the coming weeks. However, initially only for English, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian on Android. Other languages will follow shortly. iOS users can already have messages spoken in German transcribed. The quality of the transcripts also depends on the voice message itself. WhatsApp warns of possible inaccuracies.

For some time now, Apple has offered a function that allows recipients to have voicemail messages sent to them as a transcript. Since iOS 17, it has also been possible to transcribe voice messages from iMessage.

(emw)