WhatsApp seems to be ready to roll out transcriptions for voice messages to the public. The company was first spotted working on the feature back in September 2021. But it stopped development a few months down the line. Over a year later, the firm has now added the ability to transcribe voice messages to the latest beta version of its popular messaging app.
When we first heard about WhastApp’s transcriptions feature, it was limited to iOS and leveraged the iPhone’s built-in voice-to-text conversion engine to give users a text version of incoming voice messages. The latest version of the feature appears to be the same. WhatsApp is still keeping the feature exclusive to iPhones, and relying on the phone’s built-in tool for it. This means that transcriptions will work entirely offline, thus helping with privacy. However, you’ll need to download language packs to see transcriptions in the desired language.
Speaking of languages, it appears WhatsApp will support transcriptions in multiple at launch. The folks over at WABetaInfo, which first reported about this feature, have shared a screenshot that seemingly introduces the feature to new users. WhatsApp notes that transcripts may be unavailable when voice notes have unrecognizable words or languages aren’t configured correctly. At the bottom of this screen is a “Change Language” button that will let you set the default language for transcription. Note that voice messages must be in the defined language for transcriptions to work.
WhatsApp prepares to roll out transcriptions publicly
Transcriptions make it easy to continue conversations in situations when you can’t listen to incoming voice messages. You can simply read the text version and respond accordingly. Many popular messaging apps have this feature. Telegram offers it as part of its Premium subscription, while Google added transcriptions to its Messages app last year with the launch of the Pixel 7 series. After a slight delay, WhatsApp is also now bringing voice transcripts.
Transcriptions are currently available in WhatsApp beta version 23.3.0.73 for iPhone users on Apple’s TestFlight beta testing program. Hopefully, the company won’t pull the feature out this time around. In that case, we should see a wider public rollout on iOS soon. We also expect WhatsApp to bring the feature to Android sooner than later. Google already offers a voice-to-text conversion engine for Android, so WhatsApp may use it if it can’t develop its own. We will let you know as soon as we have more information.
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