Smartphones & Tablets | May 12, 2023
A while ago, it was announced that WhatsApp was planning to implement the transcription of voice notes to text. A feature very similar to the one that Telegram has been including in its paid mode for months, and that promises to be a blessing for those who receive lengthy voice notes. Well, WhatsApp has just launched this feature for beta, but exclusively on iOS.
As GHacks.net reports, WhatsApp has brought this new feature called ‘Voice Message Transcription‘ to the TestFlight beta version of WhatsApp for iOS. The application transcribes voice messages into text format so that users only have to read the audio, not listen to it.
As seen in the new update, this will be enabled by default. Currently, it is only available for the iOS version of WhatsApp in beta, and it is unknown when Android will implement this novelty. Something that may or may not happen or happen within a few months.
Once the user activates the feature, a bubble appears below the messages that transcribes the text. So, the user reads the bubble with the transcribed text, and instead of listening to it, they simply have to read it. It is logical that the audio is correctly transcribed depending on how readable the voice note is, in terms of volume, speech, and so on.
The option is enabled by default, although it can be disabled in Settings > Chats > Voice Message Transcription. It should be clarified that this feature maintains end-to-end encryption, as the transcription is being done locally on the user’s smartphone, thanks to its hardware. The phone is limited to using the language packs used to transcribe within iOS devices.
This has a downside. Not all iPhones will be able to use transcription, especially older ones, for several reasons. In addition to requiring language packages, the feature relies on the latest APIs in iOS 16. This means that you will need iOS 16 to transcribe your audio, which will affect older iPhones from Apple.
Another option that comes with this transcription is the search for specific content. The device indexes the transcribed voice note so that if a user has many voice notes, they can simply enter a keyword to find the voice note. The transcription will highlight the text in that particular voice note. This will prevent users from having to play each audio message to search for a specific message.
As expected, this feature, which is currently exclusive to iOS, will be available to the general public in the coming weeks in the stable version of the application. It is unknown if Android will receive an equivalent feature, or if so, when it will even be available in the beta version. For now, if you want to try out this feature, you’ll need to download the WhatsApp beta version for iPhone via TestFlight.
