WhatsApp has finally introduced a long-awaited feature: the transcription of voice messages into textthus allowing you to read them instead of listening to them. The feature is also available in Italianbut at the moment only on iPhone updated to iOS 16 or later. This innovation is designed for those moments in which listening to a voice is not possible, such as when you are in noisy places or in meetings, as well as for all those who hate sitting through particularly long and repetitive voice messages. The entire transcription takes place directly on the device in use, thus guaranteeing maximum privacy protection: neither WhatsApp nor other third parties will have access to the transcriptions of voice messages.
WhatsApp: the transcription of voice messages is also available in Italian
Regarding the availability of the WhatsApp voice transcription functionbelow we have summarized the languages supported by the main mobile operating systems.
With regard to Androidthe supported languages at the time of writing this article are as follows.
- English
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Spanish
For the world iPhoneHowever, the supported languages differ depending on the version of iOS you are using. For “applephones” equipped with iOS 16 or laterthe languages that support the function are as follows:
- Arabic
- Chinese
- Korean
- French
- Japanese
- English
- Italian
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Spanish
- German
- Turkish
iPhones equipped with iOS 17 or latersupport the following additional languages:
- Danish
- Jewish
- Finnish
- Malaysian
- Norwegian
- Dutch
- Swedish
- Thai
How to activate and view the transcription of voice messages on WhatsApp
Before I explain how to activate voice message transcription on WhatsAppwe suggest you update the application of messaging developed by Meta, so as to have a better chance of having the actual availability of the function which, at the time of writing, is still in the distribution phase and may not actually be available to everyone at the same time. Once this is done, here’s how to activate the feature (which is deactivated by default).
- On Android: open theWhatsApp apppress the button ⋮ and go in Settings > Chatsactivate the function switch Transcription of voice messages and select one of the transcription languages among those available.
- On iPhone: start theWhatsApp appfollow the path Settings > Chatsenable the function Transcription of voice messages moving up Hon the appropriate switch and, finally, choose the transcription language favorite. Please note that to use the voice message function, the “Hey Siri” function must be active (if you have deactivated it, reactivate it from the iOS settings).
Once you have activated the function, to see the transcription of the voice messages, all you have to do is perform a long tap on the voice message of your interest and select the option Transcribe from the menu that opens.
If you see the wording appear “Transcript not available”it may be that the language in which the voice message was recorded does not coincide with the settings of the transcription language you have chosen or it may be that some words were not recognized by the WhatsApp algorithm (perhaps due to background noise present in the voice ).
