WhatsApp is finally working on turning voice notes into text

WhatsApp is finally working on voice note transcriptions according to a report by WABetaInfo. This is a welcome development because although you can technically do this via a third-party app, it’s usually a faff. An example of just how tedious it can be is if you’ve ever used an app called Transcribe. To turn voice notes into text you’ll have to share the voice note to the app and then it’ll do the rest.

Now, that’s great and all but, it would be a whole lot better if you could do all of that in-app. Also for privacy’s sake (as much of it as we can get these days), it would be safer not to ship potentially sensitive messages to a third-party app. Thankfully, WhatsApp seems to have understood this (albeit quite late) and now the feature is in development but it looks like it might be coming to Apple first.

According to WABetaInfo, the feature will rely on your device’s speech recognition software. This means that the voice note will not be sent to a Facebook or WhatsApp server for processing but will be sent instead to, in the example above, Apple. And as with all features, WhatsApp’s voice note to text feature will require the user’s approval to function.

Lastly, when you transcribe a voice note, it will be saved on your device. So in the event that you wish to read what was said again you don’t have to repeat the process. As previously mentioned, the demonstration of this feature is on iOS and it’s likely that the Android version could be different.

You should read

• How to turn WhatsApp voice notes into text
• WhatsApp in a big u-turn, you are no longer required to accept its controversial new terms
• A report shows Facebook can read your WhatsApp messages
• WhatsApp may soon allow you to hide your last seen from individual contacts
• WhatsApp is finally getting message reactions

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