WhatsApp Just Got A Long Overdue Messaging Feature, How To Enable It

WhatsApp just received a long overdue messaging transcript feature. Incidentally, Apple introduced a similar feature along with iOS 17 during last year’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference, so it's nice to see WhatsApp close the gap.

The company touts the new feature as coming in handy when on the move or in a loud place where it isn’t possible to listen to recorded voice messages. WhatsApp also says that transcripts are generated on a person’s device, so no one else, not even WhatsApp, can hear or read one’s personal messages. To give users more peace of mind that their conversations are secure, WhatsApp added a visual confirmation earlier this year confirming the chat is securely encrypted via the Signal protocol.

In order to enable the new feature, users will want to navigate to Settings > Chats > Voice message transcripts. Once there, the feature can be turned on or off, along with selecting which language to transcribe messages in. Once toggled on, users can transcribe a voice message by long pressing on the message and tapping on ‘transcribe.’

WhatsApp adds that the voice message transcript might take a moment to become available. If anyone receives a “Transcript unavailable” error message, it might be because:

• The users transcript language setting doesn’t match the language of the voice message. 
• Some words are not recognized, possibly due to background noise. 
• The voice message language is not supported. According to WhatsApp, languages currently supported are English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian.

It is important to note the feature is not 100% accurate, according to WhatsApp. So, if something reads odd, it might be worth going back to the message later and listening to make sure what was actually said.

The new transcripts feature is rolling out globally over the coming weeks, with a few select languages to start. WhatsApp states it plans on adding more languages in the coming months.