WhatsApp Gains Voice Message Transcripts

[MacRumors]

Popular Meta-owned messaging app WhatsApp today announced a new transcription feature that's designed to provide you with a transcript of a voice message received from a friend or family member.

WhatsApp says that voice message transcripts are designed for instances when you're in a loud place and can't stop to listen to a traditional voice message. Transcripts are created on-device, are end-to-end encrypted, and aren't shared with WhatsApp.

WhatsApp users can go to Settings > Chats > Voice Message Transcripts to turn transcriptions on and off and to select a preferred transcript language. A voice message can be transcribed by long pressing on it and tapping on the "transcribe" option.

The voice message transcript feature has been available to WhatsApp beta testers for months now, but it is now ready to start rolling out to all users. WhatsApp says that it will be coming to users worldwide "over the coming weeks." A few select languages will be available at first, including English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian, but more will be added in the future.

Article Link: WhatsApp Gains Voice Message Transcripts

 

[Marc G.]

It only took them 15 years!

 

[Havalo]

‘Transcripts are created on-device, are end-to-end encrypted, and aren't shared with WhatsApp’ - I almost believed it, Mark.

 

[jdavid_rp]

Lovely! I actually paid telegram for this as I had a friend that wouldn’t do other than sending voice messages

 

[alexandr]

Aw, if only I still used it.

 

[macfacts]

It only took them 15 years!

What other messaging app had this feature in the last 15 years?

 

[Octavius8]

Apple is sooooo lagging in everything now!!!!

 

[Schnegg]

I would prefer an option to turn it off: «Sorry, this contact does not accept voice messages.»

 

[Trausner]

Wonderful! Now, does it work on iPad already?

 

[ostrykolesz]

... and still no WhatsApp for Ipad.

 

[AeroEd]

Excellent news! Family switched to what’sapp due to iMessage being dawg scatt with android.

 

[VampyricGentleman]

Obligatory where is the Apple Watch and iPad apps post

 

[podycust]

Wonderful! Now, does it work on iPad already?

In beta yes no stable release tho

 

[tim-apple-silicon]

Can't imagine it running locally or at least not in all devices supported by WhatsApp because it requires quite a bit of RAM and processing power.

 

[Rafagon]

Obligatory where is the Apple Watch and iPad apps post

And the app for the new Home Hub currently in development??

 

[VampyricGentleman]

And the app for the new Home Hub currently in development??

I’m assuming that will run a fork of iPadOS so might well come under the same development as the iPad version

 

[macfacts]

Wonderful! Now, does it work on iPad already?

You need to be able to receive SMS messages to make a WhatsApp account.

 

[coolfactor]

I wonder how well this "on-device" transcribing works on cheap Android phones?

 

[Trausner]

You need to be able to receive SMS messages to make a WhatsApp account.

There is an official macOS app, they just need to do the same with iPadOS. This would be completely sufficient. That what they have been testing in beta for years now. Spammy 3rd party apps run like that on iPad too. But I understand it to be a political decision to not release it on iPad.

 

[neotint]

"Popular Meta-owned messaging app WhatsApp..."

Thank you MacRumors for referring to any "Meta"/Facebook owned app by prefixing it as such and reminding people of that. Facebook and Twitter are legacy platform media, the future is moving in different, more distributed and indy directions. Hopefully more transition/migrate to wiser less exploitive tools. In this case: Signal

 

[JosephAW]

Ok Telegram, it’s your move, they hit the ball over the net.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

damn, finally !!!

 

[applefan8254]

Google Chat just added this as well.

Google Chat is better than whatsapp in every way.

There's just one issue (and solution that Google needs to make) with Google apps:

When you login to one Google service, all the other Google apps on that device are populated with that Google account.

Google could fix the issue with a login checkbox giving users the option to login to only the one app without having that account populate all other Google apps.

Another fix could be to give users the option to require a password to switch Google accounts when attempting to use the account switcher.

 

[neptuna]

As many new features that WhatsApp rolls out, I just don’t care for them unless they bring the iPad app out of beta and dual profiles to iPhone. The latter has been available on Android for over a year.

 

[svish]

Don't use WhatsApp much but this should be useful