WhatsApp is developing a feature that\u2019ll offer transcriptions of received voice messages, letting you easily read what\u2019s been said without having to play it out loud. The unannounced feature was initially spotted in the service\u2019s iOS app by WABetaInfo, and WhatsApp has since confirmed that it\u2019s in the \u201cvery early stages of designing and prototyping\u201d the functionality. It\u2019s unclear when it\u2019ll hit the WhatsApp beta for iPhone users or when it\u2019ll come to Android.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to a screenshot shared by WABetaInfo, the feature works by sending speech data to Apple \u201cto process your requests,\u201d not to parent company Facebook. There\u2019s a disclaimer that this data \u201cwill also help Apple improve its speech recognition technology.\u201d However, in a statement, a spokesperson from WhatsApp said the feature \u201cwill be protected by end-to-end encryption\u201d if it\u2019s released, and that the system is designed to maintain the privacy and security of messages.
Voice messages are a useful WhatsApp feature, particularly if you need to send a longer message and aren\u2019t in a position to type it out. But they can sometimes cause problems for recipients who don\u2019t have headphones and aren\u2019t in a position to listen to a message out loud, or if they simply don\u2019t have time to listen to a voice message in its entirety. Transcriptions could let people silently see the contents of a voice message, or reference important details later without having to scrub through audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WABetaInfo reports that transcriptions are saved to the device after they\u2019re created, and that a \u201cTranscript\u201d section makes it easy to skip to specific parts of a message. That\u2019s similar to other auto-transcription software like Google\u2019s Recorder or Otter.ai, which let you click on a word to skip to the moment it\u2019s said in a recording. Transcribing WhatsApp voice messages is currently only possible using third-party software.
At the moment, there\u2019s no sign of an equivalent feature on WhatsApp\u2019s Android app. However, given the level of feature parity between WhatsApp\u2019s different apps, WABetaInfo speculates that it might also be on the way.
The Verge<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WhatsApp is developing a feature that\u2019ll offer transcriptions of received voice messages, letting you easily read what\u2019s been said without having to play it out loud. The unannounced feature was initially spotted in the service\u2019s iOS app by WABetaInfo, and WhatsApp has since confirmed that it\u2019s in the \u201cvery early stages of designing and prototyping\u201d …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37394,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37392\/revisions\/37394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}